based on the principle of full respect for mankind, and I had worked out in quite a detailed manner the ideas of critical realism in sociology and politics.
4
Thus, when the war broke out, its political meaning was, on the whole, obvious to me, while it was morally clear what I could, would, and must do. I never hesitated either for reasons of personal conviction or of practical political opportunism. From the very beginning one idea presented itself to me, and that was the consciousness of duty, the knowledge that the great moment had come when everybody who could and would accomplish something, must and would be an instrument of Providence in great and small things.
As far as political practice was concerned, I considered the conditions in our country so dislocated, and the leading circles in Vienna sufficiently alive to their own interests, that even on July 26, 1914, I was convinced that a way would be found to adjust matters and avoid war. From the beginning of the conflict with Serbia I felt that Austria-Hungary, being internally weak and having no centrifugal force amid its diversity of nations, would pay a severe penalty even for a victorious war. I therefore wondered what penalty it would pay if it lost a war engaged in by a number of Great Powers, whose centrifugal forces would certainly be greater than ever before. The penalty would undoubtedly be the loss of its political existence.
It also seemed to me that the war would result in a great social upheaval equal to a social revolution. During my stay abroad I had followed the results of Edward VII’s diplomatic activity, and, at the same time, I had observed that French public opinion was, for the greater part, decidedly opposed to the propaganda of revenge. I believed in the possibility and even in the inevitability of an Anglo-German war which would be brought about mainly by economic competition, the German need for expansion, the German pressure upon Turkey and the Persian Gulf, and England’s concern about her colonies and her naval mastery. But I was unable to form any clear conception of a war which would be entered into by Austria-Hungary and Russia, since I judged that the ruling classes of both those States were aware of the danger of a social revolu-
