THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY, JANUARY 25, 1918. THE QUESTION OF AUSTRIA

New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 16757, 25 January 1918, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY, JANUARY 25, 1918. THE QUESTION OF AUSTRIA

iViiEN the Emperor of Germany bug down the gauntlet in 1914, and challenged the western 'world to nortal combat, the impulse to ininediate action was provided by the state of Austria, He had in deadly earnest prepared for war during nore than a score of years, but he iwaited "the day." 'It came sud lenly, without grey mists of mornng; the Near East was in a flash alood-red with the murder of the Archduke at Serajevo, and in the storm that followed nations hurled hemselve sat nations. Servia was ndicted and scourged for the assassination in the Bosnian capital. Russia mobilised and inarched into the jnlician Crownland of. Francis Joseph, Germany hacked a way through Belgium to France, and ?<to?.[ Britain found herself fighting in alliance that included Austria, with whom she had never before ir ill history been at open war. Aus :ria's too-exacting demands o servia precipitated the conflict. Th< >erajevo pistol shots fired the trail hat exploded all the ammunition lumps of Europe. But the trail tself had been laid by the hand o; •ircumstance in Austrian affairs, ivents conspired ceaselessly to make his monarchy, which often fought tenaciously to preserve a balance o: sower among European nations, the tool of a disruptive military ambition. Those events were the consequences )f the policy of that benevolent lespot, Joseph 11., whose eighteenth century attempts to unite the .heterogeneous elements of his Austrian iominions achieved nothing but the ireaking of his own heart, and won lothing but the hatred of his unwillng subjects. The Compromise of !567, which long afterwards reconstituted the Empire as a dual monarchy, each half of which was to lave its own Parliament' and its own vay in domestic affairs, did reallv nothing to solve the problem of Ausria, which has remained to mystify ind menace all Europe. Tltt words with which Leger, the listorian, writing after the Compromise, closed his story of the AustroJungarian Monarchy are getting stirring corroboration to-day: The Austria of Francis I. and Metterlich is no more; but at the same time it is surrounded with difficulties ... and unless some unforeseen event occurs, the situation of the Austrian State must remain precarious, and its. future inspire with great anxiety, the "minds of those who consider the maintenance of a powerful Danubian State neces-1 sary to the peace of Europe." That j situation of Austria, which is more precarious than ever, is occasioned by the unexampled variety of its peoples. To have an anomaly like a " dual monarchy" is bad enough; \ to have a mixture of races and j a confusion of tongues in a compulsory union is to provide all the elements of a tragic disruption. There are in the monarchy twentyone million Slavs (Czechs or Bohemians, Slovaks, Poles, Ruthenes, Serbs, I Croatians, and Slovenes), 12,(100,000 Germans, 9,000.000 Mag-j yars, or Hungarians, and 4,000,000 j Latins (Roumanians and Italians);' and the Slavs of the north favour Russia, the Slavs of the south have V their hearts in the Balkans, the Germans cleave to the Fatherland, j the Italians in Trieste and the! Tyrol love Italy, and the 'Rou-' manians of Transylvania are drawn towards Roumania. It is not remarkable that this hotch-potch of peoples refuses to mix well. Joseph ll.'b attempt to make of it a political unit was foredoomed to a! failure that was more Jiis country's j misfortune than his fault. All that the late Emperor could accomplish, by dint of liberal tendencies timidly manifested through a long reign, was the deferring of the outbreak of the internal combustion that incessantly imperilled his throne. Ere Francis Joseph died the question of Austria was getting rottenripe for solution. Diplomacy had manifestly failed to unravel the' Balkan tangle. Roumania was becoming rapidly Russian "in sympathies, Austrian and Italian interests in the Adriatic seaboard were producing apples of discord in the south-west. The Slavs of the Monarchy were showing resentful j .restlessness, and, the new Balkan League was growing obviously stronger. The Emperor's increasing years brought nearer the "day when the crazy political structure would no longer be held together by the cement of his strange personality. With Servia not .yet quite recovered from two exhausting wars, with still , the possibility of Italy and Rou- , mania remaining neutral, an assertion of force by Germany might have the aid of an Austria not yet : dismembered. Hence came Prussian - eagerness to launch a campaign of 1 ambitious militarism before Ger- ! many would have to stand alone ] against the great Powers of the ' West. It was a choice between < that single-handed struggle and a ' premature precipitation of the pro- ( jected war. With the Serajevo [ tragedy came an opportunity not I lightly to be lost, and "the day" 1 dawned. A modern history teacher ' well sums the facts: Germany chose \ "the day," but the day chosen was , not the day which she would have < chosen to choose. And now, after ' three years and a-half of war, with J Francis Joseph gone and Italy hos- , tile, with economic difficulties accentuating racial antipathies, the ques- ( tion of Austria emerges again. This ' national replica of Falstaff a Justice '' Shallow, like a man made out j of cheese parings after supper, threatens to fall to pieces. Maybe, ] though the war was meant to post- i [ pone that happening dreaded of ; Germany, it will but make it a more j complete catastrophe. At all events, it has not removed the question of . Austria. I