did not declare war upon Austria-Hungary until December 4, 1917—seven months after the declaration of war upon Germany. But the statement in the book of Prince Sixtus of Parma, that it was my continual pressure which induced President Wilson to declare war on Austria-Hungary, requires correction. It is true that, through mutual acquaintances, I recommended President Wilson to take this step as the logical consequence of the war with Germany, but I doubt whether, at that moment, my recommendation can have sufficed. As far as my own information goes, Italy urged the United States to declare war on Austria after the Caporetto disaster, in order to strengthen the position of the Italian Government at home. The request was forwarded to President Wilson by Mr. Sharp, the American Ambassador in Paris.
In England, too, there was much friendliness towards Austria. Though Lord Palmerston had uttered his famous and very trenchant opinion of the Austrians in 1849 when he called them “brutes”; though Gladstone had declared in 1880 that nowhere in the world had Austria ever done good, while Lloyd George had called her a “ramshackle Empire” in the autumn of 1914, many influential Englishmen felt sympathy with Austria, or with Vienna and Budapest, or were of opinion that, good-for-nothing as she might be, Austria was still better than a lot of small peoples, since she prevented both the expansion of Germany and the “Balkanization” of Europe. How deeply rooted was this pro-Austrianism can best be seen from the fact that though the Italian Foreign Minister, Sonnino, demanded portions of Austria for Italy, he worked for the preservation of Austria-Hungary itself. This was at once an effect of the political Conservatism that feared the “Balkanization” of Central Europe, and, in Sonnino’s special case, the consequence of a policy antagonistic to the unification of the Southern Slavs.
Finally, Austria found defenders in the Socialists, the Marxists particularly. They, too, deprecated “Balkanization” and therefore thought Austria worth preserving, despite her backwardness. Besides, the German Marxists agreed with German policy in regard to Austria, although the founders of German Socialism, Lassalle and Marx, had roundly condemned her. Lassalle looked upon Austria as an embodiment of the principle of reaction, and as a consistent enemy of aspirations to freedom. In the interests of democracy, he said, Austria “must be torn to pieces, broken up, destroyed, pulverized, and her dust be scattered to the four winds.” And though
