Political Considerations of Vienna Period
This, then, was my attitude when I entered those sacred and much-fought-over chambers for the first time. It is true that I thought them sacred only for the noble beauty of the magnificent building. It is a work of Hellenic magic on German soil.
But how soon I was outraged at the wretched spectacle that took place before my eyes! There were present several hundred of these representatives. They were expressing their opinions on a question of economic importance.
This first day alone sufficed to give me food for thought for weeks.
The intellectual content of what they said was at a truly depressing level, in so far as one could understand their chatter at all. Some of the gentlemen spoke not German but their Slavic mother tongues, or rather dialects. Now I had a chance to hear with my own ears what so far I had known only from reading the papers. It was a gesticulating mass in wild turmoil, yelling and interrupting in every tone of voice, in its midst a harmless old gaffer who was striving in the sweat of his life to restore the dignity of the House by violent ringing of a bell and by shouts now soothing, now monitory. I could not help laughing.
A few weeks later I visited the chamber again. The scene was transformed beyond recognition. The hall was almost empty. Down below people were asleep. A few deputies were in their seats, yawning at one another while one of them “spoke.” A Vice-President of the House was present, and he gazed into the chamber with visible boredom.
I had my first misgivings. After that, I kept looking in whenever I could possibly find time. I watched the scene of the moment quietly and attentively, listened to as much of the speeches as was understandable, studied the more or less intelligent faces of the chosen of the nations in this sad state—and then gradually formed my own ideas.
A year of calm observation was enough absolutely to change or destroy my former opinions on the nature of the institution. I no longer objected to the mistaken form which the idea had assumed in Austria. No, now I could no longer acknowledge Parlia-
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