AUSTRIA’S PLIGHT

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 143, 14 March 1938, Page 9

AUSTRIA’S PLIGHT

Steps Which Led To Present Crisis POST-WAR HISTORY Efforts To Prevent Union With Germany To understand the present state of affairs in Austria, it is not necessary to go back beyond the Peace Treaty—the Treaty of St. Germain —following the Great War. There was a time when historians wrote of “Lucky Austria.” No one would call her lucky now. Luck and Austria have long been strangers. Austria before the Great War constituted Europe’s major problem, because she had swallowed up too many of her neighbours. To-day. she is still Europe’s major problem, because she has been but off from them. Reduced from 53,000,000 inhabitants to 7.000,(100, and from 240,000 square miles (“a capital and a countrified suburb,” as one writer expresses it), Austria has been the plaything of the Chancellories of Europe. She has been divorced from Hungary, from Bohemia, from Croatia, from Transylvania, and from Galicia. The terms of the Peace Treaty expressly forbade her union with Germany—the’ Anschluss. Article 80 of the Treaty of Versailles says that “the independence of Austria is inalienable except with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations.” To give this consent the Council must be unanimous. France, Italy, and other Powers strenuously opposed the Anschluss. The Habsburgs, too, were driven out, and the country made a republic. Bereft of more of the most valuable of her territories as the result of her defeat in the Great War, compelled her to abolish universal military service ; to limit her army (on strict conditions as to maintenance) to 30,000 men; to surrender all her war vessels and aircraft, Austria’s plight was pitiable in the extreme. Thrown back upon her own resources, she first lived on borrowed money without devising a plan of reconstruction. Her condition went from bad to worse, and in 1922 the Deague of Nations was forced to come to her rescue with financial assistance which was, in fact, a beneficent form of receivership. This saved Austria from anarchy. Great Britain, France, Italy, and Czechoslovakia underwrote large loans, customs and tobacco receipts being pledged as security. It was this plight that turned Austria more and more to the possibilities of the Anschluss with Germany. In March, 1919, the Austrian National Assembly framed a Constitution of which one article declared that German Austria was part of the German Republic. But the Allies and Associated Powers (who had won the Great War) required Austria to remain a separate country. Again, in October, 1920, and May, 1921, the project was revived by the Austrian National Assembly, which directed the Government to carry out a plebiscite on the union of Austria with Germany. A vote was actually taken in Salzburg (90,587 for union, 797 against), but further action was stopped by threats from the Allied Powers. Nor was an attempt to establish Customs Union between Austria and Germany in 1931 any more successful. Indeed, the attempt was a contributory factor in the world depression from ■which the countries are now emerging. France’s withdrawal of capital led to panic and wholesale bankruptcies that spread to other coun tries. Dollfuss Regime. When Dr. Dollfuss, “the Little Napoleon,” took over the office of Chancellor in May, 1932, Austria was bankrupt and her politics were in a chaotic state. The country had only been kept going by infusions of credit from the increasingly reluctant Powers. As her economic condition became more deplorable, party spirit grew fiercer and more untameable. Dollfuss’s own party was the Catholic Christian Socialist Party, with its main strength drawn from the country. The other two were the Socialists and the Nazis —the former well entrenched in the municipal control of Vienna, the latter excited by the successes of Herr Hitler and looking toward Germany with a view to eventual union.

Dolfuss tried to carry on the government of Austria by constitutional and parliamentary methods. He failed because no two parties would join .to form a working majority. He looked around for friends who would give him something more than moral support. The most active opponent of the Anschluss had been France. But when the successive French Governments seriously considered whether the independence of Austria was worth the risk of getting embroiled with Hitlerite Germany, they decided it was nor. He t hereupon turned his eyes toward (Concluded on next page)