Viennese Court and the prevalently German bureaucracy. Beginning with 1897, the year when the Germans by their obstruction in Parliament overthrew a Cabinet which enjoyed the full confidence of a vast majority in the House, there was no real safety for the Czechs or Jugo-Slavs in Austria. With every year the chances of a revival of constitutional government were diminishing, and with the recrudescence of bureaucratic and military autocracy German ambitions and German encroachments were growing in strength and weight.
Matters were still worse with regard to international politics. No one ever counted therein but the aristocratic German clique of Vienna and the Magyars. In 1866 Prussia appealed to the Czechs, promising them “independence,” but the Czechs knew only too well the nature of Prussia and its Danaan gifts. They did not swallow the bait, and after the defeat of the Hapsburgs they once more declared to the old dynasty that they were prepared to stand by them in the hour of need and fight under their lead against Prussia. With an incomparable blindness the Hapsburgs imagined that they could best strengthen the State for the new struggle by handing over the power in Austria to the Germans and in Hungary to the Magyars. Francis Joseph was soon to learn the consequences of his action. In 1870, when all the Austrian Slavs were eager to take the field on the side of France, the veto of the two dominant races—the Germans and Magyars—prevented intervention. Why should they fight their best friends, the Prussians, the supporters of government based on violence? In 1879 the Dual System of German-Magyar rule over all the other
