Page:The New Europe - Volume 3.djvu/292

 such as the results of the world-war have given rise to. The Poles have already taken these results into consideration and founded upon them their new attitude.”

Parliamentary plant does not flourish in war, but the representative bodies of the various belligerents have played an essential part in providing that moral sanction without which the struggle could not have been prolonged. There has been one notorious exception. The Austrian Parliament, which had been prorogued in March, 1914, owing to internal difficulties, was not allowed to reassemble in the critical days which decided the issues of war, and has been left in abeyance for three whole years as the result of a settled policy on the part of the late Emperor and the army chiefs. Since the beginning of the century the theory of civil liberty was—so far, as least, as the German provinces of Austria were concerned—slowly establishing itself in practice, although the bureaucracy had a score of subtle means by which public opinion could be rendered inarticulate and powerless. At the outbreak of war civil liberty was destroyed as by a stroke of the pen; the jury system was suspended, and the whole judicial machinery of the State became, in effect, subordinate to the wishes of the high military command. The Press was muzzled even more effectually than in other countries, and the one safety-valve which had always hitherto been at the disposal of the public, namely, the absolute immunity of all speeches delivered in Parliament, fell into disuse owing to the suspension of Parliamentary life. Meanwhile the contrast between the two halves of the Dual Monarchy was accentuated still further by the fact that the Hungarian Parliament was free to deliberate as usual.

The reason for this contrast is obvious enough. The Parliament of Budapest, resting upon a corrupt and superannuated franchise, is entirely oligarchic in its composition. In Hungary the working classes, the Magyar peasantry and the ten millions of non-Magyars, are almost entirely unrepresented; and thus the House could be relied upon to voice the wishes of those responsible for the war. In Austria, on the other hand, universal suffrage has been in force since 1907, and though it has by no means fulfilled the expectations