Evening Post. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1933. "A MIRACULOUS ESCAPE"

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 83, 5 October 1933, Page 10

Evening Post. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 5, 1933. "A MIRACULOUS ESCAPE"

"Nothing except Providence seems able to shield our men in high office from the hand of an assassin" Was •the comment of the "New York Sun" on the narrow escape of Mr. Roosevelt from death two or three weeks before the due date of his inauguration. In view of the immense services that he has been able to render to his country during his first seven months of office it has even stronger grounds for its thankfulness than it appeared to have then. In comparison with the President of the United States the Chancellor of one of the smallest, poorest, and weakest States in Europe might be considered to occupy an insignificant position, yet the escape of Dr. Dollfuss by an even narrower margin is not only a matter of supreme importance for Austria but provides the whole world with a cause for thankfulness fully comparable with what it felt in February. The size and strength of a State are not the only criterion by which its power to influence the course of the world's history is determined. In July, 1914, Serbia was a small State, so small that its huge neighbour, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, deemed it a safe subject for insult and oppression. Belgium was another small State, and regarding it that Empire's friend of the "mailed fist" and the "shining armour" made a similar miscalculation. Those two small States were big enough to set the whole world at war. Today the little State of Austria possesses a similar importance out of all proportion to its size. It has been palled the strategic Centre of Europe, and under its present Government it has presented a barrier to a war which, if it fails, may spread as far as that of 1914. The narrowness of the escape was as remarkable as the gravity of the issue. It surely deserves even belter than the Battle of Waterloo the Duke's description of "the nearestrun thing you ever saw," for it leaves the hypothetical historians free to speculate on what would have happened to the world if Dr. Dollfuss's tailor had put soft buttons on his waistcoat instead of metal ones. "If the nose of Cleopatra had been shorter," said Pascal, "the face of the earth would have been changed." If the buttons of the Austrian Chancellor had been softer, the face of a much larger earth, might have been changfed much more seriously. Inscrutable indeed ate the ways of Providence, and yet when one recalls the remark of the "New York Sun" that "nothing except Providence seems able to shield our men in high office"-it is impossible to refrain from adding that at Vienna, if not at Miami, human providence might have taken a little more trouble to provide a shield against aesassination. Not knowing that the Chancellor's tailor had provided any sort of a shield, or, if they did, being unable to trust to it to cover every vital spot, the authorities in' a country where the police have a high reputation ought surely to have shown a good deal more vigilance in the protection of one of the two or three most precious lives in Austria. ! But the whole atmosphere of the '■ scene in the Parliament Building seems to have been one of easy confidence. There were evidently no police immediately at .hand, and when Dr. Dollfuss and his Minister of Commerce appeared the elegantly dressed young man who had been waiting for a long time at the lobby door got such a chance as one might have supposed to be impossible even in a far less dangerously charged atmosphere than that of Austria.

Vergil approached the Chancellor, presenting a letter with his left hand. He drew a revolver from his hip pocket with his right hand, then retreated a couple of paces and fired.

11l Chicago they would have managed better' than that. A man so clumsy us to present his petition with the left hand would doubtless have been covered or hustled, and not improbably shot, before he could do any business with the other. But Vienna gave him time to find his hip pocket, to step back two paces, and to fire two shots. Even then it was only the presence of mmd and, the promptitude with which the Minister of Commerce flung himself on the criminal that prevented further shooting. Nor was it till after some deputies had joined in and given the man a sound thrashing that the police appeared. But if the police thus appear to be blameworthy the bulk of the censure must apparently come back to Dr. Dollfuss himself. Since the Cabinet reconstruction of a fortnight ago he has added Lo his other ' cares ihc portfolio of Public Security, which puts the police under his control. It is to be hoped that in future he will realise that in that capacity it is his duty to give the

Chancellor exactly, the same jealous j "ex officio" protection as though they did not s both walk under the same hat. Both the Chancellor and, his would-be murderer have distinguished themselves by their comments on the crime. "I did not want to kill Dr. Dollfuss," says Vergil, "but to draw attention to the fact that he is not suitable as an Austrian leader." It was merely quite a moderate indication of political disapproval that he had in view, though his manner of expressing it may have been unconventional. To hit a man's waistcoat button with a revolver bullet and lodge it near his heart is a kind of political criticism that was bound to be misunderstood, and it is just as well that the critic was cut short. Without conceding the justice of the criticism Dr. Dollfuss agrees with his critic, in treating the matter lightly. After an escape which he describes as "miraculous" he is said to have shown "extraordinary calm and consideration"—qalni in respect of his own danger and consideration fof the feelings of the public. His remarks as he stepped to the porter's lodge were certainly reassuring: "I believe I have been shot. We don't need an ambulance, and don't let there be any fuss. Drive me to Dr. Denks's nursing home." That first sentence surely deserves a high place in the classics of understatement. Dr. Dollfuss was credibly informed that he had been hit, but was not, quite sure about it, though one shot had passed through the right upper arm, and the other had entered his chest two inches above his heart and lodged against a rib! The Chancell6r proposes nevertheless to take a week off, but to show that there is nothing to worry about he proposes to carry on "business as usual" at his home. And in' Berlin also another Chancellor will ■ contitiue to carry on "business as usual." The warm messages of sympathy that have been sent to Dr. Dollfuss by Mr. MacDonald and Sir John Simon do one's heart good to read.; How the dark clouds over Germany, and Europe would have been lifted if Herr Hitler could have telegraphed in the! same way! But the Nazi machine will carry on "business1 as ijsur.l" - and the old hymn of hate will still travel from Berlin and Munich to Vienna just as fast as wireless and aeroplane can carry it. '