Page:The Annual Register 1899.djvu/302

 294] FOEEIGN HISTOEY.

than to the sympathies of Germany in its dealings with foreign Governments, and its relations with France, Eussia, and even with England and the United States, were throughout of the most cordial character.

II. AUSTRIA-HUNGARY.

In Austria the parliamentary deadlock produced by the national conflict between the Germans and the Czechs con- tinued throughout the year. A turbulent minority, by a reck- less use of every means of parliamentary obstruction, including even personal violence, prevented the majority from passing the most necessary measures for carrying on the government, and compelled the Emperor to govern without his Parliament under an article of the constitution which was originally intended only to provide for cases of emergency when Parliament was not sitting, but which had to be strained so as to give a colour of constitutionalism to proceedings indispensable for the very exist- ence of the empire. A new theory was started to justify this extreme and unprecedented display of parliamentary obstruction : it was held that when questions of nationality are at stake, a minority may even go so far as to stop the whole machine of government rather than allow what it deems to be its national rights to be interfered with. There are six German parties in the Eeichsrath, and of these three — the Nationalists, the Pro- gressists, and the extreme Eadicals of the Schonerer group, numbering together eighty-three members — had determined to obstruct all legislation until the decrees placing the Czech and German languages on an equal footing in Bohemia should be cancelled. When the Eeichsrath reassembled in January, and the bill for raising the annual contingent of recruits was brought forward by the President as being a necessity of state, the reply of the obstructionists was that " there is no greater necessity of state than the withdrawal of the language decrees/ ' and they accordingly prevented all the motions of the Government from coming to a division by endless frivolous and irrelevant amend- ments, and by insisting that the names of the members voting for or against each amendment should be read to the House. They also continued their efforts (see Annual Eegistbr, 1898, p. 265) to detach the Germans of Austria from the Eoman Catholic Church as a manifestation of their desire to unite with their co-nationalists in Germany. This agitation, known as " Los von Eom ! " (" Away from Eome ! ") was supported by the Berlin branch of the Evangelical Alliance, and instructions were given by the Government to prosecute all foreigners engaged in the agitation, notwithstanding which wholesale conversions to Protestantism took place among the Austrian Germans in various parts of the country, obviously with a view to meeting Prince Bismarck's famous objection to the annexation to Germany of the German provinces of Austria — that Germany