The New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1888.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XX, Issue 6814, 19 September 1883, Page 4

The New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1888.

We never know -what credit to attach to the reports about the health of Prince Bismarck. The great Chancellor has such a. masterly political hand, is so able a player on the international chessboard, and is regarded with so ; much alarm or hope, that few events would just now , cause more joy or sorrow in Europe than the disappearance from the scene of this mover of events. Though with a powerful frame, he is now an old man, and has been repeatedly ordered by the physicians to sequester himself, for a period at any rate, from the exacting strain, the constant wear and tear of State affairs. Having gone to attend the meeting at Gasteift of his Emperor with the Austfian demonstration which at this juncture has its .meaning, and was of course of his arrangement—there, are the usual contradictory telegrams, his suiden attack "by serious illness," and then his as sudden recovery.. Hitherto things have gone invariably with Prince Bismarck's policy, and fortune has wonderfully seconded his views. Of, his two recognised antagonists, the monstrous blundering of her rulers during the las'c few years has isolated France among the nations, while in Russia the facts of the coronation have just shown, what was in mystery before, viz., that to support tbe present state of things in that Empire the mass of the people and the army can be still relied, on through the spell of the Czar's name, and, therefore, ! that, the constitutional change which would give wings to the Panselavie movement is not possible, at any rate in this generation. The populations in the Austrian and German empires and in the Balkan peninsula, which are ethnologically related to Russia, however much they may desire Sclavonic union, would not like a despotic Russia to rule. That the powerful head of the race should thus, continue unfit to preside over such a confederacy, is sore discouragement ti> those aspirations; and following up the fact revealed at Moscow, the demonstration at Gastein savoured of Bismarck's ability, for it could not but convince the disaffected in Austria that their Government is backed by all the might of Germany, NeverthelesSj just at this, moment a

■ revolt takes place in. Croatia, a. Sclavonic province, and which includes part of what is known as the military frontier, where the whole population is trained to arms, and which some years ago was remarkable for devotion to the House of Hapsburg. Even if the outbreak be promptly suppressed, it still must cause infinite disappointment, for it illustrates the difficulties

which beset any endeavour to infuse strength into that heap of confusion, the Austrian Empire. :

In Austf O'Hungary there is a. standing triangular quarrel between the principal races, Sclavs, -who are nearly hal£ the population of the empirej the Germans, next most numerous; and then the Magyars. And smaller but equally distinctive nationalities have also their peculiar claims, adding to the confusion. There is such a host of conflicting races, and so many diverse languages, that in Hungary in past times Latin had to be used as the common official tongue. That it has ceased to be so is a mis-

fortune—id one of the various sources of discord. When the Magyars in. 1848 broke into insurrection, their complaint was that the Government in Vienna was trying to Germanise them, and forcing upon them the German tongue, besides taking away their other national rights. Yet the Magyars themselres were at the same time acting in just the same way towards the Sclav and Wallacli populations, who therefore sided against them in the civil war. And at the present moment the Germans, who compose one of the four separate populations of Transylvania, whither they emigrated some centuries back from Saxony—are appealing to their original fatherland against the Magyarising policy of the Parliament in Buda-Pesth. This treatment of their kinsmen in Transylvania by the Magyars is fiercely resented by j the Germans in Austria proper, and at the beginning of this year, at a public festival in Vienna, there was a riot 1 in the streets, and next day a score of duels between members of these two rival nationalities. Their reconciliation, effected some years ago by the statesmanship of Beust and Deak, is shaken, the old bitterness is revived, and they are only kept in some sort together by the common danger from the Sclavs, who within the Empire outnumbered them both. When,' a couple of years ago, the province of Bosnia was transferred from Turkey to Austria, the Magyars strenuously opposed this aggrandisement of the Empire they belonged to, because it added a million of souls to the already multitudinous number of their Sclavonic adversaries.

But the Sclavs are by no means in concord among themselves in every province. Thus in Gfallicia the Poles and Butlienes, though branches of the one stock, have a feud, dating from the fact that they were recently in the relative position of masters and serfs.; and likewise in Bosnia, there are two parties, the bulk of the population not being in accord with those,, including most of the upper classes, who after the old Turkish conquest adopted the jViahomcdan faith and manners. In Bohemia, the hereditary quarrel of the Czech brarich pf the Sclavs with the i Germans cfiasea not, and it has been found necessary to recast for them in two separate .divisions the venerable tiniversity of Prague. Then Croatia,

Paiinatia, afld .Bosriis, have an agitation, ; ojieh;tb join the independent Siervia; Montenegro,: and/Bulgaria,Jh forming a South Sclavonic kingdom. And finally in this; network of entanglements, tlae Italians in South Tyrol and Trieste are..;sympathetic; -with.the. dbjects of the Irredenta party in Italy ■; while in. Transylvania ,■; the iftallachs, or Eoumans, ...as-, they prefer ito call themselves (claiming, to be descended from Trajan's Roman : bptony), aspire to separate; from-the: Empire, arid join their kindred of the new kingdom of Roumania, comprising .the olil provinces of Waliachia and Moldavia,

Nowhere is there; within the same compass such an. extraordinary number of nationalities as in. the Austria.ii dominion. Even in the one direction, of the military frontier—which was origiftally formed as a. barrier against the Turks, and where the inhabitants still hold their lands by the. tenure of military service — travellers tell us that there are as many distinctive Varieties of costjime,. national or tribal, as are now perhaps to be seen in all the rest of Europe. The quarrels of her multitudinous nationalities, never so rife among them all round as at render Austria just now in relation to Germany an advanced post, requiring to be carefully guarded and watched. And possibly this may be one of the reasons why the German Chancellor has not terminated burdensome armed peace ancf precipitated the conflict for which the extraordinary mistakes of the French Government and the course of events in Russia seem to offer him the temptation.