Page:The Bohemian Review, vol2, 1918.djvu/134



The old Austrian policy of puttering along from day to day has once more been employed with success. Dr. Von Seidler had to resign, but the budget has been adopted and the constitutional life of the peculiar Austrian state has been given a new lease of life until the end of the year.

The Reichsrat was to have been summoned originally for the middle of June, but it actually met July 16th. All May and June were taken up with the attempts of Seidler to cambinecombine [sic] in some way or other a sufficient number of deputies to pass the budget and make good the claim that Ausstria is a constitutional country and that the majority of the people back the government. All the German parties, with the exception of the German Socialists, were united in the German National Verband and they backed Von Seidler as the champion of the German rule in Austria. He could count on the Ukrainian deputies, as Ukrainians of Eastern Galicia cherished the hope of seeing the Ukrainian republic brought under the Hapsburg scepter, and thus have their nation unintedunited [sic]. An Austrian premier may generally count upon the support of the Poles; in fact every governmental majority since the days of Ausgleich of 1867 had for one of its essential elements the Polish deputies of Galicia. But conditions changed and Seidler attempted in vain to gain over the support of the Polish Club. There was a strong democratic sentiment among the representatives of the Polish people against which the Polish nobility, always pro-Austrian, found itself in a minority; and besides the Poles of Galicia had many reasons to be discontented with the treatment extended by the German and Austrian governments to the so-called independent Poland. And from across German lines came the complaints of the Poles of Prussia who are suffering today more severe persecutions at the hands of their Prussian lords than even before the war. Without the Poles there was no way of securing a majority for the budget, in fact without their support the Austrian govrenmentgovernment [sic] would have to dissolve the parliament and make it plain to all the world that the government of Vienna was opposed to the will of the majority of its subjects.

Negotiations and conferences went on busily for two months; leaders of the various racial groups were invited to see Premier Seidler and Foreign Minister Burian, threats were made that deputies would lose their parliamentary immunity and would be drafted into the army when the government should be compelled a hostile parliament; the emperor’s personal influence was employed to break up the homogeneous groups of the Czechs and Jugoslavs. Still no solution could be found to a state of affairs which was more than a cabinet crisis or parliamentary crisis, and which involved the question, whether Austria was capable of further life. Austrian newspapers with their lengthy discussions of this grave situation bring us to the end of June. For what happened afterwards we have to rely on cable news which give us the result merely of the crisis, but not the manner in which the solution was found. When the parliament met on July 16th, von Seidler was still at the head of the government. He made a non-commital speech, the chief feature of which was a defense of his conduct in splitting Bohemia into twelve districts. He said in short that since the Czechs refused to collaborate in constitutional revision, it would be proceeded with regardless of their desires. What happened after that is not yet clear. All we know is that Seidler offered his resignation to the emperor once more and that this time it was accepted. Baron von Hussarek, former Minister of Education, and of strong German and clerical opinion, was appointed his successor with a cabinet composed solely of permanent office holders and leaders, but it seems evident that the overthrow of Seidler was a sop thrown to the Poles in return for their support of the budget. At any rate the fact remains that the new prime minister succeeded in his chief task; the provisional budget granting the supplies for state administration and war xependituresexpenditures [sic] was approved by the vote of 215 to 196. All the Germans, with the exception of the Socialists, voted for it and most of the Ukrainians did the same thing, while a certain number of Polish, Roumanian and even Italian deputies upheld the government. The minority was composed of all the