NOTES ON THE WAR.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17934, 30 October 1918, Page 6

NOTES ON THE WAR.

It is not possible to obtain from the current messages a clear idea of what is happening in Austria and Hungary. There is said to be a definite separatist movement in Hungary, but its significance and importance are in doubt. The Bohemian situation is not clearer, although there, of course, the Czechs have always been anxious for independence and it is easy to believe that the national movement is gaining oourage and strength. The southern Slavs have declared for independence, encouraged, beyond question, by tho official promise of autonomy. Broadly, the position in tho empire is that tho Government, anxious to comply with what it believed to bo the letter of President Wilson's requirements, though not necessarily with the spirit, prepared a scheme of national nutonomy for tho subject races. Whether that scheme was promulgated with sincerity remains to be discovered, but it is to be imagined that as soon as self-govern-ment on national lines was promised tho subject races promptly commenced to agitate for complete independence. That cannot be the whole story, however, and the reports that are being rocoived are much too confusing to show where the truth lies.

It is not possible here to discuss thje whole question of the racial composition of tho Austrian Empire, but briefly it. may be explained that there an* eight great national groups. There are roughly ten million Germans in Austria—Austrian Germans, in the current descriptions—and probably another two millions in Hungary. These are the basis of tho Austrian ldngdom and the Austrian nation. And there are ten million Magyars in Hungary. The Czecho-Slovaks of Bohemia and northern Hungary constitute the next great gioup, numbering probably eight and a half millions. Tho Jugo-Slavs, who approximate seven millions, form a fairly compact group in the south and along the Adriatic coast. The Poles. in Galicia, number about five millions, and their natural affinity is with the Poles of Poland, to whom they are likely to be united in the final settlement. Eastern Galicia is peonled mainly by Ruthenos, who also occunv a strip of Hungarian territory across the Carpathians, their total being four millions. In Hungary, east of the Danube and occupying ■ almost the whole of Transylvania, are some three million Rumanians. Finally there are nearly a million Italians in the territory bordering on Italy. This tally, which leaves a small margin for other nationalities, shows that there are eight great national groups whose ambitions and aspirations have to bo satisfied.

Whatever the immediate causes of the war may have been—and they are not really in doubt—there is no need to ignore the fact that the constitution of Austria-Hungary was tho great disturbing factor of European politics. It was impossible for Central Europe to acquire political stability while a vast territory was occupied by an obviously unstable empire. Austria mado the Serb national agitation the immediate oxcuso for war. There would have been no such excuse if there had not been seven million Jngo-Slavs in Aus-tria-Hungary, agitating and scheming for their indopendenco or for union with Serbia. Tho fact that decided Rumania's course was tho existence of the three million oppressed Rumanians in Hungary, and incidentally the same fact inspired the military strategy of the Rumanian leaders and involved the army in disaster. The Slovaks made a common cause with tho Czechs and there has always been a feud between tho Czechs and the ruling ■ Austrian Germans. No empire that was not founded on tho goodwill of the component races could have been stable and tin Austrian Empire was held together wholly by the military domination of the Germans and Hungarians.

If the Germans 'had won the war, they would have bean free to proceed with their plans in Central Europe, and part of tiheir scheme would have been tho complete suppression of the national amd racial aspirations of the subject races of Austria-Hungary. They appreciated and have always appreciated tho danger that existed. And they would have dealt with it as they dealt with tho Poles in Posen. Already they •had been working in Bohemia, where there are said to bo some two million German settlers, for the most part occupying land of which Czechs were deprived for political offences. Tho use of the separate languages would havo been rigidly suppressed. German would everywhere have been the language of the schools and universities and the Courts. The whole scheme had often been discussed, and tbcro is .no reasonable room for doubt ns to the policy that the Germans in Germany and Austria would have pursued. The subject races would havo been under a military domination, which their own conscripts would havo been forced to maintain.

Tho scheme has failed, and t&e settlement, tho only sort of settlement that can secure the peace of Europe, will recognise the national aspirations of the smaller nations. The disruption of the Austrian Empire seems therefore inevitable. And the Germans themselves have seen it coming. The " Frank, furtor Zeitung," which of all the Gei - mß(n journals is probably the best informed regarding Austrian politics, put the problem briefly and clearly from tho German point of view at the end of August, when the failure of the Teutonic scheme was already realisod. "Those who know their Austria," it said, "meet with well founded doubts all attempts to bring about before the end of the world war and of the world crisis a solution of tho Austrian crisis. The establishment of internal peace in Austria is confronted with difficulties precisely similar to those which confront peaoe by understanding among i)ho nations. The hope of final victoiy is the obstacle. And since the transformation of Austria is one of tho causes and also one of the aims of the world war, no one can be surprised at tho intimate connection between tho outcome of the world war and the manner of Austria's transformation. Even the peoples of Austria are striving after this transformation, not for Austria's sake, but in view of tho ultimate grouping of the world. The aim of the Slavs admittedly is not emancipation from the ' domination' of tho Germans—a domination that for thirty years was not capable of exacting oven a German district Court for a purely German district of Bohemia—their aim is in no sense inspired by motives of internal policy; it consists in abolition of the alliance with the German Empire and association with the enemy group of Powers for the purpose of ' damming in Pan-Germanism.' Tho majority of

German-Austrians for their part to-day moTe than ever regard Austria above all as the flank-guard of the German Empire, and would rather consent to the break-up of Austria than see her fall away from tho German alliance. Austrians for Austria's sale© are scarcely any more to be found. How, then, in view of 60 marked a contrast between the various aspirations for the future, can an internal settlement agreeable to all be feasible before the end of the world war has demonstrated the impracticability of the one or the other state-form?"