DEMOCRACY DEAD

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 83, 9 April 1934, Page 9

DEMOCRACY DEAD

DESTROYED IN AUSTRIA

NEXT STEP UNCERTAIN

. The tumult and the shouting of the Austrian civil war have died, but the captains and the kings remain greatly perplexed concerning what to. tlo with their victory over the Austrian workers. Austrian democracy is destroyed, but what form of reaction is to succeed it, is still uncertain, writes G. E. E. Gedge in the "New York Times."

For internal purposes Chancellor Dollfuss is as Fascist as any Heimwehr man, but the storm of foreign criticism aroused by the severity of the methods adopted to achieve the final victory over the,republicans has caused a certain desire in Austria to see the prccivil war situation revived, in which the genial smiles of the Chancellor were presented to foreign countries as representing Austria, while the stern gazes of the uncompromising Vice Chancellor (Major EmilFoy), and' Prince Starhomberg were reserved for home display.

This would be somewhat difficult to achieve, however, .far internal rivalries ai'c forcing Dr. Doll fuss" himself simultaneously to smile benignly abroad and adopt a Mussoliniesquo glance,at home, as witness the cruising .of aeroplanes above Vienna dropping leaflets urging enlistment in his personal Fascist bodyguard, the Ostmaeiidsehc Sturmscharr, rather than in Major Fey's and Prineo Starhemberg.'s Heimwehr. •While the victors, if not quarrelling, are already disagreeing over the spoils, Nazism is busily recruiting among the embittered workers. Bricklayers and, plasterers are' working .at top speed to' hide1 the ugly, gaping holes in the municipal dwelling blocks, but foreign observers are more concerned with the human than the material wreckage. The victorious captains and kings will have sooner or later to find, the' answers to a scries of nwkwiml questions if they wish to regain-any portion of- that goodwill which disappeared when the artillery opened fire! ON WHAT GROUND? Under what charge, for instance, were Dr. Karl Seitz, Mayor of Vienna, and several thousand Socialist Deputies, functionaries, trades .union officials, and chairmen ■of sports and. educational societies founded.by the Socialists arrested? * Certainly it, would be impossible to prefer charges of active resistance against men such ■ as- the 100 Socialists who were arrested at Salzdorf, whore not a shot was fired. What are the Government's inters tions regarding the hundreds of thousands of tenants .of municipal dwelling houses, which it has already namcid'after Major Fey and other Fascist heroes? ; The Government is proceeding to dispossess janitors and also families "which'have been centres of revolutionary activity." Translated into non-Fascist, language, this apparently means that it will expel all prominent Socialist, families and replace them by Heimwehr men. ' The result has already been a stream of denunciations such as niajked the Nazi revolution in Germany. The terror-stricken workors, threatened with the prospect -of homolessness, are tumbling over one another to clear themselves by joining the Heimwehr or Patriotic Front and.denouncing their neighbours in order that they may be allowed to remain in these wonderful buildings.- For those expelled from the Socialist paradise for workers face the prospect of returning to the foul, sunless courts whence the Socialists brought them. FATE OF UNIONISTS. What will be the fate of the many thousands thrown into the streets for their loyalty ,to , the-Socialist Party or the trade unions, to ho. replaced by eager sycophants suddenly professing a burning enthusiasm for Chancellor Dullfuss and his Patriotic, Front1? -,

What will bo the fate of the Austrian Jews, whoso intellectuals, 'too .activeminded to find meaning in the ancient shibboleths of the AustriaNi reactionary parties, virtually all found an opportunity for self-realisation among the progressive and ambitious Socialists?

At present many of them arc preparing to pack and join the stream of liberal refugees from other reactionary countries who are hastening from Austria, no longer free, to one of' tho few remaining refuges of democracy in Europe. How will Fascist Austria treat the co-operatives, tho closing of which on German Nazi lines is already demanded, by private traders? ' ' . How soon will the Fascists establish the sincerity of their yean-long abuse of the Vienna municipality as bloodsuckers Toy a wholesale reduction of municipal taxation? Already, before Social Democracy's body is cold, business bodies are beginning to storm its slayers with demands for tax reduction, in hopes of which they supported the campaign against the Socialists.

Tho monument <o tin; republic was destroyed in one night, but llio Fascists admit in (ho newspapers that; they do not yet have the faintest idea of what they will replace it with. Thr-ir dilemma looks significant for wider issues.