Political Considerations of Vienna Period
This strengthens their faith in their own cause, and increases their bitterness against him who attacks it.
That the Pan-German movement did not realize this cost it its success. Its goal was rightly seen, its will was pure; but the road it took was wrong. It was like a mountain-climber who keeps his eye fixed on the peak to be scaled, and takes the trail with great decision and energy, but pays no attention to the path, and, his eye always on his goal, neither sees nor examines the nature of the ascent, and thus finally goes astray.
The situation of its great competitor, the Christian Socialist Party, seemed to be reversed. The road it took was shrewdly and rightly chosen, but a clear realization of the goal was lacking.
In almost every matter where the Pan-German movement was lacking, the attitude of the Christian Socialist Party was right, and was deliberately planned for results.
It had the necessary realization of the masses’ importance, and secured at least part of them by plainly emphasizing its social character from the very first. By adjusting itself to win the petty and lower middle and artisan classes it obtained a following as faithful as it was dogged and self-sacrificing. It avoided fighting any religious institution, and thus secured the support of a mighty organization such as the Church is. Consequently it had but one truly great adversary. It recognized the value of large-scale propaganda, and was skilled in working upon the human instincts of the broad mass of its followers.
It too failed to reach its dreamed-of goal of saving Austria. The fault was in two shortcomings of its method, as well as in its uncertainty about the goal itself.
The anti-Semitism of the new movement was founded on a religious concept instead of a racial insight. The reason that this mistake occurred was the same which also caused the second error.
If the Christian Socialist Party was to save Austria, it must not, in the opinion of its founders, take its stand on the race principle, since otherwise a general dissolution of the State was soon bound to take place. Particularly the situation in Vienna itself made it
123
