DEMOCRACY DEAD

Evening Star, Issue 21722, 17 May 1934, Page 11

DEMOCRACY DEAD

DESTROYED IN AUSTRIA NEXT STEP UNCERTAIN ' V The tumult and the shouting of the Austrian civil war have died, but the captains and the kings remain greatly perplexed concerning what to do 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. R. 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 pre-civil 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 Emil Fey) and Prince Starhcmberg were reserved for home display. This would be somewhat difficult to achieve, however, for internal rivalries are forcing Dr Dollfuss himself simultaneously to smile benignly abroad ami adopt a Mussoliniesqne glance at borne, as witness the cruising of aeioplanes above Vienna dropping leaflets urging enlistment in his personal Fascist bodyguard, the Ostmaerkischc Sturmscharr, rather than in Major Fey’s and Prince Starhemberg’s Heimweh r. 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 hide 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 series of awkward 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 chairman of sports and cducatioal societies founded by the Socialists axrested ? Certainly it would be impossible to prefer charges of active resistance against men such as the 100 Socialist® who were arrested at Salzdorf, where not a shot was fired. What arc the Government’s intentions regarding the hundreds of thousands of tenants of municipal dwelling houses, which it has already named 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 nonFa.scist language, this apparently means that it will expel all prominent Socialist farcilities and replace them by Heimwehr men. The, result has already been a stream of denunciations such as marked the Nazi revolution in Germany. The ter-ror-stricken workers, threatened with thfe prospect of homelessness, 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 bo replaced by eager sycophants suddenly professing a burning enthusiasm for Chancellor Dollfuss and his Patriotic Front? What will bo the fate of the Austrian .Tews, whose intellectuals, too activeminded to find meaning in the ancient shibboleths of the Austrian reactionary parties, virtually all found an opportunity for self-realisation among the progressive and ambitious Socialists? At present many of them are 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 the few remaining refuges of democracy in Europe. How will Fascist Austria treat the co-operatives, the dosing of which on German Nazi lines is already demanded by private traders? How soon will the Fascists establish the sincerity of their year-long abuse of the Vienna municipality as bloodsuckers by a wholesale reduction of municipal taxation ? Already, before Social Democracy's body is cold, business bodies arc beginning to storm its slayers with demands for tax reduction, in hopes of which they supported the campaign against the Socialists. The monument to the republic Vas destroyed in one night, but the Fascists admit in the newspapers that they do not yet have the faintest idea of what they will replace it with. Their dilemma looks significant for wider issues.