Page:The New Europe - Volume 4.djvu/68

Rh supreme blunder of convoking Parliament and unchaining the tempest of all the elements hostile to the Monarchy, a tempest which it appears impossible to still. And the most serious factor of all is the wide popular support which the movement receives. In Galicia enthusiastic demonstrations have forced the deputies to abjure their traditional Austrophil policy. In the Czech countries a genuine revolutionary movement, supported by all the political, economic, literary, and artistic organisations, by town and village, by the workmen and intellectuals, in a word, by the whole nation, threatens the deputies with pitiless severity if they do not state the full popular demand. Similar movements are taking place among the Ruthenes, Jugoslavs, Italians, and Roumanians.

The Empire is disintegrating. The internal situation is such that it is impossible for the Czechs, Poles, and Jugoslavs, to withdraw their declarations in the Reichsrat which voice these popular movements. The fate of Austria is being decided. The Germans and Magyars cannot control this formidable movement. For, on the one hand, they do not understand the political psychology of their opponents, and did not believe that the process of internal dislocation was so advanced. On the other hand, blinded by their insensate projects of domination, incapable of understanding that everything is irremediably lost, they continue as of old: centralist and Germano-Magyar “Austria” must be preserved solely in order that some profit may be drawn from its preservation. Thus they refuse to yield an inch. For the Germans, the loss of their predominance in Austria would mean the complete loss of their political position. And then there would be no object in their remaining in Austria, they would be happier in Germany. And for the Magyars to lose their political privileges in Slovakia, Croatia, and Transylvania would mean the end of Magyarised Hungary and the loss of everything for them. What interest would they have in fighting to preserve Austria for the Emperor? That is the whole problem. The fate of Austria-Hungary would be a matter of indifference to the Magyars from the moment that the Monarchy became federalised. For they could lose neither more nor less whether it were federalised or dismembered altogether. In a certain sense they would be freer if it disappeared completely than if they remained in some kind