Page:The guilt of William Hohenzollern.djvu/38

34 continued attempts at an independent policy, which grew ever more futile according as difficulties increased, within and without.

Nor was the situation helped by any personal quality in the Government of the State. At its head stood a monarch who had never been noted for intellectual ability, to whom age and a series of heavy blows of fate had made repose imperative, and whose régime had taken on the character of senility. But it was his misfortune that the peoples of Austria took no account of this need of repose, and that their revolt against the impossible State into which they were compressed grew continually more violent. Under the influence of this growing unrest in the realm, the Emperor's senile need of repose gave rise to the most contradictory phenomena; among other things, it brought about some astonishing capitulations. But these had not the desired effect in calming the popular mind, for they only touched individual points, they made nothing but patchwork. Of any radical reform the régime was incapable.

If concessions did not effect the desired end in producing peace, then the need of repose brought about a recourse to extreme harshness, so that the disturbers of the peace might be suppressed by force. And if this was in the first instance directed to home affairs, foreign politics were also affected by it. In Austria home and foreign affairs were very closely related, from the fact that of the eight nationalities represented in the realm only two dwelt wholly within its borders—the rest were to a great extent outside it, and in some cases were organized in independent national States. The national movements of Rumanians, Ruthenes and Poles had their influence on Austrian foreign policy, and still more those of the Italian and Yugo-Slav Irredenta.