THE NEW EUROPE
to be discarded; four Cabinets followed in quick succession, and under the last, that of Dr. von Koerber (to-day again Austrian Premier), the Emperor capitulated before the Germans; piece by piece Badeni's decree has been plucked to pieces and finally abolished altogether.
The Emperor and his counsellors found a new expedient to evade the solution of the national and, above all, of the Bohemian problems; political attention was diverted to social problems, and it was calculated that the working classes would make short work of the national movement. The Russian revolution had a strong repercussion in Bohemia and Austria, whose growing industrialisation brought to the front a strong socialist party, and Vienna advised the introduction of universal suffrage, hoping that social antagonism would supersede national antagonism. But apart from the fact that universal suffrage in Austria was very artificial, securing to the German minority its artificial majority in the Parliament, the national dissensions could not be weakened; not only in Austria but in Hungary also the absolutist rule of the minority caused a collapse of constitutionalism. Francis Joseph thought that universal suffrage would weaken Magyar absolutism and appease the Slavs; Kristófy promised to introduce universal suffrage in Hungary, but it was not the first time that an imperial promise had not been kept. After the long and futile interlude of the Coalition, the reckless Count Tisza became the dictator of Hungary.
Being weakened at home, Austria-Hungary tried to gain some prestige by her foreign policy. The occupied provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina were annexed, with an entire disregard of the stipulations of the Berlin Congress. In order to convince Europe of the necessity for so high-handed an act, and to alarm her with a trumped-up story of a revolutionary Panslav movement among the Southern Slavs, documents were forged at the legation of Belgrade; but the Friedjung trial exposed Austria's Machiavellian methods in the face of all Europe. An Austrophil historian of the Balkan policy of Austria-Hungary—Theodor von Sosnosky—is bound to accept the English view of Mr. Seton-Watson that, in any other country, Count Aehrenthal would not have remained at his post twenty-four hours after these forgeries had been publicly disclosed in the Austrian Delegation. But
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