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The war arose from a dispute over little Serbia—the Austro-Hungarian Great Power, 51 million people against 4½, declared that its existence was endangered. To-day the war is waged between great and very great States, but the racial composition of the large Eastern States turns the question of power into the question of the small nations.
15. The Dismemberment of Austria-Hungary as the Principal Aim of the War: “The Idea of the Austrian State.”
27. Austria-Hungary, composed of nine nations, is altogether an artificial State; as a leader of the Austrian Germans (von Plenner, jr.) once expressed it, it is a State composed of fairly large and civilised nations, held in subjection by the dynasty and the German Magyar minority. If the principle that nations are entitled to self-determination is meant in earnest, Austria-Hungary is politically and morally condemned; since the latter part of the eighteenth century all Austro-Hungarian nations have been striving to attain freedom and independence. Austria is a mediæval survival. As against modern democracy and nationality Austria represents the old dynastic State; Dr. Seidler, the Austrian Prime Minister, in rejecting the right of nations to self-determination, expressed only what had been expressed in 1848 by the Austrian bishops and what has been put in practice by Vienna at all times. Of course, the dynasty had to lean on some nationality (German-Magyar), but it used its nations against one another (Divide et Impera). Against its nations Austria sets the dynasty by the grace of God and the army, against democracy it sets its aristocracy, an aristocracy peculiarly selfish and narrow-minded, as has been said, a kind of an East Indian exploiting company. The Habsburgs, who have been for centuries German Emperors, appropriated to their use the mediæval imperialistic idea, and still employ it, even though they have given up formally the German Imperial crown. They were devoted servants of the Church, misusing religion for their family interests. The Habsburgs accomplished the anti-Reformation with the help of dragoons and Jesuits: Geistesmörder was the name given to the régime of Metternich and Bach by one of the greatest German-Austrian poets. The Pope himself admitted recently that he worked for the preservation of the last great Catholic State. Clericalism in practice directs Habsburg imperialism, which lately was aimed at the Greek Orthodox Churches of Russia and of the Balkans. (This traditional task of Austria was well pointed out in a pamphlet written by the German theologian, Erhart.) The whole régime of Francis Joseph had its policy based on this clerical imperialism; Francis Ferdinand with his “Gross-Oesterreich” differed only on the point of tactics, which his adherents declared to be firm determination.
Palacký, who, in 1846, was the first man to set up for Austria the program of a free federation of nations, attempted, as late as 1865, to discover “the Idea of the Austrian State”; it was to be an Austria just to its nations. This is the Austria that Palacký had in mind when he declared in 1848 that Austria would have to be created over again if it did not exist. But the introduction of Dualism in 1867 taught Palacký that one could not expect justice from Austria. Czech statesmen of more recent days have long tried to look upon Austria as Palacký did in 1865, but Austria went on its fateful road. The Triple Alliance and the occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina made of it a submissive German vanguard in the East; its moral baseness was revealed by the diplomatic intrigues during Aehrenthal’s chancellorship and by the Zagreb (Agram) and Friedjung trials. The last Balkan Wars and finally this war, were merely the culmination of Austro-German politics. Mazzini, after the war of 1866, made a correct diagnosis of Austria when he said that the downfall of Turkey would be followed by the downfall of Austria—both these political anomalies have stood together and are falling together.
That Austria is something abnormal is admitted even by these German statesmen who are now busy figuring how to keep Austria alive: Renner,
