AUSTRIA'S MURDERED HEIR

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 152, 29 June 1914, Page 4

AUSTRIA'S MURDERED HEIR

On the threshold oF 84 years, tho Emperor Francis Joseph of AustriaHungary sees tho hand of assassination remove yet another of those nearest to him. That fate has befallen his Empress and his heir ; his eldest son committod suicide ; his brother Maximilian was shot at dawn by the Mexicans, after an ill-fated effort in the 'sixties to rule as Mexico's Emperor. One by mie the high-placed members of Aub-tro-Jlun^atiaa Realty. ,d« fisJUtfß*.

pear, and through all this whirl of family tragedy and ever-threatening racial conflict lives on and on the lone old man whom death appears to have forgotten. But even Francis Joseph can not live for ever, and the assassination of the nephew-heir and his morganatic wife may hasten an end to which European diplomacy has long looked forward with apprehension — an apprehension which must be intensified by the bloody event that has occurred at Serajcvo. In a sense this terrible crime typifies the whole racial tragedy of Aus-tria-Hungary and of Eastern Europe. Nowhere does the clash between Slav and Teuton occur more keenly than in Hungary, and in the conflict between Austria and Servia it assumes its most direct and menacing form. Just as Servia looks forward to a Greater Servia that will include the Serb populations of Hungary and the Adriatic coast-line, so also does Austria aim at sweeping Servia from the path that leads to the ./Egean Sea. One effort of Austria to anticipate and prevent Servian expansion was the annexation of the "occupied provinces" of Bosnia and Herzegovina in \9OB. Another was the initiation of the idea of an independent Albania. In the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina— an act in contravention ot tho Treaty of Berlin— the outside world detected the hand of the Austrian heir-apparent Francis Ferdinand; and it is in the streets of the Bosnian capital that he and his wife have met death at the hands of a banished Serb. Behind this appalling act lies all the bitterness of a racial struggle which can hardly end without some vital alteration in the map of Europe. Of late years the murdered heir-ap-parent, emerging from ' comparative seclusion, had given evidences of a ruling strength. It was true that he had cut off his own succession by a morganatic marriage with the Countess Sophie Chotek— at the same time renouncing for his sons the succession to the Monarchy—but Europe in general was more and more inclined to hope that in Francis Ferdinand Austria-Hungary had a man who might, for many years to come, be equal to tho formidable task ot suecoeding the aged Emperor and of continuing to hold together tho two kingdoms and their heterogeneous races. Now, in an instant, that hope has been obliterated by the revolver of the assassin ; and the young Prince on whom the succession devolves is untried and almost 1 unknown.. Charles Francis Joseph (Karl Franz Josef), 26 years of age, is a, nerjhew of the murdered Francis Ferdinand, and therefore a grand-nephew of the j reigning Emperor Francis Joseph. He is j married to a young and charming Bourbon Princess, and this union of the Bourbon and Hapsburg families, effected in 1911, has resulted in an infant son. Tho series of tragedies that has brought Charles Francis into direct succession to 7 the dual throne has, according to observers, made him "serious, reserved, almost cold," and he is "devoted to his regiment." Probably much the same would, fiftpen years ago, have been written of the 'late Francis Ferdinand. The fact is that the man on whose Bhoulders ' tho burden of the problems of Eastern Europe will pi-esently fall is an unknown factor. Besides adding a new chapter to the Hapsburg tragedies, the Serajevo crime will stir Hungary and the Balkans to the core, and will give a now edge to the Serbo-Austrian conflict and the Slav-Teuton rivalry generally. The Bosnian seizure, the Balkan wars, Servia's vain striving towards the Adriatic, and tho Serajevo assassination are all scenes in a great inter-racial drama, the end of which is by no means yet.