DEMOCRACY DEAD

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 April 1934, Page 2

DEMOCRACY DEAD

DESTROYED IN AUSTRIA The tumult aud 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 Starhemberg were reserved for home display.

This would be somewhat difficullt to achieve, however, for internal rivalries are forcing Dr. Dollfuss himself simultaneously to smile benignly abroad and adopt a Mussoliniesque glance at home, as witness the cruising leaflets urging enlistment in his personal Fascist bodyguard, the Ostmaerkische Sturmscharr, rather than in Major Fey’s and Prince 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 hide the ugly, gaping holes in the municipal dwelling blocks, but foreign observers are more concerned with the human than the material wreckage.

1 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 por- • tion 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 De- ‘ puties, functionaries, trades union offi- • cials, and chairmen of sports and educational societies founded by the So- ■ cialists arrested? Certainly it would be impossible to prefer charges of active resistance against men such as ’ the 100 Socialists who were arrested i at Salzdorf, where not a shot was fired. r What are the Government’s intenr tions regarding the hundreds of thousL ands of tenants of municipal dwelling [ houses, which it has already named 5 after Major Fey and other Fascist , heroes? i The Government is proceeding to > disposes janitors and also families I “which have been centres of revolu- : tionary activity.” Translated into noni Fascist language, this apparently r means that it will expel all promin- ■ ent Socialist families and replace them 1 by Heimwehr men. > The result has already been a ' stream of denunciations such as marked the Nazi revolution in Ger- • many. The terror-stricken workers, ‘ threatened with the prospect of homelessness, are tumbling over one an- ! other 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 Ihe 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 be replaced by eager sycophants suddenly professing a burning enthusiasm for Chancellor Dollfuss and his Patriotic Front? What will be the fate of the Austrian Jews, whose intellectuals, too active-minded 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 refugees of democracy in Europe. How will Fascist Austria. treat the co-operatives, the closing 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 blood-suckers by 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 reductions, in hopes of which they supported the campaign against the Socialists. The monument to the republic was destriyed in one night, but the Fas- : cists 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 c wider issues.