THE GERMANS OF AUSTRIA
politicians with an exaggerated imperialism. They want to separate off whatever stands in the way of creating a German majority; and yet they are annexationists, although any annexation by Austria leads into Slav territory, and so increases Slav predominance.
“By renouncing all idea of making the Germans of Austria into a nation independent alike of the racial state and of the other nations, by refusing to rally the nation and assert its right of self-determination, the German bourgeoisie have based their national cause upon Privilege. And now they have the feeling that every renunciation of privilege weakens their national position, that every step towards democracy leads to national misery. . . . They are continually holding up to us German Social Democrats, the noble example of the Czech Social Democrats, who loyally join their bourgeois co-nationals. But have they never noticed that the national development of the Czechs is taking place in the name of Democracy, while the national preservation of the Germans, so long as they do not form a separate nation, depends on the maintenance of privileges? It is not that the Czech bourgeoisie adopts democratic views in order to win the Czech workman, but that the Czechs, if they wish to develop, can only do so according to the laws of democracy—because their power tends to follow their numbers. But what does the German bourgeoisie want of us when they bid us support their national policy? They want us to renounce Democracy, to renounce Universal Suffrage in the country and in the commune, to rest satisfied with the ‘Curia’ because the German cause is so badly managed as to be incompatible with democracy! That is what made Victor Adler, at the Socialist Congress, sigh: ‘We have a peasantry and a bourgeoisie with whom there is absolutely nothing to be done.’”
Herr Austerlitz concludes with the phrase: “Only in the ‘Federation of Nations’ (Völkerstaat) can democracy be at home and victorious; the ‘State of Nationalities’ (Nationalitätenstaat), as we see it to-day, is condemned to barrenness and stagnation.”
Unhappily he gives no indication as to how the one is to be replaced by the other; in other words, how Federalism is to take the place of Dualism. Even the ablest political theorist of his own party, Dr. Carl Renner, stands committed to the futile and unsatisfying plan of national autonomy in each of the seventeen Austrian provinces, and this is the plan favoured by the present Austrian Government.
“Flirting with Vienna”: a Warning
In several recent issues of the Journal des Débats, M. Auguste Gauvain has subjected Mr. Lloyd George’s speech to a careful examination in the light of Austro-Hungarian conditions. In view of M. Gauvain’s authority in this matter we reproduce some of his more salient passages. On 8 January, under the title “Government by consent of the governed,” he wrote:—
“If the Emperor-King does not send troops to our front, it is because he cannot. . . . If he threatens us to-day in order to ensnare us,
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