Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

incapable of Counter-Revolution, as he is incapable of Revolution. The Hungarian does things for himself; the Austrian likes to have things done for him. The Monarchists about the Emperor Charles, who were responsible for the attempt in March last - Prince Windischgrätz, Count Erdödy, Baron Boroviczenyi-are all Hungarians. But there is also a decisive difference in the circumstances of the two peoples. Austria is dependent on outside help for its food-supply, and for nearly all the raw materials of its industry. Either the Big Entente or the Little Entente could starve Austria within a month by drawing a cordon round her frontiers. There can be no relief from this situation unless and until Austria joins Germany, or the Entente provides credits on a very large scale. There appears now to be little or no prospect of such credits being obtained; and many observers are beginning to doubt whether even with their aid Austria would be capable of independent existence. Hungary, on the other hand, is self-supporting in the matter of food-stuffs, and has even an exportable surplus with which she can negotiate the purchase of raw materials for her industry. The complete and unrelieved impotence of Austria makes any public feeling there may be for or against a monarchical restoration purely academic. It is doubtful if there is very much feeling on the subject, outside the ranks of ex-army officers and officials on the one hand and the professional leaders of Social Democracy on the other.

The existing republican régime, it is true, excites enthusiasm in no single quarter. The prestige of the Vienna Government is probably lower than that of any Government in Europe. Every political party (except the Pan-Germans) has had an attempt at wielding power; but the logic of the position is too strong for any ministerial changes to make a difference. On the whole, Ministries in which the Social Democrats have held office have been rather more successful, for the simple reason that, when they are out of power, the Social Democrats have no interest in preventing disorder. The history of 1848 has repeated itself in the three years since 1918, with the Social Democrats in the rôle of the Liberals of 1848. Now, as then, the Clerical provinces have turned their backs on infidel Vienna. This time

they have gone further than in 1848, and obliged the capital to accept a Constitution (in force since Nov. 10, 1920), which makes of Austria a Federal State on the model of Switzerland, with almost complete autonomy for the provincial administrations. The City of Vienna is detached from the province of Lower Austria, of which it previously formed part, and ranks as an independent province. Having thus secured themselves against the contagion of the capital, the provinces have sat down to await happier days. Two of them (Salzburg and Tirol) have held plébiscites, which resulted in overwhelming majorities for union with Germany. One (Vorarlberg) has voted for union with Switzerland. By pressure exerted in Berlin and Bern the Entente prevented any effect being given to these proceedings; and a fourth province (Styria) was induced, not without difficulty, to forgo the holding of yet another plébiscite. This end was attained by threatening not to grant the credits, which at this time the Austrians believed would be forthcoming. Such belief no longer prevails, and the manœuvre could hardly be repeated. Pressure exercised on Vienna is, of course, without effect in Styria. But, though the list of provincial plébiscites is not complete, there have been enough to demonstrate beyond the possibility of doubt that the provinces are overwhelmingly in favour of union with Germany. Any monarchist tendencies which they may have must be reconciled with this desire. The movement for union with Germany is in fact not based on racial or linguistic affinities. It has no kinship with the 'Grossdeutschland' movement of the 19th century. It is supported because it is regarded as an economic necessity; and on this issue at any rate all parties, Pan-Germans, Clericals, and Social Democrats, are agreed.

If union with Germany were to be combined with a restoration of the Hapsburgs. it would clearly involve delicate problems for the dynasty. It is not thinkable that the clock could be set back, and the Hapsburgs succeed the Hohenzollerns in the Imperial dignity. Indeed, if Charles of Hapsburg were to return to Vienna, it could hardly be with the title of 'Emperor of Austria.' In the purely Austrian lands of his house (the two Austrias, Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, and Tirol) the

6

highest title he held was' Archduke.' Possibly a solution would be sought by forming a new Kingdom of Austria,' as the Empire of Austria' was formed in 1805. The heralds will have a difficult time of it.

[ocr errors]

That the average Austrian bourgeois both in the provinces and in Vienna would welcome a restoration, if it could be combined with union with Germany, may be taken as fairly certain. All the lighter side of Vienna-and the lighter is the most Viennese side of Vienna-misses the Hapsburgs dreadfully. The attachment of the Viennese to the Imperial House had a personal note, to which there was no parallel in any other European monarchy. Their absence is felt like the absence of a family of cousins, with which one has grown up. They were part of the genial, comfortable atmosphere, in which the Viennese lived and moved and had his being under the old régime. How far he would be prepared to disturb or risk such remains of geniality and comfort as he has been able to snatch from the wreckage, in order to have them back, is another matter.

The attitude of the Austrian working-class is much more difficult to estimate. It is certainly not that of the German working-class, which thinks and acts in pretty close accord with its party leaders. The rank and file of the Austrian workers have probably no convictions in favour of republican state forms. The truculence of the Republicanism of the Social Democrat Party leaders and of their organ, the interesting and extremely well editedArbeiter-Zeitung,' is merely the measure of their fear of the strength of the Hapsburg tradition, and of the potentialities which a successful restoration in Hungary wonld open up in Austria. It finds an echo principally in the new army (Reichswehr), which is a jealously guarded Social Democrat preserve, and in certain of the Workers' Councils in Vienna itself and in the Wiener Neustadt district.

In 1919 I had to make investigations into the food

*The Social Democratic Party membership in Vienna alone increased from 49,600 at the outbreak of the war to 188,379 in 1921. The total Trade Union membership at the same date was 459,000. Not much over 25 per cent., therefore, of the organised workers are officially members of the party. On the other hand, at the last elections 435,487 of them voted for it.

conditions in various factories in Vienna and Wiener Neustadt and also in the industrial district of North Styria. In general, Austrian factory organisation is very much more primitive and patriarchal than it is either in Germany or in England; and the attitude of the employees depends very much more on the personality of the managing director. Of the few indications of political feeling among the employees much the most striking was a tendency, which I found widely spread, to associate the Hapsburgs with the mismanagement of the army rationing on the Italian Front, especially in the last year of the war. Again and again in conversation reference was made by men who had served on this front to the starvation they had undergone. Sometimes the officers were blamed. The officers,' I would be told, 'had plenty to eat; and so did the men at the base. But we got nothing but a half-loaf of bread and cold water, and Goulasch (Maconochie ration) once a week.' One man, after some such remarks, added hesitatingly : 'We have made a clean sweep of all that. We have no more Kaiser now.' I asked if he thought the. Kaiser and Vienna were to blame, or the officers of the Train (A.S.C.). He knew nothing about that, but he added: Officers and such are there because of the Kaiser. Now there is no more Kaiser, all these miseries are over.' How far the recollection of the privations which the Austrian soldiers suffered in the latter part of war has softened since 1919, I am not in a position to judge. But it must be strong enough to rob the old régime, in the eyes of most of the present generation of workers, of any halo which it might otherwise possess.

The actual chances of a restoration in Hungary depend on the possibility of circumventing, frustrating, or dividing the Little Entente. The three States of which the Little Entente is composed consist either entirely (in the case of Czecho-Slovakia), mainly (in the case of Jugoslavia), or largely (in the case of Rumania) of territories forming part of the late Hapsburg dominions. None of them can afford to allow a Hapsburg to ascend a neighbouring throne, and become a rallying-point for every discontented element within their borders. The danger is most acute for the CzechoSlovak State with its numerous minorities, nearly all of

whom were incorporated in the new State against their will, and of which the richest and most powerful, the German Bohemians, representing 28.5 per cent. of the entire population, is in open revolt against the racial policy of the Prague Government. Jugoslavia and Rumania have less cause for alarm; for both States owe their formation to the free consent of their component elements. But the present parliamentary rift between the Croats and Slovenes on the one hand and the Serbs on the other makes the idea of anything in the nature of political experiment particularly distasteful at the present moment at Belgrade. Bucharest on the whole has pursued a generous and conciliatory policy towards the minorities in Transylvania and the Banat; but the return of a Hapsburg King to Budapest would undoubtedly have an electric effect on the large enclaves of Magyar race in Eastern Transylvania as well as in the largely pro-Magyar atmosphere of the towns in the newly-ceded districts. In these circumstances the military occupation of Hungary by the three Allies, for which the Little Entente is understood to provide, would be an immediate sequel to any restoration in Budapest.

There have been moments during the past two years when it looked as if the Powers of the Big Entente might be played off against the Powers of the Little Entente in the interests of a Hapsburg restoration. France, Italy, and certain British officials at Budapest have all at different times and for different reasons appeared to toy with the idea. That, however, was before the common interests of the Prague, Bucharest, and Belgrade Governments had taken definite shape in the form of an alliance. The Little Entente is now allpowerful in the Danubian lands; and it is not easy to imagine any political conjuncture, in which it would now be possible for the Hungarian monarchists to play off the Allied Missions, or any one of them, against it. Unless, therefore, some internal disrupture of the first magnitude, such as a revolution in Czecho-Slovakia or an Italo-Jugoslavian War, occurs to paralyse the striking power of the Little Entente, the cause of the Hapsburgs appears to be held for some time to come ineluctably in check. More than this it would be rash to say.

« AnteriorContinua »