The European Mystery Man.

Evening Star, Issue 7496, 14 April 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

The European Mystery Man.

Emperor Franc" % Joseph is not a general, or he would win battles ; he is not as administrator, or hi? army would be easier to mobilise; he is not a financier, or bistreasury would be in better heart j but the Emperor can make his States pull together. He understands men so far as to find able instrument!, though teldom of the first class; and in finding them he has no> prejudices, as he proved when he picked up that Protsstant bourgeois Beuat. He knows how to make the weight of his Empire felt without exposing it to all the risks of war (tide the history of 1855), and he has the most perfect patience of any man in Europe, He never fidgets the Powers, and never suggests grand changes. He waits even for that Turkish heritage he covets as the Czars* cannot persuade themselves to wait; and only the Turks, taught by cruel experience', know that they have in the world no more dangerous foe than Austria. Constantly devoted to a single aim—the greatness of the House of Hapsburg, which to him is Austria, Hungary, the world—he is, in the [mrsuit of that object, absolutely passion' ess, and will embrace his greatest enemy or throw over h'3 dearest friend. It must have been a bitter pill to the Emperor tD abandon the petty states of Germany, which had risked so much for his sake; but with his house at stake, he signed their sentencss without a sigh, so escaping without the surrender of one acre of his own land. And it must have been a bitterer pill still to recognise the little Savoyard, a cadet, in his eyes, of his own line, as Sovereign of Italy ; and a poisonous draught to yield to the detested Hohenzollern, the secular Protestant foe, the Imperial throne of Germany. Yet King Humbert and Raker William are the Emperor's dearest allies, and the alliance, while it pays, and it may pay for centuries, will be honestly main' tained. He betrayed Russia in 1855, asPrince Schwarizenberg admitted, in a style the Rtlsdans have never had the wisdom to forgive ; but if it were clearly safe, and he saw the road, he would to-morrow join the Czar in another grand partition, and adhere to it loyally enough. He is not false by nature, rather the reverse, remaining still, in his own eyes, head of the Holy Roman Empire, first gentleman in the universe ; but his concepiion of duty is to think first of the great heritage entrusted to him by his ancestors, and to see that this, at all event?, be not diminished. It U through this pasaionlcLsness that he, absolutist to the core of his heart, is able to bear the fretful constitutiona'ism of his subjects, and to reconcile, by a calm assumption of impartiality, their ever-eonfl'cti*>g demands. "It is needful to us," and bo Hungary may go free, and Deak may be great, and regions may be tolerated, and even the Mussulmans of Bosnia may be assured of special protection. Victory never elates the Emperor of Austria, as we see in the patience with which he waits for that legal sovereignty in Bosnia the want of which would put Prince Bismarck beside himself; and defeat, as we saw in 1860 and 1866, only induces him to use the new conditions as foundations upon which to build. If we add that the Emperor has been made by his history slightly callous, and would expend soldiers or servants like shells for an adequate end, and that he controls perfectly an inner pride as haughty as that of any ancestor—and there has been no pride like that of this BemiSpanish House, which claims to represent Charlemagne—we have given what we feel to be an imperfect, and yet, in parts, accurate view of the Emperor, who is holding every week a military council against Russia, but sendstoSt. Pet3?sburg no remonstrances, no offer, and no inquiry.