FRANCIS JOSEPH: AN ELUSIVE PERSONALITY
When at the end of nine months no single contribution had come in, I reminded the prospective authors of their promise and visited some of them personally. They explained that the work was much harder than they had imagined it would be; that it was almost impossible to find facts in support of convictions which they knew to be well founded, but that, if I would bear with them yet awhile, they would assuredly not disappoint me.
I extended the time limit. When another year had passed my chief contributor-elect, an historian of European reputation, frankly begged to be excused. He could not do the work, he said, and alleged in support of his incapacity various sentimental reasons that had not occurred to him before.
One by one the other contributors also pleaded inability. The burden of their complaint was that they could find no facts to substantiate their opinions. In short, not a single reasoned article on Francis Joseph could I obtain throughout the length and breadth of his realms, though verbal criticisms of him and his works continued to be thick as wheat stalks on the Hungarian plain.
The strangeness of this phenomenon whetted my curiosity and led me to study Francis Joseph for myself. Could it be that in Austria-Hungary, as in Ireland, there are "no facts"? The Emperor had surely lived long enough for some of the events of his life and reign to belong to the domain of history. With the help of these and other ascertainable facts it ought surely to be possible to build up something like an accurate opinion of the man. By the time I had read some 17,000 pages of histories, official documents, records, and biographies. I had come to the conclusion that there are, indeed, some facts in Austria, but that to express them in any approximately intelligible form is akin to high treason. In proof whereof I may cite the passage which caused the seizure of my own book, "The Habsburg Monarchy," in Austria-Hungary for "insult to Majesty":—
"The attitude frequently taken up by Francis Joseph towards the administrative oppression of various sections of his subjects constitutes a hard psychological problem. While personally unselfish, generous and just, ever ready to redress a private injury or to alleviate private distress, Francis Joseph as a ruler has often seemed callous to the point of cynicism
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