Page:The New Europe - Volume 3.djvu/275

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 * style="border-bottom:2px solid black"|||style="text-align:right; border-bottom:2px solid black"|7 June 1917
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are 10 million Germans in Austria among $28 1⁄2$ million inhabitants, and 10 million Magyars in Hungary in 21 millions. Why, then, did these other nationalities of the Monarchy, whom a German-Magyar victory would threaten with disaster, let themselves be drawn into the war? In the case of Hungary, the answer is very simple: its non-Magyar nationalities have no more influence on their Government than had the helots in Sparta. But the same cannot be said of Austria. The Czech, Polish and Jugoslav districts alone, though under-represented in Parliament when compared with the German provinces, had yet a total of representatives equal to that of the German members. Why, then, in spite of the numerical strength of these three nationalities, have the Germans and Magyars been able to dominate the foreign policy of the Habsburg Monarchy?

The Poles in Austria did not co-operate with the Czechs and Jugoslavs, and this has enabled the Germans to wreck Austrian Parliamentary life and to deprive the Austrian Parliament of any influence upon foreign policy. In the crisis of 1897 the compact minority of German Nationalists proved stronger than the composite and loosely-knit Slav majority, and, by sheer violence, overthrew the Cabinet supported by the Slav and Roman Catholic majority. The majority, very largely owing to the unwillingness of the Poles to go into opposition against any Government of His Habsburg Majesty, was unable to uphold its rights. The German minority thus established its absolute veto on legislation, and, in the interest of its own nationality, destroyed Parliamentary government in Austria. For, in reality, the Slavs had a greater interest in the maintenance of Parliamentary government than the Germans, who, forming the predominant element in the central Government offices in Vienna, could make their will felt without Parliament. Moreover, the Viennese Court is predominantly German; and, in the absence of a properly-constituted Parliament, the public opinion of the capital, which everywhere tends