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 Francis Joseph created Baron Aehrenthal Count, and insisted upon his retaining office. The annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina was soon followed by the Balkan War, and Turkey, the protégé and ally of Austria and Germany, defeated. The war of 1914 is the continuation of the Balkan wars. Germany, through her Austro-Hungarian vanguard, is trying to become an Asiatic Power, and to secure the land route to Africa. Francis Joseph accepted this Prussian policy, lulled by the personal cajolery of William, who pretended to venerate him as the wise leader, not only of Austria-Hungary and Germany, but of all Europe (one recalls, for instance, the theatrical presentation of the German Confederate Princes in the Hofburg on the Emperor's name-day). Francis Joseph, ever since his accession, has been blinded by the inveterate imperialism of the House of Habsburg, and this infatuation makes him responsible for the present war. Defeated twice by the Russians, and even by the despised Serbians, the army of Francis Joseph surrendered to the Prussian generals, and he himself became the mere vassal of Berlin.

It would have required a man of strong and manly character on the Austro-Hungarian throne to inaugurate a sound national and democratic policy such as would secure the free development of the nations composing Austria-Hungary. Austria had a function, a raison d'étre as a European vanguard against the Turks; as soon as the Turks became innocuous Austria would have acquired a fresh right to existence if she had honestly tried to be the leader of the various nations. Austria could have anticipated the future of Europe, being, indeed, with her motley nationalities. a kind of miniature Europe. That would have involved acting according to that golden rule of princes, affixed in bronze to a statue which Francis Joseph daily could read from the windows of his palace: Justitia regnorum fundamentum! But Francis Joseph had no plan of positive leadership; he was not just; drift, not mastery, was his essential characteristic as Emperor and as man. In spite of his passivity, Austria-Hungary, since 1848, had been progressing; but this progress was due to the growth of the population and to the economic changes caused by close interdependence with Western Europe; the growing army and navy and the exigencies of a complicated administration involved heavy taxation, and