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Bequest or
Irving Kane Pond

■0)

Oa/- fjtJT

The House of Hohenzollern

and

The Hapsburg Monarchy

Original^ published in

The New York Evening Post and
The New York Nation

By
GUSTAV POLLAK

Published by
The New York Evening Post Co.

CONTENTS

Page

r. The House of Hohenzollem .... 5

BismiEirck's Neglected PoKcies • . • 23
t The Vision of a Central Europe . . 33

Austria's Opportunity 59

The Future of Bohemia 67

Hungary and the Fall of Tisza • . • 81
The Poles of Austria 95

The House of HohenzoUern

[From The New York Nation, March 22, 1917.]

T N all discussions of the fate of Ger-
-*- many in case of her ultimate defeat,
the question of the attachment of the
people to the HohenzoUern dynasty plays
an important part. That Prussian loyalty
will be equal to almost any test admits
scarcely of doubt, but the question natur-
ally suggests itself, Will other subjects
of the Empire, notably South Germans,
remain unshaken in their devotion to a
dynasty that is responsible, as all Germans
must eventually recognize, for the most
disastrous war in history? It is difficult to
make predictions at the present time, with
the fortunes of war still trembling in the
balance. One may safely say, however,
that from the establishment of the present
Empire to the outbreak of the war, every
non-Prussian has been, first of all, a
Saxon, Bavarian, Wiirttemberger, etc.,
and only secondarily a German. We have
on this point the highly instructive cor-

roboration of so excellent an authority as
Prince Bismarck. He says, in the thir-
teenth chapter of his "Recollections":

Never, not even at Frankfort, did I

doubt that the key to German politics was
to be found in princes and dynasties, not
in publicists, whether in parliament and
the press or on the barricades. ...
In order that German patriotism be

active and effective, it needs dependence
on a dynasty. Independent of dynasty,
patriotism, as a practical matter, rarely
reaches its full height. . . . It is as
a Prussian, a Hanoverian, a Wiirttem-
berger, a Bavarian, or Hessian, rather
than as a German, that he is disposed to
give unequivocal proof of patriotism.
The German love of the Fatherland has
need of a prince on whom it can concen-
trate its attachment. Suppose that all the
German dynasties were suddenly deposed ;
there would then be no likelihood that the
German national sentiment would suffice
to hold all Germans together, from the
point of view of international law, amid
the friction of European politics, even in
the form of federated Hanse towns and
imperial rural conmiunes ( "Reichsdorf -
er") . The Germans would fall a prey to

nations more closely welded together if
they once lost the tie which rests in the
sense of the common importance of their
princes.

Bismarck was never imder any illusions
as to the feeling of non-Prussian Germans
towards the HohenzoUern dynasty. After
the war of 1866 he labored hard to con-
vince King William that it would be a
serious mistake to punish Bavaria by
forcing her to give up Anspach and Bay-
reuth to Prussia, just as it would be to
compel Austria to give up part of her
possessions. "I gauged," he wrote, "the
proposed acquisitions from Austria and
Bavaria by asking myself whether the in-
habitants, in case of future war, would
remain faithful to the King of Prussia
after the withdrawal of the Prussian of-
ficials and troops and continue to accept
commands from him; and I had not the
impression that the population of these
districts, which had become habituated to
Bavarian and Austrian conditions, would
be disposed to meet HohenzoUern predi-
lections."

All this is well known. South-German
dislike of Prussian ways is as old as the
history of the Electors of Brandenburg
and as recent as the present war, with its
acknowledged friction between Prussian
and non-Prussian commanders of the
Central armies. The Hohenzollerns have
ever ruled with a heavy hand, in peace as
in war, and they do not go out of their
way to enlist the sympathies of non-Prus-
sians.. Nor is it in politics and in warfare
only that the antagonism between the
Prussians and the people of other parts
of Germany has found expression. Ger-
man literature gives abundant proof that
the Hohenzollern dynasty and the liberal
sentiment of Germany have ever been far
apart. None of the rulers of the house of
Hohenzollern befriended German poets,
with the single exception of the ill-starred
Frederick III (while still Crown Prince) ,
unless their verses glorified Prussian
deeds. The greatest of Prussian rulers
ignored contemptuousljr the greatest of
German poets, and Les^ing^ and Heine had
as little cause to look kindly upon Berlin

as Goethe. Goethe visited the Prussian
capital with Karl August of Weimar in
May, 1778, and his impressions of Berlin
life and of the surroundings of the King
were far from favorable. "I have got
quite close to old Fritz," he wrote, ^'having
seen his gold, his silver, his statues, his
apes, his parrots, and heard his own curs
twaddle about the great man." The King
and the poet had nothing in common.
Frederick's judgment of Goethe's "Gotz
von Berlichingen" was as follows: "Voili
un Goetz de Berlichingen qui parait siu*
la scene, imitation detestable de ces mau-
vaises pieces anglaises, et le parterre ap-
plaudit et demande avec enthousiasme la
repetition de ces degoutantes platitudes."
Frederick the Great cared only for French
savants; he made one President of the
Academy of Sciences, another Librarian.
Gk)ethe was not at all in sympathy with
Frederick's plan of putting the federation
of German sovereigns on a strong military
basis. He feared not so much Prussia as
the Prussian King, who had no considera-
tion for small states like Saxe- Weimar.

In the summer of 1780 he spoke in the
Aristophanic little play "Die Vogel," of
"the Black Eagle with his ever-ready
claws.'*

Under Frederick's successors the state
of affairs in Prussia was even less to
Gk)ethe's liking, Frederick William II
discouraged the development of science
and free speech by every means in his
power. Kant barely escaped being de-
prived of his professorship. The next
King, Frederick William III, and his
Queen, ostentatiously ignored Goethe on
their visits to Weimar.

Schiller did not fare so ill in his rela-
tions with the Hohenzollerns, but he was
not spared by the Berlin bureaucracy. In
the last year of his life he wished for a
wider sphere of activity than was afforded
him in Weimar and Jena. He visited
Berlin in May, 1804, and Queen Luise
was seemingly anxious to have him settle
there. On his return to Weimar he wrote
to the royal Cabinet Counsellor Beyme
that, while he found himself unable to
leave Weimar permanently, he should be

willing, under certain conditions, to spend
a few months every year in Berlin, but
no answer to his letter was vouchsafed him.
Lessing had at various times gone to
Berlin in the hope of finding there some
suitable position. At one time, in 1765,
he seemed to have some prospect of get-
ting the royal librarianship. He was pro-
posed to the King by one of his French
favorites, Colonel Guichard, but Freder-
ick, who had become prejudiced against
Lessing through Voltaire's version of a
previous quarrel between the two, refused
to consider the suggestion. The position
was oflFered to Winckelmann, but he de-
clined it on account of the low salary, and
Lessing's name was once more brought
forward by Guichard. Frederick there-
upon declared with vehemence that a
Frenchman would get the place, and so a
Frenchman did. Lessing felt the disap-
pointment keenly. He wrote to his father
later on: "I left Berlin after the only
thing that I had so long hoped for and
that had long been held out to me was
denied me." It is safe to say, however,

that Frederick would never have found in
Lessing a pliant employee, such as he liked
to have near him. Lessing had previously,
in 1764, declined the offer of a professor-
ship of rhetoric in the University of
Konigsberg because of the condition that
he was to deliver annually a eulogy of
the King.

It is interesting to contrast with these
experiences of Lessing in Prussia the at-
titude of the Austrian authorities towards
contemporaneous men of letters. Lessing
wrote to Nicolai: "Let some one dare to
write in Berlin as freely as Sonnen-
fels is writing in Vienna." As early
as 1711 Emperor Charles VI had made
Leibnitz an Aulic Councillor and a baron
of the Empire, and when the philosopher
came to Vienna in 1718 and submitted to
the Emperor a draft of the Peace of
Utrecht, he received an annual pension of
2,000 florins, which Charles offered to
double if Leibnitz agreed to settle in the
Austrian capital.

The hst of literary men who suffered
from Prussian reactionism is a long one.

Bome, Herwegh, and Hoffmann von
Fallersleben, among others, showed that
there was mutual dislike, but no one em-
bodied his hatred of Prussia in such flam-
ing words as Heine ; witness the preface to
his "Franzosische Zustande," After speak-
ing of Mettemich's cynical but open de-
fiance of liberalism and the mulish con-
sistency of the Emperor Francis, he pro-
ceeded :

As regards Prussia we may speak in a
different tone. Here at least we are not
restrained by respect for the sacredness of
the head of the German Empire. The
learned minions on the banks of the Spree
may dream of a great Emperor of the
house of Borussia and proclaim Prussian
hegemony, with all its glorious lordliness,
but thus far the long fingers of the Hohen-
zollem have not yet succeeded in grasping
the crown of Charlemagne and dump-
ing it into the same bag with so many
Polish and Saxon jewels. . . .

It is true that recently many friends of
the Fatherland have desired the enlarge-
ment of Prussia and hoped to see in the
kings the masters of a united Germany.

They have held out a bait to patriots and
talked of Prussian liberalism, and the
friends of liberty have begun to look con-
fidingly towards the Linden of Berlin,
but as for me, I have never shared their
confidence. On the contrary, I watched
with anxiety the Prussian eagle, and while
others spoke with so much warmth of how
this bold eagle turned his eye toward the
sun, I watched all the more carefully his
claws, I did not trust this Prussian, this
tall and canting white-gaitered hero, with
his wide mouth and his rapacious stomach
and his corporal's stick, which he first
dipped in holy water before laying it on.
I disliked this philosophic military despot-
ism, its mixture of small beer, lies, and
sand. Repulsive beyond expression was to
me this Prussia, this stiff, hypocritical
Prussia, this Tartuffe among the nations.

Heine allowed himself in his verse to

go even further in denouncing Prussia

and the house of HohenzoUem, but

though as a poet and as a wit he abused

his double license, he but over-emphasized

the grievances of liberal Gtermany. There

is perhaps in all literature no similar in-

stance of a dynasty incurring such fierce
hatred on the part of one of the greatest
writers of the nation.

Whatever concessions any ruler of the
house of HohenzoUem, since the days of
Frederick the Great, made to liberal ideas
were wrung from him by bitter political
necessity. The humiliating peace of Til-
sit forced Frederick William III to adopt
the reform plans of Stein and Harden-
berg, but the stifling period of reaction
that followed the War of Liberation, in
the latter reign of the King and that of his
successors, Frederick William IV and the
Prince Regent (afterwards William I),
was unrelieved, down to the Revolution
of 1848, by any breath of freedom. Prus-
sia was ready for Bismarck. From the
outset there was no thought in his mind
of making Prussia great in order to make
her free. He sounded the keynote of his
future policy in a speech in the Prussian
Diet on December 8, 1850, when he said:
"According to my conviction, Prussian
honor does^not consist in Prussia's play-

ing the Don Quixote all over Germany
for the benefit of mortified parliamentary
celebrities, who consider their local con-
stitution in danger. I look for Prussian
honor in Prussia's abstinence before all
things from every shameful union with
democracy/' Bismarck's ideal was a
great Prussia and only incidentally a
great Grermany; a liberal Prussia or a
liberal Germany was never a part of his
programme. In 1868, shortly after his
accession to the Prussian Ministry of
State, he wrote to Count von der Goltz,
his successor as Ambassador to France:

"The pursuit of the phantom of popular-
ity in Germany, which we have been car-
rying on for the last forty years, has cost
us our position in Germany and in
Eiu*ope, and we shall not win it back by
allowing ourselves to be carried away by
the stream, persuaded that we are direct-
ing its course, but only by standing firmly
upon our legs, and being first of all a
Great Power and a German Federal
State afterwards."

Bismarck remained true to his policy
throughout his rule, yet when all its fruits
had been garnered in, and he was surveying
the past from his retreats at Friedrichsruh
and Varzin, a gnawing doubt as to the
permanency of the structure he had erect-
ed overcame him. "History shows," he
wrote, "that in Germany it is the Prussian
stock whose individual character is most
strongly marked, and yet no one could
decisively answer the question whether,
supposing the Hohenzollem dynasty and
all its rightful successors to have passed
away, the political cohesion of Prussia
would survive. Is it quite certain that
the eastern and western divisions, that the
Pomeranians and Hanoverians, the na-
tives of Holstein and Silesia, of Aachen
and Konigsberg, would then continue as
they now are, armed together in the indis-
soluble unity of the Prussian state?"

Many a G^erman student of history who
ponders at the present time the doubt as
to the stability of the HohenzoUern dy-
nasty expressed by Bismarck will recall
the voice of a far-sighted German, the his-

torian Gervinus, who, when the unifica-
tion of Germany was an accomplished
fact, wrote an open letter to the Prussian
King, "An das Preussische Konigshaus"
(published posthumously in 1872), in
which he impressively argued that the an-
nexation of G^erman lands by Prussia
after the war of 1866 had disgraced the
house of Hohenzollem, and that it car-
ried the seeds of future evil with it. All the
glories of the war of 1870 did not blind
Gervinus to the dangers threatening a
Germany founded on militarism and not
on justice and fair dealing. He foresaw
with dread the creation of a military state
such as the world had not seen even when
Napoleon was at the height of his power.
"We have,'* he wrote, "as regards power
y^' taken the place of France, but we shall

draw upon ourselves all the hatred that
France incurred." The following words
have acquired an added impressiveness
through the events of the past two years:
"Is it not a fact that, at the time of the
Luxemburg complications, when the
secret treaties of alliance between Prussia

and the South German states were made
public, the anger and suspicion of all Gov-
ernments were aroused when it was shown
that one day before the Peace of Prague
a principal article of the Treaty had been
violated? Can we ignore the fact that the
new doctrine, 'Might before right,' sur-
rounded as it is by all the halo of a bril-
hant statesmanship, has greatly under-
mined the hitherto prevailing principle of
non-intervention among English states- y
men of the old type?"'

Developments within the Grerman Em-
pire since 1871 have justified the appre-
hensions of those who, like Gervinus, saw
in the overshadowing importance of Prus-
sia an ominous menace to the smaller Ger-
man states. Their privileges as compon-
ent parts of the German Empire have be-
come a mere mockery under a Constitu-
tion which vests the Imperial succession in
the house of HohenzoUem, with its heredi-
tary right in the Presidency of the Feder-
ation, the casting vote of Prussia in case
of a tie in the Federal Council, a perma-
nent Prussian majority in the Reichstag,

and the prerogative of the King of Prus-
sia as German Emperor in calling, ad-
journing, and proroguing the Reichstag,
Parliamentary government in the real
sense of the word has become impossible
under a system which leaves the Imperial
Ministers independent of the will of the
Reichstag and relegates the Chancellors
of the Empire to the position of mere tools
of a Hohenzollern King. A further ex-
pansion of Prussia could only take place
with a corresponding loss of prestige on
the part of the smaller states. What,
these states must have asked themselves
more than once since the outbreak of the
war, will be our gain if Prussian general-
ship triumphs? It is not too early to
N/' raise the question as to whi^t will be their
portion if Prussian supremacy ends in
military disaster.

In any case, the day camiot be far dis-
tant when the intrinsic rights of Prussia
to the part within the Empire she has
arrogated to herself will be seriously ques-
tioned by descendants of those German
stocks which contributed so largely to the

power of the old Germanic Empire during
the thousand years of its existence,
Franconians, Saxons, Luxemburgs, ^
Hohenstauf en, as well as Hapsburgs, fur-
nished the great rulers of the Holy Roman
Empire long before a HohenzoUem was
dreamed of as a possible Emperor, In
these days of dynastic upheavals in other
countries the experience of G^ermany as an
hereditary monarchy within less than fifty
years cannot be thrown into the scales as
against the history of an elective Empire
of a thousand years,

Prussia's supremacy as the German
Kulturstaat far excellence has been too \/

long assumed by militarists and Junkers,
and too easily acquiesced in by the rest y
of Germany, Even in a purely military
sense, Prussia, according to Bismarck
himself, has long ceased to be as produc-
tive of great talents as was the case in the
time of Frederick the Great, "Our most
successful commanders," he wrote in his
Memoirs, "Bliicher, Gneisenau, Moltke,
Gtoeben, were not Prussians originally,
nor, in the civil administration, were Stein,

Hardenberg, Motz, and Grolman." The
list of great Germans in other fields who
were not Prussians by birth is endless. The
names of Leibnitz, Liebig, Bopp, Grimm,
Hegel, Gauss, Ehrenberg, Bach, Wag-
ner, of Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, and
many others of similar eminence, leap to
the mind at once. And Diirer and Hol-
bein, the South Germans, marked the
climax of all German art long before the
Mark Brandenburg had become the King-
dom of Prussia.

Bismarck's doctrines and Hohenzol-
lern principles are now being tried in the
furnace of a world war. Not all that can
be said, and must justly be said, of Prus-
sian leadership in the intellectual and ma-
terial development of Germany can ob-
scure the patent failure of the Hohenzol-
V lern dynasty. Prussian hegemony may
have fed the German mind and body, but it
has starved the German soul.

Bismarck's Neglected

Policies

[From The New York Evening Post, April 14, 1917.]

OINCE the outbreak of the war the
^^ question has often been asked. What
would Germany's policy in 1914 have been
if Bismarck had been alive? Would there
have been any war at all? In the first
flush of victory the German people in-
voked the name of Bismarck as that of a
patron saint blessing their arms and re-
joicing in the fruits of his wisdom. Later
on less was heard of Bismarck's share in
preparing Germany for this war, and to-
day his achievements are beginning to be
viewed in a different light. History is
not only being made but rewritten. His-
toriographers ask themselves. Can the
fame of the man who brought about Ger-
man unity after three successful wars sur-
vive unscathed the prodigiously imsuccess-
ful one that was their result?

The thought of a powerful military at-
tack on Germany often haunted Bis- •
marck in his retirement. The forestalling
of a coalition against Germany was to be
the crowning work of his diplomacy. Any
means to that end seemed proper to him.
He brought about the Triple Alliance, not
because he considered Austria-Hungary
and Italy natural or particularly desirable
allies of Germany, but because he felt that,
with any two strong military countries
backing Germany, she could withstand a
possible coalition of any other two of the
great Powers against her. Much as he
had disliked and distrusted Austria all his
life, he preferred her, on the whole, to
Russia as an ally against France. But be-
fore definitely concluding the Triple Al-
liance, he carefully weighed in the balance
all the possible combinations against Ger-
many. Austria's help being assured, he
felt reasonably safe against an attack by
both France and Russia. "I should not
consider,'* he reasoned, "a simultaneous
attack by our two great neighbor Em-
pires, even though Italy were not the third

in the alliance, as a matter of life and
death,'' but the situation appeared to him
much more serious if Italy were to threaten
Austria's possessions on the Adriatic,
"In that case," he wrote, "the struggle,
the possibility of which I anticipate,
would be unequal." And imagining
France and Austria in a league with
Russia, "no words," he said, "are needed
to show how greatly aggravated would be
the peril of Germany." In other words,
he could conceive of an attack on Ger-
many by three Powers as being literally
a matter of life and death. And reason-
ing thus, he made sure, as he thought, of
the friendship of both Austria and Italy.
Events have proved not so much Bis-
marck's wisdom as the folly of his suc-
cessors. It would never have entered his
mind to create a situation like that which
confronts Germany to-day, with fourteen
countries, including the United States, ar-
rayed against her. He certainly did not
foresee the possibility of Germany and
Austria jointly declaring war on Russia
and France and bringing England into

the conflict, while forcing Italy to break
with her partners in the Triple AUiance.
Bismarck presupposed that Germany
and Austria would cultivate peace with
Russia, and judged that their alliance
"would not lack the support of England/'
In concluding the alliance with Austria-
Hungary, Bismarck was under no illusion
as to the difiiculties inherent in such a
partnership, Ofiicial statements nowa-
days overflow with assurances of the most
complete harmony between the two em-
pires, Bismarck did not take such an
idyllic view of an alliance promoted by
him solely as the result of cold-blooded
calculation.

In point of material force — ^he wrote in
his Memoirs.— ^I held a union with Russia
to have the advantage. I had also been
used to regard it as safer, because I placed
more reliance on traditional dynastic
friendship, on commimity of conservative
monarchical instincts, on the absence of
indigenous political divisions, than on the
fits and starts of public opinion among the
Hungarian, Slav, and Catholic popula-
tion of the monarchy of the Hapsburgs.

Complete reliance could be placed upon
the durability of neither union, whether
one estimated the strength of the dynastic
bond with Russia, or of the German sym-
pathies of the Hungarian populace. If
the balance of opinion in Hungary were
always determined by sober political cal-
culation, this brave and independent peo-
ple, isolated in the broad ocean of Slav
population, and comparatively insignifi-
cant in niraibers, would remain constant to
the conviction that its position can only be
secured by the support of the German ele-
ment in Austria and Germany. But the
Kossuth episode, and the suppression in
Himgary itself of the German elements
that remained loyal to the Empire, and
other symptoms showed that among Hun-
garian hussars and lawyers self-confidence
is apt in critical moments to get the better
of political calculation and self-control.
Even in quiet times many a Magyar will
get the gypsies to play to him the song
"Der Deutsche ist ein Hundsfott" ("The
German is a blackguard").

Glermany, as Bismarck was well aware,
was not loved either in Russia or in
Austria-Hungary. "Could anti-German
rancor," he asked, "acquire in Russia a

keener edge than it has among the Czechs
in Bohemia and Moravia, the Slovenes of
the provinces comprised within the earlier
German Confederation, and the Poles in
Galicia?" Nor did Bismarck consider the
stability of the Austro-Hungarian mon-
archy as assured beyond doubt. "The
factors which must be taken into account,"
he wrote, "are as manifold as is the mix-
ture of her populations, and to their cor-
rosive and occasionally disruptive force
must be added the incalculable influence
that the religious element may from time
to time, as the power of Rome wakes or
wanes, exert upon the directing personal-
ities." He foresaw that not only Pan-
Slavism and the Bulgarian, Bosnian, Ser-
vian, Rumanian, the Czech, and the Polish
questions, but also the Italian question in
the Trentino, in Trieste, and on the Dal-
matian coast, might become dangerous not
merely as affecting Austria, but as pre-
cipitating a European crisis. What has
been so often asserted and as often official-
ly denied, as to the friction between the
Gterman- Austrians and the Czech soldiery,

is clearly foretold in Bismarck's state-
ment: "In Bohemia the antagonism be-
tween Germans and Czechs has in some \^
places penetrated so deeply into the army
that the officers of the two nationalities in
certain regiments hold aloof from one an-
other, even to the degree that they will not V
meet at mess."

Bismarck did not shrink from war if it
suited his purpose of aggrandizing Grcr-
many and, above all, Prussia, but he never
sought war needlessly. "During the time
that I was in office," he wrote, "I advised
three wars, the Danish, the Bohemian, and
the French; but every time I first made
clear to myself whether the w,ar, if suc-
cessful, would bring a prize worth the
sacrifices which every war requires, and
which are now so much greater than in the
last century." He considered Germany
as perhaps the single great Power in
Europe which had nothing to gain by pro-
voking war. "We ought to do all we
can," he said, "to counteract the ill-feeling
which has been called out through our

growth to the position of a really great
Power, by honorable and peaceful use of
our influence, and by convincing the
world that a German hegemony in
Europe is more useful and less partisan
and also less harmful to the freedom of
others than that of France, Russia, or
England." He stated emphatically that
Germany required no increase of contigu-
ous territory, and that her only object
should be to convince other nations of her
peaceful intentions. "I have followed my
own prescription," he remarked, "not
without some personal reluctance, in my
course towards Spain in the question of
the Caroline Islands and towards the
United States in that of Samoa."

How was it possible, it will be asked,
that German statesmen of to-day, know-
ing all about Bismarck's misgivings as to
the sincerity of the friendship between
Austria and Germany, and about his
dread of embroiling the two countries in
a useless war against France and Russia,
could enter so light-heartedly upon their
stupendous venture? The answer is to

be sought not only in their natural ignor-
ance of their own limitations, but in the
example of unscrupulous selfishness and, v
if need be, cynical, brutality set them by
their great protagonist during the entire
course of his career. Lacking his intel-
lectual force and his unrivalled resource- V/
fulness, they thought themselves safe in /

adopting his tactics and improving upon / (/
them. Was it not Bismarck's principle
that all contracts between great states
cease to be unconditionally binding as soon
as they are tested by the struggle for ex-
istence, and that no great nation will ever
be induced to sacrifice itself on the altar
of fidelity to contract? Starting with this
premise, what could be more logical than
the invasion of Belgimn, with all that fol-
lowed?

Bismarck had no diplomatic scruples of
any kind, but he knew how to guard his
diplomatic secrets. His occasional sincer-
ity in disclosing the past was his best asset
in making future deceit possible. It is
quite clear that he never foresaw the pos-
sibility of a war between the United States

and Germany, but had he foreseen it he
never would have resorted to such devices
as were employed by his successors, the
agile Biilow and the ponderous Bethmann-
Hollweg. Biilow was puerile enough to
imagine that a Deutsch-Amerikanischer
Nationalbund would forever solidify the
sentiment of German- Americans against
their adopted coimtry, and Bethmann-
HoUweg allowed the ingenious Zimmer-
mann to concoct his little Mexican-Jap-
anese scheme. Not such, with all its ter-
giversations, was Bismarck's foreign
policy. Woe to the German people that
they have chosen to disregard its strength
and to cling to its weakness!

The Vision of a Central

Europe

[From The New York Nation, December 14, 1916.]

T^E W polemical books written during the
'^ present war have called for serious
criticism. When passion shrieks, reason can
only be silent. Friedrich Naumann's
* *Mitteleuropa' ' ( Central Europe. Trans-
lated by Christabel M. Meredith, Lon-
don: P. S. King & Son), however, stands
in some respects in a class by itself. A
fervent economic plea for Germany's
future expansion, it is but indirectly con-
cerned with the present clash of arms and
ignores international hatreds. The book,
which has had an extraordinary vogue
throughout Germany and Austria-Him-
gary, is now obtainable in an English
translation (faithful, though by no means
flawless) to which Prof. W. J. Ashley has
written an introduction. He speaks of it
as "far and away the most important book
that has appeared in Germany since the

world-conflict began." Such a success
challenges thought, even aside from the in-
trinsic merits of the work. It will there-
fore not be superfluous to examine in de-
tail the arguments that have made so
powerful an appeal to German and Aus-
tro-Hungaridn readers.

Herr Naumann is a member of the
Reichstag and author of a number of
books. His career shows strange muta-
tions of principle — ^reUgious, political, and
economic. Originally a Lutheran pastor
and SociaKstic evangelist, he abandoned
the pulpit for journalism and politics. He
founded Die HilfCj and through this
journal and his book on "Demokratie und
Kaisertum" attempted to reconcile the
tenets of Social-Democracy with the pre-
vailing furore for naval and colonial ex-
pansion. The National- Socialist party
being unable to obtain representation in
the Reichstag, Herr Naumann allied him-
self with the VoUesparteij which derived
its strength mainly from the middlcrclass
radicals of southern G^ermany. As an
ardent free-trader and advocate of certain

definite legislative measures, he succeeded
in gaining a seat in the Reichstag, where
he attempted to fuse several minor radical
groups into a wing of the Liberal party.
In a book written at that time, his "Neu-
deutsche Wirtschaftspolitik," he predicted
the political and social regeneration of
Germany through unrestricted intercourse
with other coimtries. Such was Herr
Naimaann's past political philosophy ; what
is his present creed?

Briefly speaking, Naumann advocates,
one may say he foretells, as in a prophetic
vision, a combination — it is nowhere di-
rectly called an alliance — between the Ger-
man Empire and the Hapsburg Mon-
archy, offensive and defensive, economic
and military, into which as many neutral
states as possible may and should, as a mat-
ter of self-interest, eventually enter. The
adhesion of Turkey and the Balkan states
is taken for granted. The advantages of
such a superstate to the neutral countries
which are to join their maritime front to
the territory of the Central Powers, spe-
cifically to Holland, Greece, Rumania,

and the Scandinavian countries, are but
vaguely alluded to — for prudential rea-
sons dictated by the war. The main pur-
pose of the formation of this "Central
Europe" is, as frankly admitted by the
author, the greater good of the two prin-
cipal countries, Glermany and Austria-
Hungary. Without committing himself
to any definite plan for the organization of
this vast state, Herr Naumann tentatively
puts forth a progranmae which he says
statesmen of the future may modify at
their pleasure. This includes common re-
cruiting laws, mutual military inspection,
a joint committee for foreign affairs, joint
boards for the control of railways and of
river navigation, common coins and meas-
ures, common banking and commercial
laws, common military expenditures, mu-
tual liability for national debts, equality of
customs tariffs, joint collection of customs,
equal laws for the protection of labor,
equal laws of association and trust laws,
etc. There may or may not be eventually
free trade between Germany and the
group of states that are to join her, but

the bond of cohesion between them will
primarily be a political one. Economic
considerations will adjust themselves to
their common political interests.

In the programme thus outlined the
need of permanent preparedness for war is
repeatedly emphasized. Hence regulation
of the storage of grain becomes a matter
of paramount importance. This and similar
measures Herr Naumann would entrust to
several commissions, which he proposes to
locate as follows: Budapest is to be the
grain centre, Prague the centre for all
treaty matters, Hamburg the centre of the
maritime trade, Berlin the exchange cen-
tre, and Vienna the legal centre. But it
is only after peace has been declared that
it will be possible to formulate a definite
programme, and the gist of such a pro-
gramme can, in Herr Naumann's opinion,
be simimed up in two words: "better or-
ganization." It was Prussian organiza-
tion that paved the way for the successes of
this war, and if, says he, the opponents of
Germany like to label the intrinsic con-
nection between the works of peace and

those of war as "German miUtarism," they
are welcome to it. The wholesome effect
of Prussian military discipline pervades,
in his view, the whole of Germany from
top to bottom.

Enthusiastic to the point of rhapsody as
Herr Naumann is over his project, he does
not wholly ignore the difficulties of its exe-
cution. He realizes that the Government
of Austria-Hungary may have to be
argued and cajoled into a partnership in
which that country is bound to be the
weaker member. Germany will have to
make it clear that there is no thought of
interfering with the internal affairs of the
Hapsburg Monarchy, and that the deli-
cate questions of race and language which
have so long agitated that country would
be let alone by the Gtermany of Central
Europe.

What is to be the geographical extent
of this powerful congeries of states? It
is Herr Naumann's ambition to see Cen-
tral Europe comprise about 5,000,000
square miles, that is to say, one-tenth of
the inhabited surface, of the globe. He

arrives at his estimate by a series of daring
steps. Starting with the 450,000 square
miles of Germany and Austria-Hmigary,
he adds, first, the 900,000 square miles of
"a number of neighboring European
states," and then "claims" all of European
and Asiatic Turkey, thereby swelling the
figures to 2,500,000 square miles. Add
the colonies of the German Empire and
you have 4,000,000 square miles, and "if
we venture to count in the overseas pos-
sessions of neighboring states which have
not yet joined us, we may arrive at ap-
proximately 5,000,000 square miles" — ^a
figure which he admits is "somewhat arbi-
trary." The population of this Central
Europe, beginning with the 116,000,000
inhabitants of the German Empire and
Austria-Hungary, will, in the manner de-
scribed, mount up to about 200,000,000,
or, roughly, one-eighth of the population
of the globe.

Fantastic as this programme seems to
be, it is undeniable that Herr Naumann's
teachings are spreading, and will have
to be reckoned with in the future.

Already Austrian and German trade
unions have given their adhesion to the
plan, and even councils of German and
Austrian Socialists have approved of it.
So conservative a German economist as
Professor von SchmoUer is arguing that
the present time urgently calls for close
tariff arrangements with Austria-Hun-
gary, and that "the leading men of nearly
all classes and parties are gradually meet-
ing under this flag." Naumann himself
foresees certain objections within Ger-
many itself. He fears that his scheme
will be viewed with suspicion by Prussian
nobles, the conservative, powerful, and
domineering (herrschaftsstarke) Old
Prussian, as well as the "Liberal capital-
ist," who, though for opposite reasons,
equally distrusts Austria-Hungary. To
these two types must be added the "Great-
er-Germans," whose ideal is a purely Ger-
manic state, and who are already groaning
under the burden of the Poles, Danes, and
French Alsatians of the Empire.

Herr Naumann, furthermore, realizes
that the Magyars are not in love with the

Germans, but he relies on their keen desire
to retain their supremacy over the Slavs,
and reasons that they will grasp at any-
thing Germany may offer them to attain
their ends. From a purely economic point
of view, Austria-Himgary and the other
members of the Central European com-
bination are to be won over by a system of
mutual tariff preferences which shall pro-
tect the industrially weaker countries.

Herr Naumann, it must be admitted,
presents his case with considerable skill.
He writes picturesquely and, in the main,
clearly and forcibly. His occasional senti-
mental outbursts, and the studied vague-
ness to which German writers are so prone,
but enhance the interest of the book in
German eyes. He is careful not to burden
his readers needlessly with statistics. These
and certain dry historical facts are relegat-
ed to a separate chapter at the conclusion
of the book.

While Naumann's thesis is apparently a
simple one, he finds it necessary to bolster
it up with assertions and prophecies of
various kinds. We meet at the outset with

the statement that there is no room, at the
present time, for France in the new Cen-
tral Europe. Having chosen to ally her-
self with England, she will, unfortunately
for her, "in the near future become a
greater and better Portugal." Yet
even for her Herr Naumann would
leave a door open, perhaps only in a
distant future, for, like so many
Germans, he professes to harbor no
ill-feelings towards France. Italy, too, he
does not consider, for all time to come, nec-
essarily ineligible to partnership in Central
Europe, though he cautiously adds, "the
armies on the Isonzo have the first word."
Germany's present ally, Turkey, being
"antiquated" and separated from Central
Europe, both geographically and national-
ly, is not hailed with delight as a future
partner. But Central Europe will eventu-
ally determine the conditions of its own
existence. Though Herr Naumann care-
fully refrains throughout his book from
speaking harshly of any of the belligerent
nations, there is an unmistakable Bis-
marckian flavor in some of his arguments.

All participants in the Great War must
feel that neither now nor in the future can
small or even moderate-sized countries
have any voice in world politics, "Our
conceptions of size have entirely changed,
only very large states can assert their in-
dividuality, all the little ones live by profit-
ing from the quarrels of the great, and
must first ask their permission if they
would make an unusual move." The world
thinks, as Cecil Rhodes says, "in contin-
ents/' A generation, Herr Naumann sur-
mises, will be required for the task of es-
tablishing Central Europe, even if peace,
declared on the basis of victory of the Grcr-
man- Austrian arms, seals the permanent
solidarity of the Hapsburgs and Hohen-
zollems, A shade of doubt as to this soli-
darity — ^hardly as to the victory itself —
enters even Herr Naimiann's mind. "The
question will arise : Are the Ambassadors
from Berlin, Vienna, and Budapest going
to leave the hall of the National Peace
Congress as open and honest friends or as
secret opponents?" If peace is only to
pave the way for future misunderstand-

ingSy Europe will face another Vienna
Congress of 1815. "In that case, for what
shall we have sacrificed our sons and the
mutilated Hungarians their limbs?" A
perplexing question, indeed! As danger-
ous as the admission that after the conclu-
sion of peace "we all shall be more careful
than hitherto to suppress frivolous pretexts
for war and to strive for a mutual under-
standing between nations."

For Herr Naumann, as for every Ger-
man and Austro-Hungarian, the war be-
gan "purely as a defensive one," though in
the same breath he tells us that "in the
German Empire two ideas had always been
present in the minds of the people and the
Government: that sooner or later a break
with the Czar was bound to come, and that
some time there would have to be a fight
with England for the control of the seas.
The only unexpected thing was that all
came together with a rush — ^the war in
France, the war in the East, and the naval

war."

Leaving aside Herr Naumann^s specula-
tions as to the origin of the war, it is worth

while to raise some doubts as to the feasi-
bility of his plans after its conclusion.
Economic considerations are certainly
powerful factors in the development of
modern nations, but all statesmen must
reckon with the facts of human nature.
Nations and races will go on with their in-
born or cultivated likes and dislikes after
the war as before. It becomes necessary
to remind those who so glibly assume Aus-
tria-Hungary willingness to listen to
Germany's siren voice after the war
that the mutual jealousies of Austria and
Prussia are of very long standing, and
have not been wholly interrupted by the
present war. It was Frederick II who in-
augurated the systematic policy of weaken-
ing Austria in order to strengthen Prussia.
Conversely, Joseph II sought to recover
Austria's prestige by isolating Prussia and
regaining new territory, whether in the
East or in the West. Thenceforth there
was mutual distrust between the two coun-
tries, though Joseph II, immediately after
Frederick's death, thought for a moment
of burying old animosities and founding

an Austro-Prussian alliance which would
guarantee the peace of Europe. Prussia,
however, soon emphasized her antagon-
ism to Austria by her machinations with-
in the German Empire, at Mainz and
Worms, while Joseph II turned to Russia
as the natural friend of Austria. Under
Metternich's regime the mutual jealousies
were accentuated. He rejected contempt-
uously Stein's plan of dividing the over-
lordship of Austria and Prussia in Ger-
many along the lines of the Main. Met-
ternich was shortsighted enough to think,
even after the disappearance of the Holy
Roman Empire, that Austria might guide
the destinies of both Germany and Italy,
and he called the Congress of Vienna to-
gether with this end in view. Prussia never
ceased to watch her opportunities, and
knew how to bide her time.

Bismarck, who is generally credited
with the authorship of the plan for a Cen-
tral Europe, tells us in his "Gedanken und
Erinnerungen" that he never thought, in
the days of the German Bund, while advo-
cating the union of all Germany on a

dualistic basis, of anything but Prussian /

hegemony. He frankly told Count
Karolyi, the Austrian Ambassador, in
1862 : "Our relations must either improve
or grow worse. You will learn to deal with
us (Prussia) as a European Power."
Throughout his career Bismarck never lost
his contempt for Austria, though after the
war of 1866, foreseeing the Franco-Ger-
man War of 1870, he shrewdly insisted on
treating Austria leniently in order to se-
cure at least her passive attitude towards
Germany later on. Austrians still remem-
ber Silesia and Sadowa, and they have not
grown fonder of Prussia during the pres-
ent war. Both Austrians and Himgarians
complain, as Herr Naimiann admits, of
the German, and especially the Prussian,
want of consideration, of their overbearing
manners, etc. "Modern Germans," he
says, "are almost everywhere bad German-
izers." "Why is it," he naively asks, "that
we Germans of the Empire are during this
war so little liked by the rest of the world?"
The question which he leaves unan-
swered was discussed at some length dur-

ing the Franco-Prussian War in an edi-
torial article in the Nation (Oct. 20, 1870:
"Popular Notions of Prussia.") at a time
when the Nation, like the rest of the most
thoughtful orgaiis of public opinion
throughout the United States, was strong-
ly on the side of Germany. Its remarks
are pertinent at the present time :

As to Prussia's habitual want of popu-
larity, it is one of the most curious phe-
nomena in modern history. Prussia has
invariably been disliked, not only by her
enemies, but by her very friends and allies.
The Poles, of course, hate her (and who
would blame them for that?) , but even the
Russians dislike her, notwithstanding the
intimacy and relationship of the two sov-
ereigns. So do the Austrians, so did the
Bavarians and Wiirttembergers, the
Dutch and the Danes, the English and the
Italians, and their dislike seems to have
nothing to do with political jealousies or
grievances. Nor do the French form an
exception to the rule, although it is but
fair to say that before the war at least
there was nothing personal even in their
chauvinism. There must, of course, be
some real and tangible reason for all this.
It is natural enough that, when once a

prejudice exists against a country, the
stranger who visits or traverses it can
rarely be in a proper condition of mind for
steering clear of difficulties and scrapes,
and these difficulties will enhance rather
than correct his prejudices. But we can
hardly call prejudice a natural aversion to
what must appear forbidding and ungenial
to everybody not rendered callous by life-
long habit. The bureaucratic hardness of
Prussian officials, and the rigid compulsory
method with which Prussia enforces the
acceptance of her gifts and her protection,
as well as of her burdens, are certainly not
calculated to beget good will, and w:e can
hardly wonder if Prussia enjoys the
strange distinction of being disliked by a
good many of her own people, who would
willingly allow themselves to be educated,
vaccinated, taxed, and drilled, but who
either object to the official modus operandi
or are anxious to sell their obedience for a
fair measure of constitutional rights.

Herr Naumann quotes the experience
of the North-G^erman Confederation, be-
fore 1870, in its dealings with South Ger-
many, as an example of how easy it was
to overcome the scruples of Bavaria,
Wiirttemberg, Baden, etc., concerning a

closer union with Prussia; but he has to
admit that they had maintained before the
Franco-German War an attitude of dis-
trust towards Prussia which even now has
not wholly disappeared. "The Berliner
was in their eyes long an alien, and is
so in part even to-day." If Grermany is
defeated, Prussia will be less an object of
veneration in South Grcrman eyes than
ever before; but even if she is victorious,
will the feeling between South Germans
and Prussians be all that may be desired?
Will there be unmixed mutual respect and
due appreciation of what each has accom-
plished to bring about victory? Prussia's
preponderance in Central Europe will be
far greater than her present dominance in
Germany. What will Bavaria, Wiirttem-
berg, and Baden have gained to compen-
sate them for sinking into positions of re-
latively greater inferiority than they had
been chafing under before the war? Herr
Naumann sees only a benign thought in
the "controlling concept (Oberbegriff) of
a Central Europe dominating over Ger-
mans, French, Danes, and Poles in the

German Empire, over the Magyars, Ger-
mans, Rmnans, Slovaks, Croats, and Serbs
in Hmigary, over Germans, Czechs, Slo-
vaks, Poles and Southern Slavs in Aus-
tria." All these will "of their own accord
(von selbst)" speak German — as though
Naiunann had never heard of bloody riots
in Bohemia over the question of using the
dual languages in schools, in law courts,
etc., and as though Prussia had not, ac-
cording to Prince Biilow, failed utterly in
her attempts to impose the German lan-
guage with an iron hand on the recalci-
trant school children of Posen. Nothing,
however, appears difficult to the senti-
mentalist in politics. In Herr Naumann's
eyes it is the easiest thing in the world
for Vienna and Berlin to supplement each
other, with great advantage to both.
"We," he says, addressing himself to Aus-
trians, "have more horsepower, and you
more music. We think more in terms of
quantity, the best of you rather in terms
of quality. If we can fuse our respective
abilities, then and for the first time what
is harsh in modem German civilization will

acquire through your assistance the touch
of charm which will make it tolerable to
the outside world." How simple a process
this fusion ( "zusammengiessen" ) appears
to be in the delightful vagueness of Herr
Naumann's pages !

And even if Austrians and Germans al-
low themselves to be carried away by such
glittering phrases, the sober-minded Hun-
garians may in due time be trusted to look
at the situation after the war with a keen
eye to their own interests. The Magyars
have never fully relished the union with
Austria, and, no matter what their present
attitude may be, they will never allow the
Dual Monarchy to enter into any scheme
that may threaten to interfere with their
future freedom of action. Herr Naiunann
assimies that under German influence the
plains of Hungary will become much
more productive. They may, indeed, but
how will that influence be exerted without
wounding the susceptibilities of the proud
Magyars ? Already we hear of fierce pro-
tests in the Hungarian Diet against the in-

Solent interference of German purchasers
of Hungarian farms. Will the Hun-
garian peasantry be less resentful after the
war? Count Szechenyi, "the greatest
Magyar," as he is sometimes called by his
countrymen, said in the Diet of 1848:
"How does a nation come to possess the
force and virtue necessary for its political
action? If the majority of the individuals
composing it are to fulfil humanely and
honorably their appointed task, they must
acquire, above all, the art of pleasing, the
faculty of attracting and absorbing the
neighboring elements. Is it likely that a
people will possess this faculty who will
not respect in others that which it insists
on having respected in itself? It is a great
art to know how to win men's hearts.'*
Unless the Prussians of Central Europe
shall draw the Magyars to their hearts
more easily than they have drawn to them-
selves their South-German brothers, the
future of Central Europe must remain du-
bious.

A mere hint at the numberless problems
which would confront the Slavs of Hun-

gary and Cisleithania un^der the scheme of
a Central Europe must suffice. A
strengthening of German influence, in
whatever shape, and however disguised,
must inevitably entail a weakening of
Slavic power, and such a scheme will there-
fore arouse suspicion and resentment
among the Slavs within Central Europe.
The mutual relations of other nationalities
that will be asked to join Grcrmany, Herr
Naumann conveniently ignores. Rumania,
for instance, may or may not disappear
from the map of Eiu*ope as a consequence
of the war; in either case, will the Rinnans
of Hungary be better satisfied to remain
under Magyar rule, with Grcrman over-
lordship, than they have been hitherto?
Will the Magyars themselves be more
kindly disposed towards them? Will the
Ruthenes of Galicia dislike the Poles
less, and love the Teutons more, in a new
superstate? But everything seems to fit
into Herr Naumann's scheme. Yet,
though Bulgarians and Serbs may be only
Slavs to him, and therefore destined to be
thrown into a conmion melting-pot, their

national characteristics and diflferences will
outlast the war. The Bulgarians are a
practical and energetic people, not given
to boasting of their ancestry, like the
Serbs. They may, or may not, have made
a mistake in casting in their lot with the
Teutons, but their future still lies largely
in their own hands. They may desert
Germany, as they have deserted Russia.
What will be the feeling of the Serbs of
Hungary towards Germany? Each Bal-
kan race will survive the war at least to
the extent of being able to plague its
neighbors. And who can foretell whither,
in the readjustment of Europe after the
peace, the force of a former Pan-Slavism
will tend? Will Poles, Serbs, and Bui-
gars fraternize under the common aegis
of a Central Europe? A stroke of the
pen has resuscitated the ancient Kingdom
of Poland — ^with the status of Galicia and
Posen still undefined — ^but the fortunes
of war may wipe it off the scrap of paper
on which the two Emperors signed their
edict.

So far the war has settled nothing,
though what the rule of blood and iron
can accomplish, Germany imder Prussian
rule has accomplished. Prussian generals
have won new glory for Prussian military
efficiency. But in proportion as they have
succeeded, they have sown the seeds of
envy and dislike in the rest of Germany
and in Austria-Hungary. Political prog-
nostications of writers and statesmen and
even Imperial rescripts have turned out
poor prophecies before this. Naumann
sees in the Germany of to-day a "half-
finished product," but Central Europe is
to develop somehow the fairest flower of
modern civilization — "a type of man in-
termediate between Frenchmen, Italians,
Turks, Russians, Scandinavians, and
Englishmen" — and all this is to "grow
around Teutonism." Such is the fabric of
his dream.

At bottom, stripped of all its fine
phrases, Herr Naumann's gospel of the
great transformation is the old familiar
one of coercion — friendly coercion, by open
flattery and half-veiled insinuation, but still

coercion. He admits that for Austria-
Hungary to enter the Central European
combination will involve "a certain sacri-
fice — ^not to be regarded lightly — of econo-
mic independence and of her rights as a
free state" (her "staatsrechtliche Unge-
bundenheit" ) , but, he finally says in cold
blood, "the transaction is necessary, ac-
cording to all teaching of history, to the
further continuance of the Austro-Hun-
garian Dual Monarchy."

And the continuance of the Hapsburg
Monarchy is in doubt because in the chain
of his reasoning the continuance of wars
is impliedly assumed as axiomatic. Free
as he is from the chauvinism of a Bern-
hardi or a Reventlow, there is no proof, in
his plea for a Central Europe, that he be- ^
lieves in the march of political progress,
in the humanizing and liberalizing in- ^
fluences that are already at work in other
coimtries to make further wars impossible, i
or at least more difiicult than hitherto. He
no more reads the thought of the best ele-
ments of Germany than he understands the
inmost feelings of Austria-Hungary — ^not

to speak of England, France, and
America. But though the mmd of Prussia
may remain unchanged after the war,
must we assume that the soul of German-
Austrians, Magyars, and Slavs is bound
to undergo a complete transformation?

Austria's Opportunity

[From The New York Evening Post, March 31, 1917.]

VT EVER before in the troubled history
-^^ of the Monarchy have the perplexi-
ties of the Hapsburg rulers been so great
as now. Internally and externally, Aus-
tria-Hungary is beset by apparently in-
soluble problems. In all parts of the Em-
pire there is distress, dissatisfaction,
divided council. To cap the climax, the
question of a break with the United States
now looms up portentously. In Cisleith-
ania the subject is being approached with
the caution imposed by the censor; in Hun-
gary, however, there is greater freedom
of speech. Magyar papers have repeated-
ly pointed out the folly of antagonizing a
country which plays so large a part in
Hungary's economic life. In thousands of
Hungarian homes the only means of sus-
tenance comes from the United States.
It is safe to say that more than fifty mil-
lion dollars is sent annually by Austro-
Hungarian subjects and naturalized

Americans of Austro-Hungarian birth to
relatives in the Empire, twenty-five mil-
lions alone coming from Slovak miners in
Pennsylvania and elsewhere. How can
Austria under present conditions face the
cessation of such a revenue? And this
question opens up the larger one of the
origin and the issue of the war.

More and more frequently, in Austria
as in Hungary, people are asking, what
have we to gain by continuing the war?
The promises held out by the Hohenzol-
lem to the Hapsburg before the fatal ulti-
matimi to Servia, have long since lost their
potency. The new Emperor and his ad-
visers are disillusioned, the people weary
and half-starA'^ed. The political outlook in
all the Austrian crown lands, with the
possible exception of Galicia, is dreary
in the extreme. Every semblance of
constitutional government has disap-
peared in the Austrian half of the
Empire. The Vienna Reichsrat has
not been convoked in three years. The
Czechs, whom the Emperor had hoped
to conciliate by the appointment of Count

Clam-Martinitz as Austrian Premier,
branded the Minister as a renegade; in
Hungary the opposition to the pro-Ger-
man policy of Tisza is becoming more and
more pronounced. The Hungarian Pre-
mier is held responsible, jointly with the
German Chancellor, for the disastrous
failure of the German peace proposal.
Count Andrassy, the leader of the Consti-
tutionalists ; Counts Apponyi and Karolyi,
the leaders of the two Independence par-
ties ; ex-Premier, Dr. Alexander Wekerle,
and other influential men — some in the
ranks of the Democratic party — ^are un-
dermining the position of the formerly all-
powerful Tisza, and with his fall Hohen-
zollern influence in the councils of the
Hapsburg monarchy will have received a
deadly blow.

Throughout the war Germany's efforts
to Teutonize Hungary have been keenly
resented by the proud Magyars. In the
Diet the insolence of Gterman purchasers
of Hungarian estates has provoked bitter
discussion and the propagandist visits of
two leading German politicians, Herr

Bassennann and Count Westarp, to the
Hungarian capital, have been sarcastical-
ly commented upon by the Budapest press.
Thus the N^pszava said: "German Kul-
tur is sufficiently well represented in Hun-
gary to make it unnecessary to found
any fresh associations for its dissemina-
tion." Conversely, German newspapers
have complained of the intolerant attitude
of the Himgarians. The Munich Neueste
Nachrichten deplores the inability of the
Magyars to appreciate the purely cultural
efforts of Germany, and revives the old
charge of Magyar oppression of other
nationalities.

The fact is, the Hungarians are, as they
have always been, an intensely practical
people, and they will not compromise their
future for the sake of pleasing either
Hohenzollem or Hapsburg. The bait of
becoming the guardians of the grain em-
porium in the post-bellum Central Eu-
rojpe has been spurned by clear-sighted
Magyar statesmen, and though Hungary
has gone far enough in following German

leadership, there are indications that she
will not go the full length of Hohenzollem
desires.

Least of all will the Germans of Cis-
leithania be entrapped into approval of the
last mad scheme of Hohenzollern states-
manship — open defiance of the United
States. During the fifty years that have
elapsed since the Compromise with Hun-
gary the balance of power within Cis-
leithania has inclined, now to the German
elements — liberal or conservative — ^now to
the Czechs or Poles; but through it all
Vienna has remained the centre of the Em-
pire. German- Austria still rules the rul-
ers, if not the Monarchy. The new Em-
peror reflects, like Francis Joseph, the
feeling of Vienna, and this is, and ever has
been, antagonistic to Berlin. Vienna,
even before the war, retained much of its
old dislike of Prussian ways, and Berlin
reciprocated this feeling. What an acute
student of Kulturgeschichte, Wilhelm
Heinrich Riehl, wrote half a century ago
concerning the relations of Vienna and
Berlin is still largely true:

"As regards mutual depreciation and
lack of understanding, North and South
Germans stand on the same level. There
are enough educated people in the North,
travellers in many lands, who almost glory
in the fact that they have never seen Vi-
enna; just as there are such in the South
who are proud of having always avoided
going to the capital on the Spree."

In Gterman literature, down to compara-
tively recent days, depreciation of Aus-
trian writers was the rule rather than the
exception. "Grillparzer," wrote a North
German critic, "is an Austrian poet who
happens not to have written in the Magyar
or Czech tongue, but in German. His
works cannot be considered as manifesta-
tions of the German spirit." In a sense
this was true enough, for Grillparzer was
an Austrian in every fibre, and disliked
Prussian arrogance and pedantry intense-
ly. Nor was the dramatist the only Ger-
man-Austrian writer thoroughly repre-
sentative of the Austrian spirit as dis-
tinguished from the Prussian. Lenau,
Raimund, Rosegger, and Anzenzruber

are notable instances of this in literature,
as were Mozart, Schubert, Haydn, and
Johann Strauss in music, and Schwind in
art.

Vienna and Berlin, though ostensibly
united, are in reality far apart. Austria
has not forgotten the series of humiliations
suffered for a century and more at the
hands of the Hohenzollerns. Bismarck's
policy, from the beginning to the end of
his career, was one long, carefully
wrought-out plan for destroying Austrian
influence, first in the German Federation,
and then in all Europe. A hundred frank-
ly cynical pages in his Memoirs bear this
out. And only two years ago one of Bis-
marck's successors labored hard to barter
away some of Austria's fairest provinces
for Italy's promise to keep out of the war.

As was Austria, so were Bavaria,
Saxony, and other German states but
pawns in Prussia's game. Bismarck had
them all in mind when he wrote, in 1859,
to Minister von Schleinitz of that "infirm-
ity of Prussia's" which could only be
healed ferro et igni. Fire and sword are

once more the motto of Prussian states-
manship, but Prussia, now the arbiter of
the fate of all Germany, has still to reckon
with her "faithful ally." Austria stands
at the parting of the ways. Her alliance
with the Hohenzollern, forced upon her
by fancied political necessity, is not based
on inner kinship in thought and feeling,
not on ancient historical tradition, nor on
community of future interests. It is a hol-
low pretence, rife with the seeds of future
dissension. When the break between
Hohenzollern and Hapsburg will come, it
would be rash to predict, but that the pres-
ent union will not outlast the war is cer-
tain. The tone of the last Austrian note
to our Government portends unmistakably
a change in the relations between the Teu-
tonic Powers. Whatever Germany may
decide upon in her delusion, Austria can-
not risk the severance of her relations with
the United States.

The Future of Bohemia

[From The New York Evening Post, May 16, 1917.]

Bohemia is declared to be in a state of
siege. What does the news portend for
the future of the kingdom and the entire
Hapsburg monarchy? Are the prospects
of peace brought nearer by tiiis emphatic
evidence of civic strife in the most import-
ant crownland of Cisleithania? A possible
answer to such questions concerning the
future may be sought in a retrospect of
the past.

"Whoever is master of Bohemia is mas-
ter of Europe," said Bismarck. He had
in mind, not the nominal rulership, but
the mastery of problems which from the
time of the fall of the great Moravian em- ^
pire, about the year 900, have never ceased
to trouble Europe. Throughout her per-
turbations Bohemia has within the past
centmy grown economically to a com-
manding position in Austria and Europe.
Agriculturally and industrially highly
productive, with enormously rich coal de-

posits and the most famous mineral
springs in the world, Bohemia, "the pearl
in the crown of St. Wenceslas,"' enjoys in-
deed a proud preeminence. For centuries,
too, Bohemia has been prominent in the
arts of peace. The Czech nation gave
Comenius (Komensky) to the world, and
in more recent times Bohemia has been
one of the artistic centres of Europe.
Gluck conducted his first operas in Prague
and Mozart's Don Juan first saw there the
light.

Down to the close of the eighteenth
century Europe was but little concerned
in the destinies of Bohemia. Since then
the awakened national aspirations of the
Czechs, amid the general revival of Slav-
dom, have drawn the attention of foreign
observers to a long-neglected subject. And
now the note of the Entente Powers, with
its implied promise of the restoration of
the realm of Bohemia, which came to an
end in 1620, fixes the gaze of all the world
upon the Austrian province seemingly
destined to play an important part in the
final settlement of the war. "A great em-

pire, like a great cake," says Franklin,
"is most easily diminished at the edges."
Naturally enough, certain Czech pa-
triots and agitators have sought by every
means at their command to use the pres-
ent opportunity to undermine the hold of
the Hapsburgs on their North Slavic do-
minions. The realm of St. Wenceslas is
to be restored, but how is the dream to be
realized? The advocates of the plan
picture to themselves a country consisting
of Bohemia proper, Moravia, and Silesia,
plus the Slovak districts of northern Hun-
gary, the whole to comprise about 50,000
square miles, and to contain about 12,-
000,000 inhabitants. The English trans-
lation of the Entente note spoke of the lib-
eration of the "Czecho-Slovaks," instead
of the "Czechs and Slovaks" (as the
French original had it), but the resusci-
tation of Bohemia as an independent na-
tion, with "Slovakia" as an integral part,
has not in any quarter been clearly form-
ulated. In a matter of such importance
the details are everything.. "Slovakia"
has had no political existence since the

tenth century, and its present limits, hav-
ing reference only to the regions of Hun-
gary where Slovaks predominate, are not
easily defined. It is admitted by those
who favor the incorporation of Slovakia
that not all her children in Hungary can
return to the fold. The fate of the Slo-
vaks in other parts of Hungary than those
which are to be merged in the new Bo-
henua is left in doubt; nor do we get the
slightest hint as to the status of the Mag-
yars who will fijid themselves incorporated
in the new state, together with the Slovaks.
The forced consent of the Hungarian
nation to the cession of their northern ter-
ritory is, of course, assimied, just as is the
consent of the Government of Cisleithania
to the liberation of all Bohemia. What
is to be the form of government to be
adopted for the new state? On the
whole, a monarchy seems to be preferred,
though some advocates of total separation
from Austria incline to a republican form
of government.

Prof. T. G. Masaryk, formerly of the
University of Prague, and now an exile

in London, passes lightly over the ques-
tion of the constitution of the new Bo-
hemia. Writing in the New Europe,
shortly before the establishment of the
present Government of Russia, he says :

The dynastic question is left to the de-
cision of the Allies, who might perhaps
give one of their own princes. There
might be a personal union between Servia
and Bohemia, if the Serbs and Bohemians
were to be neighboring countries. A per-
sonal union with Russia or with Poland,
if the latter were to be quite independent,
has also been suggested. (German and
Austrian princes must co ipso be ex-
cluded.) The Bohemian people are thor-
oughly Slavophile. A Russian dynasty, in
whatever form, would be most popular,
and, in any case, Bohemian politicians de-
sire the establishment of the kingdom of
Bohemia in complete accord with Russia.

This is equalled in vagueness only by
the suggestion that "so far as the Ger-
man minority is concerned, I should not
be opposed to a rectification of the politi-
cal frontier; parts of Bohemia and Mo-
ravia, where there are only a few Czechs,
might be ceded to G^erman Austria." We

must remember that in present Bohemia
the proportion of Grermans to Czechs is
as thirty-seven to sixty-three, and that
the German minority, so nonchalantly to
be disposed of, contains most of the me-
-^hanical and technological skill, enterprise.

and wealth, that Bohemia boasts. More-
over, there is nothing in the history of the
kingdom, remote or recent, to warrant the
assumption of future harmony between the
conmion people and the aristocracy — ^a
very important consideration in the case
of a country where noble f amiUes have per-
haps greater power and influence than has
any other aristocracy in Europe. The
feudal nobility of Bohemia has never
identified itself with the people — Grerman
or Czech — as has the Magyar aristocracy
v> with the masses of Hungary. The Princes
Schwarzenberg own one-thirteenth of the
land; the Lobkowitzes, Clam-Martinitzes,
and many other noblemen ranged on the
side of the feudalists are scarcely less in-
fluential than the Schwarzenbergs. Gen-
erally opposed to the feudalists in political
matters involving the equality of the

Czech and German languages, but equally
aloof from the masses, are the Princes
Auersperg and other German-speaking
landed proprietors, whom the new Bo-
hemia will find it anything but easy to
dispossess or expatriate. And not only
Bohemian noblemen of both nationalities
have hitherto been attached to the house
of Hapsburg, but the bulk of the Czech
people have been distinctly loyal on vari-
ous critical occasions. That a cataclysm
Kke the present war has led to something
like revolt, both in the army and in civil
life, is explainable enough on purely
economic grounds. Up to the outbreak
of the war the most fervent of Czech
nationalists have acquiesced in the over-
lordship of the Hapsburgs, and clamored
only for an autonomy of Bohemia like
that which Hungary enjoys, within the
monarchy^ That the Hapsburg regime,
with rare exceptions, has on the whole
consistently opposed the political and
literary aspirations of Czech leaders has
not disturbed the vision of those among
them clear-sighted enough to recognize

that an independent state of Bohemia
would mean a Bohemia exposed to the
ambitions of neighboring states and the
entanglements of European polities.

The principal spokesman for Czech
aspirations in the last century, the his-
torian, Francis Palacky, a patriot of great
renown, is credited with the authorship
of the dictima that "if Austria did not
exist it would have to be invented/'
Palacky wrote as late as 1865: "To pre-
tend that the resources of so vast an Em-
pire are to be devoted entirely to the
service of one or two favorite peoples,
while the others who contribute equally to
the might of the whole estate are to be
content with what may be allowed them,
is equal to saying: 'We are the masters
and you are the servants/ *' It is true,
Palacky's argument was directed against
the Germans of Bohemia, but he was too
good a logician not to know that his
reasoning could be turned both ways.
"The Slavs,'' he declared, "desire the
prosperity of the monarchy, on condition
that they are given guarantees for their

normal development." He feared — ^not
hoped — ^that the Dualism established in
1867 portended the eventual dismember-
ment of the monarchy.

Another fallacy in the reasoning of those
who would identify Pan- Slavic aims with
present Czech aspirations is the assump-
tion that Bohemians have always been
wishing to throw in their lot with the
kindred races of Austria and other
countries. The truth is that the Czechs
of Bohemia have had but a tempered
sympathy with the aspirations of other
Slavic .peoples. The idea of a Pan-Slavic
union occurred to KoUar, generally con-
sidered the father of the movement, mainly
for literary purposes. He first advanced
the plan in 1881, and, of course, from
that the step to a furtherance of political
aims was a natural one. During the revo-
lution of 184,8 the Bohemians, while tak-
ing the leadership in the Slavic movement
which then seemed to promise success,
were far apart from several of their Slavic
brethren. The general Slavic congress
convoked by Palacky at Prague resulted

in a split into two camps. The Czechs de-
clared in favor of the Austrian Govern-
ment, as did the South-Slavic Croats and
Serbs. The Poles, who had learned to
see in the Russians their natural oppres-
sors, espoused the cause of Hungary.
Pan-Slavism is to day as little of a practi-
cal fact as it was during the revolution of
1848.

It never entered Palacky's mind that the
revival of the Czech language meant the
creation of a Czecho-Slovak state. Up to
about 1850 he and a few scholars like
Schafarik represented all that there was
in Czech literature, in the creation of which
he was chiefly interested. It is told of
him that when he and a small number of
his friends gathered at his house on one
occasion he remarked jestingly: "If the
roof should now fall, the whole of Czech
literature would be buried in its ruins."
Nevertheless, the stimulus given to Czech
aims by the present war is not surprising,
and, properly expressed and led into prac-
tical channels, it may lead to important
results. Austria is on the verge of ex-

haustion, and after laying her heavy hand
on Czech "rebels'' like Dr. Kramarsch, the
Government may even before the conclu-
sion of peace be forced to gentler measures
in dealing with her recalcitrant subjects
in Bohemia. Possibly the leaders of the
present movement among the Czechs, as
well as the European statesmien eventually
charged with peace negotiations, may
come to the conclusion that an autonomous
Bohemia within the Empire may be a
stronger guarantee of future peace to all
concerned than a nominally free Bohemia
without. One thing, at all events, is cer-
tain. The Czechs of Bohemia will never
lend a willing ear to Pan-Gterman bland-
ishments. They may make peace, in their
own interest, with the Hapsburgs but they
will never cease to distrust the Hohenzol-
lerns. They still feel towards Grerman
chauvinism as they did in the day when
Ladislas Rieger, Palacky's son-in-law and
the most eloquent spokesman of his peo-
ple, said in a famous discourse : "You al-
ways talk of German science and civiliza-
tion. How often have these idols been held

up to us for our admiration! One never
hears any one talk of French science and
civilization, but 'Deutsche Wissenschaf t' is
such a mouth-filling morsel 1"

It is to be hoped that at the conclusion
of peace the Czechs, like the Poles, may
be masters of their destinies, but it is pre-
mature to forecast their decision. Austria
in her strength and her weakness — ^her di-
versified German ahd non-German ma-
terial and intellectual interests, as well as
her hopeless internal dissensions-is to-day
the greatest stumbling block in the path of
Germany's single-minded ruthlessness.
Pan-Germanism, always confined in
Lower Austria to a handful of noisy dema-
gogues, has made no converts since the
war. Vienna is not yet ready to sink to
the level of a lesser Berlin. And all Aus-
tria will long remember that Prussia lured
her into the present war and, when hos-
tilities were scarcely begun, brought every
pressure to bear upon her to make her
relinquish some of her fairest provinces
for the sake of keeping Italy from joining
the Allies. Such an alliance in arms has

taught Austria what to expect in a future
partnership in "Central Europe." It will
be the task of wise statesmanship among
the Allies to reconcile the claims of the
Czechs with the position of Austria as an
important factor in eventual combinations
that shall bring about peace and save the
world from future aggression on the part
of Germany.

Hungary and the Fall of

Tisza

[From The New York Nation, May 31, 1917.]

T^ HE resignation of the Tisza Ministry
is an event the significance of which
will be felt on all the battlefields of Eu-
rope. Exactly fifty years after the re-
gained autonomy of Hungary was sealed
by the coronation of Francis Joseph at
Budapest, his successor to the crown of
St. Stephen parts with the services of the
Premier who has been the most powerful
advocate of the alliance between the
HohenzoUems and the Hapsburgs. Count
Tisza had staked his fate on the unshaken
continuance of that alliance, and he has
fallen. Ostensibly he resigned because the
Emperor Charles refused to approve of
his attitude concerning the reform of the
franchise in the Hungarian kingdom, and
it may well be that the voice of the various
nationalities who are clamoring for a juster
share in the Govemment than the Magyars

have hitherto accorded them can no longer
be suppressed; but more serious problems
are confronting both halves of the mon-
archy to-day than even the question of uni-
versal manhood suffrage in Hungary.

Public opinion in Hungary is divided
on the question of continuing the war.
We have heard of Count Kdrolyi, the
leader of a branch of the Independence
party, strongly urging the need of peace
and repudiating aU ideas of conquest; and
of such influential papers as the Pesti
Hirlap and the Pesti Naplo (once famous
as the organ of Francis Deak) ranging
themselves on the side of the opposition to
Tisza. Finally, there came the cable news
of a bitter attack of the Pesti Naplo on
Count Reventlow and of the Sociahst
organ, Nipszava, on Tirpitz, while three
members of the Chamber of Deputies were
quoted as condemning the present subma-
rine warfare.

Little has been heard during the war of
the once powerful Kossuth party. Its
very name has been merged in that of other
groups, but that its principles will revive

after the war is as certain as that the spell
of that famous leader has not forever lost
its potency. How will his teachings com^
port with the new order of things in Hun-
gary if the Pan-Germanists and advocates
of a new Central Europe have their way?
Can Magyars ever forget his fierce detes-
tation of the Hapsburgs, his glowing ad-
miration for Anglo-Saxons? "It is the
Anglo-Saxon race alone," he said, in an
address in this country on March 6, 1852,
"that stands high and erect in its inde-
pendence. . . . And inviolability of
person and the inviolability of property
are English principles. England is the
last stronghold of these principles in Eu-
rope." And contrast with this his remark
about Prussia, on a similar occasion:
"What would the petty princes of Ger-
many have been in 1848 without Prussia?
And what was Prussia, when her capital
was in the hands of the people, without
the certainty of the Czar's support?"

Tisza, who returned to power as Premier
in 1918, after having been in the Cabinet
from 1908 to 1906, has been the subject

of bitter opposition both before and since
the outbreak of the war. He resumed
office after Prime Minister Lukacs had
introduced, in 1912, a franchise bill the
provisions of which would have doubled
the electorate, but which still left the fa-
vored classes with so many privileges that
the Radical party and the Socialists raised
a fierce outcry against the Government's
proposal. Tisza, who was then President
of the Chamber, was the principal target
of abuse, and after he became Premier he
had to face a new Opposition party, or-
ganized by Count Andrassy, who was, and
has since been, committed to the reform of
the franchise. Tisza declared universal
suffrage to be a national danger. He not
unnaturally feared that the political equal-
ity of the various nationalities of Hungary
would threaten Magyar hegemony. But
the exigencies of war lead to strange
avowals and disavowals. Tisza recently
seemed to experience a sudden change of
heart and professed in Parliament his af-
fection for the non-Magyar races. ''No-
where in the world," he said, "is the prin-

ciple of nationality applied so liberally as
in the two states of the Dual Monarchy."
These idyllic conditions have not always
prevailed either in Cisleithania or in Hun-
gary. Few modern Magyar statesmen
have consistently adhered to the principles
of Deak and Eotvos, who labored honestly
for a conciliatory policy towards non-
Magyar nationalities and respected their
languages and customs. Their enlight-
ened views gave way in the seventies to
the ruthlessly chauvinistic policy of the
elder Tisza, and the Magyarization of the
state has since gone on apace. The in-
tolerance of the Government towards Par-
liamentary representatives of other races
may be illustrated by an incident which
occurred last February. A well-known
Slovak Deputy, Father Juriga, who had
suffered imprisonment for his nationaUst
principles, discussed a bill before the
Chamber designed to perpetuate the mem-
ory of the heroes who had fallen in battle.
In the course of his remarks he requested
the House to permit him to read a letter
written in the Slovak language by a sol-

dier who had thanked the Minister of Edu-
cation for having allowed, during the war,
the study of the Slovak language in
secondary schools. But after violent in-
terruption on the part of the Opposition
leaders, the Chamber ruled that not a
single Slovak word could be spoken by
any Deputy, and Juriga desisted from his
purpose with the quiet remark: "I do
not wish to create a scandal, and theref or6
content myself with pointing out that in
this House quotations may be read in
EngUsh and French, the languages of the
enemy, but not in some of the languages
of our own country."

The Germans within the liroits of Hun-
gary have on the whole bowed more meek-

y ly to the rule of the Magyar than the other

nationaUties. Indeed, their outward trans-

, ' formation into Magyars — the Saxons of
Transylvania alone excepted — ^has in the
large towns been rapid, and as they had no
separatist aspirations, there has been little
political friction between them and the
dominant race. German names of places
have disappeared from school geographies,

and in many instances German patrony-
mics have been gladly exchanged by their
bearers for more sonorous Magyar ones.
Yet the war has not drawn Magyars and
Teutons closer to each other. OflScially
they may fraternize, organically they do
not fuse. Hungarian and Austrian gene-
rals bore a distinguished part in the early
battles, when German armies came to the
rescue of their hard-pressed allies in the
Carpathians and elsewhere, but the names
of Kovess and Boehm-Ermolli are never
mentioned when Germans sing the praises
of Hindenburg and Mackensen. Nor
have the South Slavs of the monarchy
learned during the war to look with friend-
lier eyes on BerUn and Vienna than before.
With the fate of Servia as a warning ex-
ample before them, the loyalty of Serbo-
Croats to the Hapsburgs and their wil-
lingness to place themselves under the aegis
of the Hohenzollems have been sorely
tried. The Croats and Magyars have al-
ways been at daggers drawn. It may be
taken as axiomatic that what the Magyar
desires the Croat opposes. Croatia has

never concealed its bitter discontent with
Dualism, and Hungarian politicians have
fully reciprocated the feeling of the Croats.
Recent utterances of the newspapers of
Agram and Fiume that occasionally find
their way to this country reflect the dis-
satisfaction of the people with prevailing
economic conditions — a feeling which ex-
tends to the political situation as well.

Tisza had originally not been particu-
larly friendly to the German designs on
Austria-Hungary, which have found ex-
pression in the plan of a "Mitteleuropa."
He opposed the economic federation be-
tween the Central Powers and those Eu-
ropean states which Germany was espe-
cially anxious to place under her wings.
In truth, he distrusted more than one
partner in the future Central Europe, and
like all Magyar statesmen of the present
day, who seek in every political combina-
tion solely the interest of their own race,
he thought of the future, while the states-
men of Vienna thought chiefly of the pres-
ent. Whether his dismissal from ofiice
now is due to his own recognition of the

fact that the alliance between Hapsburgs
and Hohenzollems is tottering, or whether
the Emperor Charles wishes to have a free
hand in movements which might find in the
fiery Hungarian a dangerous opponent,
Tisza's fall presages in any case an un-
mistakable change in the relations between
Gtermany and Austria-Hungary. The fact
is that, though the two countries have been
politically united since the outbreak of the
war, they have in their military activity
since their early common successes been
gradually drifting apart. Germany is
fighting her battles in France alone, as
Austria is fighting hers in the Trentino and
the Coast Districts, The fate of the Mon-
archy is nearer to the heart of its ruler
than the future of his German ally. As
for his subjects, they are skeptical, and
they were long forced to remain silent.
Previous experiences in their history have
taught all the peoples of the Empire not
to build their hopes too firmly on military
victories. In 1866 Austria himabled Italy
in the sea-fight at Lissa, and was com-
pelled to give up Venetia to her. She was

crushed at S^adowa by Prussia, and Hun-
gary gained her autonomy and Cisleithania
a liberal Constitution. And to-day, with
the fortunes of war still in the balance,
Slavs, Rumans, and others look expectant-
ly to a future that shall bring them, some-
how, through some turn of affairs at home
or abroad, their coveted self-government.

Whoever may be Tisza's successor, an
element of unrest is now workmg in the
Empire which is certain to influence the
course of affairs. Vienna has served notice
on Budapest that it intends to become
once more the centre of political gravity,
but whether the Gk)vernment, with or with-
out the sanction of the representatives of
the people — ^it is reported that for the first
time in more than three years the Reichs-
rat has been convened — ^will be able to
strike out into new paths, internally as well
as externally, remains to be seen. Too lit-
tle is known of the new Emperor to war-
rant the assumption that he intends to rule
with the help of the liberal Grcrmans of
Austria, but he certainly cannot perma-
nently ignore them. Though ever since

the fall of the Auersperg Ministry, in
1879, they have been out of power, they
are a factor to be reckoned with. Their
voice is bound to be heard again, and its
echoes will reach Berlin. The Austrian
Grermans will not forever follow whither
Prussia shall lead. Once more, as so often
in the past, the inherent antagonism be-
tween Austrians and Prussians manifests
itself. The Grermans of Lower and Upper
Austria, of Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia,
the Tyrol, and other Crown lands, who are
mostly of purer Teutonic stock than the
Prussians, are beginning to ask unpleas-
ant questions. They are getting tired of
being called Germanic brethren when it
suits Prussian advantage to claim them,
and to be repudiated when the wind blows
from another quarter. As in politics so
in literature. For many long years there
seemed to be, in Grillparzer's words, a con-
spiracy against Austrian writers in Ger-
many. She looked askance at the gKat
dramatist himself, though she gradually
learned to adopt him and other Austrians,

just as she has adopted Swiss writers like
Gottfried Keller and Konrad Ferdinand
Meyer.

It must be said, in all fairness, that
since the elder Andrassy's death, no Aus-
trian statesman except Tisza has made it
his task to promote a genuine alliance be-
tween Hapsburgs and HohenzoUems.
Count Aehrenthal, the only Minister of
Foreign Affairs in recent years who has
left his impress on Austrian politics, was
concerned purely with the aggrandizement
of his own country — ^though in ways that
proved disastrous in the end — and did not
y ask for Germany's consent to the annex-
' ation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. But he

fashioned his course closely after her ruth-
less RealpoUtik. Austria has since chosen
to identify herself still more completely
with Prussia's foreign policy, heedless of
the warning given to the Hapsburgs, years
^go, by so stanch a defender of Prussian
principles as Professor Delbriick. He
wrote {Preussische Jahrbucher^ Vol. 180) :
"The conception of nationality has at-
tained in the nineteenth century through-

out the world a power which it is abso-
lutely useless to contend against. We
have seen in the case of Prussia how little
even a state of its gigantic strength can
accomplish against a few million scattered
Poles. The sooner G^rman-Austrians
make up their minds to recognize the
equality of all nationalities, even the small-
est, and the more willing they show them-
selves to make all the practical sacrifices
inherent in such a recognition, the better
it will be for them and for the German
cause everywhere. The hope for such a
consummation lies in Austria's relations to
Hungary and in her foreign poUcy.''

The task of Tisza's successor in the in-
ternal affairs of Hungary is clear enough
— there can be no retreat from the principle
of the equality of her nationalities; as to
the future foreign policy of Austria, that,
as well as the foreign policy of Germany,
will be shaped by the issue of the present
war.

The Poles of Austria

[From The New York Nation, July 5, 1917.]

Appointment of a stop-gap Ministry
gives Emperor Charles a breathing spell
before grappling definitely with a serious
crisis. Czech Deputies are rebellious, as
Czech regiments have long been, and the
Poles are clamoring for more emphatic
recognition in the government of Austria.
All parties in Galicia have been watching
events in Russia closely, and the course of
the Poles in national affairs will be shaped
by international developments.

On the whole, ever since the ruthless
suppression of the peasant rising in
Galicia, in 1846, the Austrian Government
has shown distinct partiality and a cer-
tain skill in its dealings with the Poles,
favoring the nobility without actively an-
tagonizing the rural population, and
granting concessions to the national spirit
which were at times galling enough to
Germans and Ruthenes. In 1868 Polish
became the vehicle of instruction in the

University of Cracow, as it became some-
what later in the University of Lemberg,
and Polish officials replaced German ones
thoroughout Galicia. Von Grocholski en-
tered in 1871 the first Austrian Cabinet
as Minister for Galicia, and Polish influ-
ence has since made itself felt both in the
Ministries and in the Reichsrat. Polish
patriots have risen to leadership in the
Austrian Parliament. Francis Smolka,
who had been condemned to death for
treason before 1848, became in 1881 Presi-
dent of the Lower House of the Vienna
Reichsrat, and in more recent times an-
other Galician Deputy, the Armenian
Abrahamowicz, occupied the same place.
Such distinctions, however, were not won
ivdthout resort to sknful parliamentaiy
tactics, and sometimes to obstinate opposi-
tion to the methods of Germanizing poli-
ticians. The Compromise of 1867 was at
first a sore trial to the Poles. Dualism,
with Magyar preponderance, was as little
to their liking as Federalism, with Bohe-
mian autonomy, would have been. The
fifty-seven Polish Deputies, whose votes

could decide important parliamentary
issues, withdrew from the Reichsrat. As
in the case of the Czechs, the policy of
abstention proved successful in the long
run, and the Poles have to the present day
been better able to maintain their ground
in the coimcils of the Empire than any
other of the Slavic races of Austria.

The relations between the Polish aris-
tocracy and the Austrian Government
were badly strained in 1908, in conse-
quence of the Russian propaganda, carried
on among the Ruthene peasantry of Ga-
licia. To this Count Szeptycki, the
United-Greek Archbishop of Lemberg,
who was subsequently taken into Russian
captivity, but has since been released by
the Provisional Government, lent his will-
ing aid. The Poles, as ever opposed to
Ukrainophile pretensions, were hostile
alike to the efforts of Austria and Russia
to strengthen their hold on the Ruthenes —
the former through agents of the Catholic
Church, the latter through those of the
Orthodox-Greek. The tension, which led
to the assassination of the Governor,

Count Potocki, by a Ruthene student, re-
sulted in the appointment, for the first
time in the annals of Galicia, of a non-
aristocratic Pole, the historian. Dr. Bo-
brzynski, to the Governorship. He en-
deavored to mediate, not with conspicuous
success, between Poles and Ruthenes. The
breach between them, in fact, widened
when, in March, 1918, the Governor at-
tempted to carry through the Galician Diet
a bill for electoral reform intended to
effect a compromise. He was forced to
resign, and through his successor. Von
Korytowski, a Polish nobleman, the ruling
classes of Galicia were once more brought
closer to the Vienna Government. Since
then, however, developments in the Aus-
tro-German alliance have wrought a
change in the attitude of Polish and Ru-
thene leaders toward each other and to-
ward the Government. The Poles,
through their spokesman, Coimt Stanilas
Tamowski, president of the Cracow
Academy of Sciences, had charged the
Ukrainists as early as March, 1914, in the
Galician Diet, with close affiliation with

the Pan-German Ostmarken-Verein, an
association notoriously bent on destroying
the Polish nationality. The Ruthenes
then plainly showed themselves susceptible
to German influence. It was generally
believed by them that the Archduke
Francis Ferdinand, under instructions
from Berlin, favored the establishment of
a Ukraine state, to whose rule the children
of his morganatic marriage might suc-
ceed. The war has ended this dream,
though it has not allayed the restlessness
and mutual jealousies of Poles and Ru-
thenes.

The question of the resuscitation of the
ancient kingdom of Poland, which has
now come to the front, has overshadowed
the narrower Pohsh question in Austria.
Since the issuing of the proclamation to all
the Poles by Grand Duke Nicholas, in
August, 1914, there has been constant
interchange of thought between the Polish
leaders of Austria, Prussia, and Russia.
Sienkiewicz, among others, called on his
compatriots everywhere to identify them-
selves with the cause of the Russian peo-

pie, and Count Wielopolski, the president
of the Pohsh Club of the Duma that
assembled at the outbreak of the war, has
stood for a compromise between Russians
and Poles which was first advocated by his
namesake, the Marquis Wielopolski, after
the revolution of 1880.

The occupation of Galicia by the Rus-
sians introduced a new element of imcer-
tainty into the situation. Attached as
many of the prominent Poles were to the
house of Hapsburg, and much as they
resented the arrogance and brutality of the
Russian Governor, Count Bobrinsky, who
kept Lemberg imder the heel of Russian
autocracy, they yet felt their Polish senti-
ment enlisted by the liberal stirrings of
Warsaw. The fortunes of war have ren-
dered the hope of all Poles for a restora-
tion of their ancient kingdom not entirely
illusory. Apparently, Germany encour-
ages the plans of Austria. It has been as-
serted that the Archduke Charles Stephen,
whose sons-in-law. Prince Radziwill and
Prince Czartoryski, bear names famous in
the history of Poland, has been selected

100

for the throne of the restored kingdom;
but whatever faith Galieian Poles may put
in Austrian promises, they will look long
before they leap into a HohenzoUem trap.
Their position in the Hapsburg dominions
during the last fifty years has been by no
means intolerable, and it is now more than
ever within their power to strengthen their
influence.

The plan of a restored Poland under
Hapsburg rule has been mooted before,
and even Mettemich was not wholly insin-
cere in proposing it at a time when an
alUance with France and England agair^st
Russia seemed feasible. Napoleon III.,
too, had his plan for restoring Poland and
placing it under the rule of an Austrian
archduke. Bismarck took notice, during
the Crimean War, of similar ideas of
various European diplomatists, but dis-
missed them as fantastic. But whatever
he thought of Austria as a possible ruler of
Poland, he never deceived himself (as lit-
tle as did his successor. Prince Biilow) as
to the hopelessness of any attempt on the
part of Prussia to gain Polish favor.

101

"The love of the Poles of Galicia for the
German Empire," he wrote in his Recol-
lections, "is of a fitful and opportunist
nature," and he recognized that Austria
had at all times a stronger hold on Polish
sympathies than Germany. He admon-
ished Germans not to look upon Poles in
any other light than that of enemies, and
remarked that Austria could the more
easily come to terms with the Polish move-
ment because, notwithstanding the mem-
ories of 1846, she still retained more of the
sympathy of Polish nobles than either
Prussia or Russia.

The world cataclysm has changed noth-
ing in the relations of Prussia toward her
Polish subjects, but a new Russia makes
a new appeal to hers. At all events^ there
is no place in a future Poland for Hohen-
zollern influence, no matter what the role
of the Hapsburgs may be in the nation
that is to arise from the ashes of the pres-
ent war.

102

The Nation's Staff of
Contributors

The Nation may well be proud of its
StaflF of Contributors. Started in 1865
by Edwin Lawrence Godkin and Wen-
dell Phillips Garrison, who showed re-
markable discrimination in selecting
writers with special knowledge and
with a command of style, this Staff has
been perpetuated in the spirit of its
founders. Instead of turning to the
facile publicist for discussions of out-
standing questions, The Nation has
found that a thorough knowledge of a
given subject such as its experts possess
does not prevent the full-hearted utter-
ance which these grave times require.

Some of the topics treated in recent
issues are the following:

The Avatar of the Hun, The Recent
Crisis in Spanish Neutrality, The Sub-
marine, Peace Without Annexation,
Overhauling the Machinery of Empire,

103

The Aesthetic IdeaUsm of Henry
James, The Sham Argument Against
Latin, Russian Thought and the Revo-
lution, The WeU-Paid CoUege Pro-
fessor, The American Tradition and
the War, China's Coming of Age, The
Intellectual Mobilization of France,
The Problem of the New Russia, Italy's
War of Emancipation, Nationalist
Ireland — The Case for Home Rule,
Chili and the World War, The Position
of Brazil, Why Idealists Quit the
Socialist Party, The Virtuous Vic-
torian..

To give some idea of the great diver-
sity of interests embraced by its staff

of contributors, The Nation selects from
a list of more than three hundred the

following names:

Prof. C. M. Andrews, History, Colonial Period

to 1766.
Prof. Irving Babbitt, Rousseau — Literary

Criticism.
Prof. Hiram Bingham, South America.
Prof. J. H. Breasted, Egypt.
Viscount Bryce, South America — The Near

East — ^Asia Minor.
Prof. C. J. Bullock, Taxation.

104

Ma j •-Gen. W. H. Carter, Riding Horses —
Cavalry.

Prof. G. H. Chase, Greek Art.

Prof. W. W. Comfort, Mediaeval Literature,
France and Spain.

Prof. A. C. CooHdge, Russia and Siberia.

Mr. Kenyon Cox, Italian Art.

Dr. G. W. Crile, Surgery.

Prof. W. M. Davis, Physical Geography.

Prof. F. H. Dixon, Railways.

Prof. J. M. Dixon, Japan.

Prof. E. Emertpn, Church History,

Prof. W. S. Ferguson, Greek and Roman His-
tory.

Mr. Henry T. Finck, Music.

Prof. O. W. Firkins, Contemporary Poetry.

Prof. Warner Fite, Philosophy.

Mr. W. C. Ford, Early American History.

Dr. Fabian Franklin, Economic Theory.

Prof. H. N. Gardiner, Psychology.

Prof. F. H. Giddings, Sociology.

Prof. G. L. Goodale, Botany.

Prof. T. D. Goodell, Metrics.

Admiral C. F. Goodrich, The Navy.

Prof. C. H. Grandgent, Romance Languages.

Dr. L. H. Gray, The Aryan East.

Prof. A. D. F. Hamlin, Architecture.

Prof. S. N. Harper, Russian History.

Prof. C. H. Haskins, Spanish Inquisition —
Normans — Palaeography.

Prof. F. H. Herrick, Biology.

Prof. E. W. Hopkins, Sanskirt.

Prof. W. H. Howell, Physiology.

Prof. J. A. Jaggar, Geology.

Prof. Morris Jastrow, Jr., Babylonia and
Assyria.

105

Prof. A. G. Keller, Sociology.

Prof. J. F. Kemp, Metallurgy.

Prof. C. J. Keyser, Mathematics.

Mr. F. £. Leupp, Social and Political Remini-
scences.

Dr. Jacques Loeb, Artificial Production of Life.

Prof. A. O. Lovejoy, Philosophy — ^Academic
Freedom

Prof. William MacDonald, American Political
History.

Prof. F. J. Mather, Jr., Art.

Dr. Paul E. More, Literature.

Prof. W. B. Munro, Government.

Mr. A. D. Noyes, Finance.

Prof. G. R. Noyes, Russian Language and Lit-
erature.

Prof. R. M. Pearce, Scientific Features of
Modern Medicine.

Mr. I. R. Pennypacker, Civil War Campaigns.

Prof. J. B. Pratt, Ethics — Religions of Modern
India.

Prof. G. M. Priest, German History and Gov-
ernment.

Mrs. G. H. Putnam, French Literature and
Life.

Prof. E. K. Rand, The Classics in Relation to
Modern Literature.

Miss G. M. A. Richter, Archaeology, Greece and
Rome.

Dr. Edward Robinson, Greek Art.

Prof. F. N. Robinson, Irish and Welsh.

Dr. George Sarton, History of Science.

Prof. H. R. Seager, Economics — Social Insur-
ance.

Prof. S. P. Sherman, Modem English Litera-
ture.

106

Prof. Paul Shorey, Greek Literature and Phil-
osophy

Prof. Munroe Smithy German History.

Prof. E. C. Stowell^ International Law.

Dr. E. G. Tabet, Syria— Turkey.

Prof. F. W. Taussig^ Economics^ Tariff.

Mr. W. R. Thayer, Italian History.

Prof. Lynn Thorndike — ^Mediaeval Culture —
Superstitions.

Prof. David Todd, Astronomy.

Prof. A. M. Tozzer, Central and South Ameri-
can Archaeology.

Prof. E. R. Turner, European Political History.

Prof. A. G. Webster, Electricity — General
Physics.

Mr. F. Weitenkampf, Etchings and Prints.

Prof. J. R. Wheeler, Greek Sculpture.

Prof. J. H. Wigmore, Criminal Law.

Lieut.-Col. C. de W. Willcox, The Army.

Prof. F. W. Williams, China.

Mr. T. F. Woodlock, Socialism — Railways.

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