among them to a vanishing point. They secured also possibilities of higher education that qualified them to increase their share of bureaucratic appointments and thus secure a part—the only effectual part in Austria—of the actual everyday work of government and administration. From 1879 to 1893, Count Taaffe, a nobleman of Irish extraction and a personal friend of the Emperor, remained uniterruptedly Premier of Austria. His work, which was certainly done in accordance with Emperor’s intentions, tended to give the Austrian Slavs—that is to say, the Czechs of Bohemia and Moravia, the Poles of Galicia, the Slovenes of Carinthia, Carniola, the Tristine Littoral and Istria, and the Serbo-Croats of Istria and Dalmatia—a larger share in the life of Austria, and thus to counterbalance to some extent the artificial predominance of the Germans. Taaffe fell in 1893. His successor, a Pole, Count Badeni, endeavored to continue his policy; but in 1896 the Germans of Austria revolted against a ministerial ordinance that placed the Czech and German languages officially on a footing of equality in Bohemia, and began a menacing Pangerman movement called Los von Rom, or, as I have explained, in reality, “Away from the Hapsburgs”. Ten years of confusion followed, during which constitutional government was practically suspended. It ended in the sudden introduction of universal suffrage at the command of the Emperor—a reform which at the elections of 1907 was seen to have broken for the first time the artificial German predominance in the Austrian Parliament.
In Hungary the Emperor left, from 1875 to 1890, one statesman in charge of the government—Mr. Koloman Tisza, father of the late Hungarian Premier, Count Tisza. He held office on an understanding similar to that which had existed between the Emperor and the Austrian-German Liberals between ’71 and ’79—that the Magyars should have a free hand in the oppression and Magyarization of the non-Magyars provided that they voted, without wincing, money and recruits for the army. This understanding Tisza and his successors observed until 1903, when the Hungarian Independence Party refused recruits and engaged in a conflict with the Crown. Then, after two years of crisis, the Crown turned against them and threatened to introduce universal suffrage, which would have broken the predominance of the Magyar minority over the non-Magyar majority in Hungary. Frightened, the Magyars yielded, and escaped the danger of universal suffrage, which, however, was taken up as a cry in Austria and was used by the Emperor in the hope of curtailing German predominance.
Now mark these dates. The Magyars began to fear for their mastery over the non-Magyars in 1905–6. In 1907 universal suffrage placed the German elements in a minority in the Austrian Parliament. Thus both the levers created in 1867 under Bismarckian influence to establish Prussian control of Austria-Hungary were seen to be weakening, and it became necessary to strengthen them. This could only be done by an anti-Slav policy. Therefore, in 1907, the Magyar government began a series of per secutions of the Croatians and the Southern Slavs, accusing them with the help of false documents and perjured witnesses of treasonable relations with Serbia. In 1908 the Emperor Francis Joseph annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina at the suggestion of the German Emperor and made preparations for a war against Serbia, which was only averted by the withdrawal of Russian support from Serbia under a German ultimatum. In the autumn of 1909, a libel action brought by the Serbo-Croatian leaders against the Pangerman Austrian historian, Dr. Friedjung, revealed the fact that the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Office had prepared a whole series of forgeries designed to justify both the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the invasion of Serbia. The exposure of these forgeries defeated Austro-German schemes for a while, but during and after the Balkan wars of 1912–13 other pretexts for an attack upon Montenegro and Serbia were sought, and only the combined efforts of European statesmen averted a catastrophe. In 1914, when Germany was ready for war, the Austro-Hungarian heir-presumptive, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, was sent to Bosnia-Herzegovina, was allowed to visit the capital (Sarajevo) without military or police protection, was shot down by assassins—one of whom was the son of an Austrian policeman. The Austro-Hungarian authoorities promptly accused the Serbian government of complicity in the crime, and the long-sought pretext for this war was created.
No official was punished for dereliction of duty in connection with the murder of the Archduke; and the more the details of the crime are studied, the more it becomes evident that the murder was deliberately permitted, if not organized, by the Austro-Hungarian authorities. The Archduke had long been suffering from the effects of an incurable disease. His mental stability had been affected, and there existed a danger that should he succeed to the throne of his more than octogenarian uncle, even for a few months, he might appropriate the Hapsburg Family Fund for his morganatic children. His death removed the danger and, at the same time, provided a pretext for a war which, by enabling Germany and Austria-Hungary to crush forever Serbia and the Southern Slavs, should open the Germanic road to the Balkans, Constantinople and Asia Minor.
The question, the only question, that arises for us is: Are we, in seeking the future peace of Europe, to follow dynasties—degenerate, unscrupulous, incapable dynasties—or are we to support the peoples—the peoples who are struggling for liberty, who are our friends, and whose development will guarantee their security and ours? There can be but one answer: We must support the peoples with all our strength, and in supporting them, establish the freedom of Europe forever against any future menace of Hohenzollern or Hapsburg tyranny.
