Page:The New Europe - Volume 4.djvu/28

 all. He has now been appointed Governor of Montenegro, and general comment has been aroused by the positively gushing terms in which the Emperor’s formal letter of dismissal was couched-terms for which no parallel could be found in all the long reign of Francis Joseph.

Now came a fresh sign of désorientation. The retiring Ministers were replaced by a Cabinet of respectably obscure officials, of whom not a single one had ever held office or had ever taken even an indirect part in politics. Even the new Premier, Ritter von Seidler, an amiable departmental chief in the Ministry of Agriculture, had probably never been heard of by 99 per cent. even of the German population of Austria. His first step was to emphasise the provisional character of the new régime.

The general relief at Count Clam-Martinic’s disappearance from the scene did not lead to any slackening in the Slav attitude. The Czech deputies in particular, whose uncompromising speeches have already been summarised in (No. 36), re-affirmed their claims more boldly than ever, and one of their most influential spokesmen declared that no Government would receive their support which did not base its policy upon the abolition of Dualism and the transformation of the Monarchy into a group of independent national States. The assumption that the Habsburg dynasty is to form a link between these States does not, of course, in any way diminish the radical nature of such claims, and indeed it would be foolish to make too much of the convenient habit adopted by the various advocates of racial claims, of using superficial expressions of loyalty to the dynasty as a cloak to cover far-reaching and well-nigh revolutionary designs. Alarm at the bold and united front presented by the Czechs to their persecutors, and at the deeds of prowess of thousands of Czech volunteers in the Entente armies, has penetrated even to Berlin; and there is good reason to believe that the political amnesty proclaimed by the Emperor Charles on 30 June was not merely due to his own good feeling and sense of the need for reparation, but was also directly inspired by the German Government and General Staff, who, true to the traditions of BisrmackBismarck [sic], realise the importance of a German-Czech understanding, and would fain convince the intractable Austrian Germans of its necessity. In passing we may allude to the significant fact