AUSTRIA, HUNGARY AND THE SLAVS
possible step was being taken to prevent Czech agitation among the Slovaks of Hungary. He announced that he had presented both to the Austrian Premier and to His Majesty a detailed memorandum denouncing the Slav claims as both unjust and incompatible with Hungarian interests, and demanding that steps be taken to punish such attacks in the future, and to employ the censorship against them. “They cannot be tolerated, and in my memorandum I pointed out that these things make our co-operation difficult.” Without going so far as to suggest that they endangered the Compromise of 1867 [on which the Dual System rests], he had reminded His Majesty that they were dangerous from the standpoint of Austria. “And as it concerns us, too, whether our neighbour Austria is organised on a federalist or dualist basis, I went so far as to declare that unless the ground were energetically cut away from under these intrigues, the process of dissolution must begin.”
The crown favours dualism.
“These Slav aspirations must be revised and that on the present Dualist basis and a determined policy must be adopted against them. . . . The best guarantee against them is unity, and that is our strong and impregnable fortress, if the golden band which unites us is strengthened by the support of the Crown. And to prove its impregnable character I venture, with His Majesty’s permission, to announce his declaration, that there is not even the bare possibility of His Majesty’s not employing all his authority to nullify efforts directed against the lawful independence or territorial integrity of the Hungarian State. . . .
Roused by these Magyar declarations, the Slav deputies in the Reichsrat (Messrs. Stanek, Kovošec, Klofač, Hruban, Tusar, etc.) interpellated the Austrian Premier as to his attitude in this matter, reaffirming their national demands and warning “the Governments not to drag the Crown into political disputes, if only for the reason that, in these times, such a step could have no her practical result save to bring home with added force to the peoples whose interests and aspirations are thereby affected, the painful difference between a people which enjoys State independence and sovereignity and a people which has been deprived of its independence.”
The Austrian Premier condemns federalism.
This drew a long statement from Dr. von Seidler, who referred to certain assurances given by him to the Hungarian Government in the constitutional question. “I was all the more bound to do so, because certain Austrian parties take up an attitude which really conflicts with the integrity of Hungary’s constitutional structure, and especially with the Dual System. What I had to say to the Hungarian Premier in this connection cannot have been new to him and in the same way I really do not think I am telling the House anything new if I try to sum up what I had already
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