TUESDAY, JUNE 3, 1919. END OF AUSTRIA-HUNGARY.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 131, 3 June 1919, Page 4

TUESDAY, JUNE 3, 1919. END OF AUSTRIA-HUNGARY.

In "This tough old Austrian Empire, t which was by many considered so near c its annihilation, stands firmer and d stronger than it has shown itself since - the days of Maria Theresa," wrote Count g Karolyi to an Englishman in IS4B. "It h is an old wall of granite, against which q a great many heads will yet break ere . s they succeed in throwing it over." The.' s Empire lasted seventy years from the 0 writing of these words, a long time in ; £ the life of the individual, but a Bhort j n span in the life of the oldest and fc proudest of Empires. The terms pre- s sented by the Allies to Austria would \ a appeal much more strongly to the ima-1 j gination of the world had not their main , j provisions long been known, and had not b eight months intervened between the f breaking up of the Empire and the i formal embodiment of this change in a peace treaty. The terms are the completion of one of tiie most momentous dramas in history. The patrimony of the Habsburgs lies in pieces. This great collection of governments and races t under one crowned head, which had a , population of over 50,000,000, and \ stretched from the Alps to beyond the | Carpathians, from the Vistula to the j Danube and the Adriatic, is split up into , a number of independent States, and as . an Empire disappears for ever from the j map of Europe. For centuries Austria ( was one of the great Powers, one of the . chief factors in European peace. That ( it should remain so was until the Great j War one of the principles of British I foreign policy. "It is greatly to the interests of Europe that Austria should i continue to be a great Power in the j centre of the Continent, - ' declared Lord , Palmerston in 1559, and twent3" years , later Lord Salisbury said that "in the , strength and independence of Austria lay the best hopes of European stability and peace." But Austria-Hungary then had! in her mixture of races and her Austrian and Magyar tyranny the seeds of war, and when she became the ally and tool of Germany in Germany's dreams of dominion she was a peril to the world's peace. With the coming of the Great War, in the responsibility for which Austria shares, it came to be realised that there could be no permanent peace in Europe so long as there remained this Empire, with its tyrannical sway over ' subject races and its mediaeval conceptions of kingship and overlordship. The aims of the Allies demanded that it should be divided on nationalist lines, and for this the peace terms provide. Only a man without imagination can > | contemplate unmoved this spectacle of i pride and power come to such irretrievjable humiliation and ruin. But there is I little or no pity in this emotion. Austria contributed nothing to those ideals ■ jof social and political freedom which in- . spire Western democracies and their : offspring. C'obden's description of Austria as "only a Government and an army, , I and not a nation," applied to the day of ; 'her death. "Were the House of Habsburg . ! chivalrous and humane, the Magyar mag- ] nates lovers of freedom for others * besides themselves, and Parliamentary institutions in the Dual Monarchy as real i as they are in England, this danger to ' the world's peace would never have ' arisen," writes one of the leading British , authorities on the subject- "But the - double-headed eagle is a bird of prey: ' Hungarian liberty is the privilege of an ! entrenched class of slave-owners; the , Assemblies founded on election are ( ■ chaotic Babble-shops; and if chivalry ' signifies consideration for the weak or ' defence of the oppressed, it is yet a'" stranger at the Austrian Court, neither , „ does the Emperor-King practice it to- ' wards his own subjects, thousands of ! > whom his Ministers and generals have ! ! spoiled, tortured and executed ajrainst ' law." To free the oppressed peoples of I Austria-Hungary, and to ensure that the 1 German dream of "Mittel-Europa" shall ' not come true, the Allies have dismem- j \ bered the Empire. Austria before the : 1 war had about 29,000,000 inhabitants; 11 she will now have only 6.000,000. The * remainder have been absorbed in the new ] States of Bohemia, Jugo-Slavia, and in ' the new Ttaly. Eventually what is left 1 * of Austria will probably gravitate tn ' Germany, and the Allies cannot prevent ' this, though they may try to discourage j it and postpone the day. Many of the t terms imposed are identical with and ' , similar to those handed to Germany. ' 5 j The whole of the navy is to be surren- i J dered, and when the military terms are i published it will he found that the army ' < permitted is very small. But Austria. cut off from the sea and so reduced in size, is so impotent that these clauses have ' far less practical interest than those in the German treaty. An important item is - the assurance to Austria of access to tho Adriatic through former Austrian terri- j tory; to cut the State off altogether from the sea would be unjust and cruel, j It is also worthy of note, as indicative ' of the ideals that the Allies are striving to follow, that the new Bohemia underj takes to give treaty assurances that the - rights of racial, religious, ' | and linguistic, will be protected. For ', the sake of peace and justice there should not be in the new States any of those I, methods of oppression by which the Austrian and Magyar over-lords kept ,f the subject races down and exploited j % J them. 1

Hungary's declaration of independence las produced this curious situation, that while the Magyar oligarchy was the most rvrannical element in the Empire and ivas perhaps more responsible than Vienna for the Empire's part in bringing )n the war, the pains and penalties emjodied in the Peace Treaty appear to be imposed on Austria alone. For instance, Austrian nationals guilty of the violation of the laws and customs of war are to be tried by the Allies. Does this not include the Hungarians who shared in the infamy of the Austro-Hungarian record in Serbia and Northern Italy? rhe separation of Hungary from Austria also makes the imposition of reparation much more difficult. Justice demands that the old Austro-Hungarian Empire compensate Serbia for the damage done during the invasion and occupation, but with the Empire broken up into four States, two of which are allies of ours, how can anything approaching an adequate sum be collected? Finally, on« should note what the treaty does not settle. It does not fix the boundaries of Hungary with Greater Serbia and, Rumania and in Galicia, and it does not say what the boundaries arc to be between Austria and Italy and the Jugoslavs. The great dispute between Italy and Jugo-Slavia over Fiume and the Adriatic coast is still unsettled. There is therefore a great deal still to be done I by the Peace Conference before it has finished, for the time being, with the ruins of the Habsburg Empire.