AUSTRIA, HUNGARY AND THE SLAVS
several times expressly stated.” With these extremely vague phrases Dr, von Seidler turned to the problem of constitutional reform in Austria itself, and laid down as the two fundamental points: (1) “the assertion of the unity of the Austrian State”; and (2) “the maintenance of the existing frontiers of each province (Kronland).”
“We all know of those efforts which aim at placing the individual units of the Austrian State in a looser relation to it and to each other; and in so far as those who hold this view honestly wish to contribute by such reconstruction to the welfare to the Austrian State as a whole under the Habsburg Crown, they certainly deserve all respect. But I must emphasize that such views do not coincide with the programme of the Government, which holds that any loosening of the State structure would not be of advantage to the State or to its component parts. It would in any case be quite impossible to try to solve such problems during the war. If, however, the aim of such tendencies is to get our enemies to enforce by means of peace conditions what could only come into being from within and by the will of the State as a whole, then such tendencies must be most strongly condemned and rejected.
“In maintaining the existing provincial frontiers, the decisive idea is that the Crown lands, as they are to-day, are organisms of historic growth, and are alive in the popular consciousness, and consequently that no organic change in our constitutional development could ignore these fundamental elements in the State.” (Protests.) He concluded by assuring Hungarian public opinion that the Austrian Government is planning nothing which could in any way impair the inviolability of Hungarian territory, or that foundation of the State, the Dual System, and that it must repudiate any tendencies towards such an upheaval.”
Nothing could be more explicit than these pronouncements, and we hope that they will be taken to heart by the sentimentalists in Entente countries, who would have us believe that the Emperor Charles and his ministers are planning some far-reaching scheme of liberty and federalism.
Review
If there is one solid hope to which most men cling, in their horror of the existing international anarchy, it is that out of it there may emerge something like a practical League of Peace, which will co-ordinate and fructify the various dispersed motives and tendencies which make for peace, but which, for want of such co-ordination, have hitherto spent themselves fruitlessly. There are men, of course, to whom life without war suggests, in the words of one of them, “one damned long Sunday afternoon’s walk,” but they are, fortunately, a minority. To be a success, even to be a possibility, a League of Peace demands an immense amount of work and thought. The difficulties
316
