to be one of the cardinal points of the political firmament whenever the eye turns in search of a stable peace. It is true that the independence of Bohemia, that is, the independence and unity of the Czecho-Slovak race, involves tha "dismemberment of Austria" against which British pacifists so strangely protest. A sudden and touching solicitude for the preservation of the Habsburg realms, in some federalised form, has been noticeable of late in quartets formerly proud of their "Liberalism," Gladstone's verdict that "nowhere has Austria ever done good" seems to have been forgetten by these ultra-liberal partisans of Austrian intangibility. They have taken up the position held by the mid-Victorian Tories, against whom the famous parody of "Who is Sylvia?" was directed in Macmillan's Magazine of 1866:—
| Who is Austria? What is she? That all our swells commend her? Dogged, proud and dull is she; The heavens such gifts did lend her That she might destroyed be. ····· But what is Austria? Is it fair To name among the nations Some Germans who have clutched the hair Of divers populations, And, having clutched, keep tugging there? |
From the moment that Austria-Hungary, at the instance of Germany, decided to use the Sarajevo assassinations as a pretext far the long-planned "punitive expedition" against Serbia, I have been confirmed—as Count Albert Mensdorff,
