AUSTRIA'S THROES

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 39, 15 February 1934, Page 7

AUSTRIA'S THROES

SOCIALIST UPRISING. REASONS FOR UNREST. A NEW ZEALANDER'S OBSERVATIONS. (By A. M. RICHARDS.) The reports of recent battles In Austria focus attention upon a fascinating and momentous clash of personalities and ideals and a political future of sphinx-like inscrutability. The contrasted personalities are that of Herr Hitler, Chancellor of Germany, "handsome Adolph," the object of the devotion of scores of millions, and that of Herr Dolfuss, Chancellor of Austria, insignificant "Doktor Dolfuss," barely sft tall and engaged in recasting the life of his State in the bared teeth of almost unanimous hatred. The ideals at contest are those of strictly nationalistic Nazism and political Catholicism with cosmopolitan Socialism a third factor. The riddle concerns the future of "the second Switzerland," the tiny and almost purely alpiiie landlocked State of Austria created by the Great War, and especially the future of Vienna, a head separated from its natural body (again by the peace treaties), a city of over 2,000,000 inhabitants cut off by high tariff walls from its natural markets and similarly separated from its necessary food supplies.

A Disturbed City.

We were in Austria in June and July last. Apart from opcu fighting the situation was then much as it is to-day. My wife only just escaped being involved in a clash which occurred outside the Rathaus, the cathedral-like Town Hall of Vienna, from which reports indicate the Socialists have just been driven by gunfire. But that former riot was a demonstration not of Socialists, but of Nazis. It was against possible Nazi disturbances, too, that there lay in wait those detachments of armed and niounted police which we would come across every now and then behind public buildings in the old city. Fear of Nazi influences had caused the closing of the University, and never a day passed without news of at least one Nazi bomb outrage or attempt upon some public monument or facility. Even in the fastnesses of the Styrian mountains "Hail Hitlers" and "Hakencroitz" (swastikas) painted on roads and barns showed the spread of Nazi ideas. In fact observations in the provinces and conversations with the peasants led us to believe that even the countryside, though religiously Roman Catholic, was politically Nazi.

Towards Nazism. The appeal of Hitler's dramatic personality and promises and the example of their German brothers across the frontier were drawing Austrians strongly towards Nazism in those days. Austria is not a unitary State, but a federal State of nine provinces, and consequently State patriotism has never really existed there. A man's loyalty is first to his district. His secondary loyalty before th« war was to the" Austro-Hungarian Empire; since then it has tended to be to the German "folk" inside and outside of "the Reich." All tendencies had been, up to late 1932, towards economic union with Germany, to be followed by political union. The refusal of the French to allow this undoubtedly precipitated the Nazi unity in Germany. But this victory immediately reversed the current of feeling in Austria among the anti-Nazi parties —the Socialists and the Christian Socials (not "Socialists," as often written), a middle-class party of _ Roman Catholic complexion. A constitutional deadlock occurred from which either a Nazi or a Socialist coup was hourly awaited. But Dollfuss, the Christian Social leader, unexpectedly struck first. The jealousies of opposing "extremist' groups allowed him to assume dictatorial powers. Immediately, he began strenuous efforts to create for the first time in history an "all-Austria" patriotism to back his Government and sought the aid of Mussolini and the Tope to establish "corporative" institutions. His ideal was a Christian island (in the Roman Catholic and political sense of "Christian") in the midst of the seething European sea of national and class hatreds. Hitler's retort to this "divisive force in German life" was an economic blockade. Even the passport for a holiday visit to Austria was to cost Germans 1000 gold marks! We found the alpine peasantry in despair, for practically their only money income came from the summer tourist trade.

The Socialist View. But -while, at the time of our visit, Nazi attacks continued so violently, the Socialists in Linz, Graz and Vienna, the cities now in revolt, were giving Pollfuss passive support. Yet their bitterness, too, was intense. * Our unions have been rendered powerless. Soon our great municipal 'houses,' which Socialist policy and brains have presented to the community without a grot-hen of debt upon them, and which have abolished slums and brought health and beauty and comfort to even our poorest, will have rents increased to. raise funds for this Government which oppresses ue." And thev had reason to be bitter. In a city economically ruined they had assured a sufficient material and a strikingly high cultural life for all. Apparently it°is this bitterness, rather than any concerted plan, which, welling up from suppression, has led to the present civil warfare. Inherently Unstable.

But not for internal reasons only is the Christian social dictatorship in Austria inherently unstable. The position of Austria in the life of Europe makes it finally impossible of continuance. By history and geographic position Vienna is the upper Danubian commercial centre. But a few miles from her gates in all but one direction rise tariff walls over which only the essential minimum of trade can climb. And although four million Austrians live in the fourth direction they are practically all peasants living under a home-production and local-barter economy. Food must be imported to feed the Austrian cities. And in the absence of exports it must be paid for by loans raised abroad. For years past the public debt has been so enormous that no payment can ever be expected. Yet rather than allow the union with Germany or Hungary, which alone could right the situation (failing the inclusive Danubian Customs Union, which central-European hatreds at present forbid) France continues to supply loans, being unwilling to precipitate the forces which any alteration of the European status quo would let loose. Chancellor Dollfuss may continue indefinitely to play off his internal enemies against each other, but the whole international situation makes hopeless the final triumph of his policy.