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The first Germans to reach Prague carried a warrant for Gedye's arrest on a charge of "treason" (for helping Austrian refugees to flee). For ten days he hid in the attic of the British Legation until he could escape across the Polish border. Once away, Gedye was sent to Moscow for the New York Times, did not like it there, was glad when the chance came to help his native England fight for its own freedom —and Austria's.
Latter-Day Experts. Last week, back in wrecked Vienna, dressed in shorts and puffing clouds of blue smoke from his stub-stemmed pipe, Gedye was once again a familiar figure in his beloved city. He sat in the British mess hall where correspondents eat, listening to ex-police reporters who are now self-styled Mitteleuropa experts, expounding on Austrian politics. He spoke only when he was spoken to.
With him was his "socialist dog," born under Prince von Starhemberg's Fascist guns in 1934, which had accompanied Gedye through all his travels. Due back with him shortly, too, is blond, fortyish Madame Lepper, ex-Austrian civil servant, British by marriage, who started as Gedye's secretary, is now almost his collaborator.
But the bomb-battered city was not the old Vienna. Wrote Gedye: "It was like walking onto a stage where the scenery of some gay Viennese operetta had been dismantled, the vivid costumes of the artists replaced by the dull garb of the scene-shifters. The curtain has fallen on Vienna's operetta existence, and it will be long before it rises again."