The Dominion. THURSDAY, JANUARY 21, 1915. A CRUMBLING EMPIRE

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2364, 21 January 1915, Page 4

The Dominion. THURSDAY, JANUARY 21, 1915. A CRUMBLING EMPIRE

a e , a Evidence is steadily piling up in t favour of the opinion, already wide- ' ly held, that Austria-Hungary is on £ the brink of destruction as an Em- ; pire. Germany retains enormous i powers of resistance, and her armies 1 are Btill fighting grimly, for the < most part in alien territory, but the e condition of her principal ally is i strikingly different. Even if tlw e luraerous stories of disaffection and t disunion within the Dual Monarchy i are liberally discounted, the actual £ developments of the campaign still i make it abundantly clear that Aus- 1 tria has found the burden of the t war too great to be borne, and is 1 sinking under its weight. Russian I armies are, in possession of the great- t er part of Galicia, and Hungary is c threatened with imminent invasion, t Even in' the campaign against Ser-' i via the Austrian forces have been t badly defeated, and there are no vis- 1 ible ■ symptoms of recovery. As if a this were not enough Italy in the l south and Rumania in the east, each I of them with grievances of long t standing against Austria calling for i are arming and preparing: t In their'ease interest co-operates i with inclination in urging them to t join in the attack upon an Empire t whioh throughout its career has ex- a ercised a malign influence upon the I nations within and around its bor- 1 ders. The most convincing evidonce i lately afforded of the condition to 6 which the Dual Monarchy has been t reduced is to bo found m tho fall of Count Berchtold. The explana- r tion officially put forward that ho ] had resigned the office of Foreign i Minister for personal reasons is t plainly an invented excuse. When t Empires are struggling for their'.ex- 1 istence personal reasons count for e very little with their leading Minis- t ters, and ■ since there is. no Buggcs- j tion that Count Bebchtold retired c on account of physical incapacity,- c the only possible conclusion is that r his retirement was enforced. It will i be noticed that one cablegram, published to-day, states that' Count Beechtold resigned after a stormy interview with the Emperoe Feanois Joseph, in which the latter reproached him with the results of his for-' eign policy, while another recent . massage declared that the fallen Minister's successor had accepted an c invitation to visit the Kaiser, and * that German newspapers had noted ' with pleasure that Count Bueian , de Rajecz, as the now Minister is , called, had at the outset submitted to_ Germany in the direction o£ Aus- ' tria's foreign policy. \ This is a skeleton of suggestion . which may be easily filled in so far as its essential lines are concerned. l Though he made no stand against \ the policy of military aggression, for which Germany is primarily re- ' sponsible, and was indeed permit- \ ted to take tho initiative in precipi- { tating the Europoan oonfiict, Count 1 Bebchtold has had the ill-fortune to ' lead his country through a series ' of disasters which have brought it I to the brink of destruction. Pro- ' bably no other outcome was to be j i expected of the long career of provocation, aggression, and persecu- ' |tion of subject races which Austria ' ■ has pursued. The fall of Count f Bebchtold may be accepted as indi- * cative, not of the failure of a ' Minister, but of the failure of an ( Empire. The rulers of ' Germany ' are.no doubt wise enough to oxpect ' little effectual aid from their broken ' and defeated ally in the further ! prosecution of the war, but they ' have evidently determined that what ' power and resources remain to Aus- \ tria shall be 'exerted and applied ; under German direction. Austria, ! in a word, has been deprived of tho ' power of initiative and in order ' that German domination of her en- ] feebled powers may bo made com- ' plete a Minister possessed in a high ! degree of individuality and strength ( of purpose has been replaced'by one ' who is more likely to be subservient ' and obedient to his country's German taskmasters. This, at least, ' judging from the tone of the Ger- ] riian nowspaper comments to which : we have referred, is what the Ger- ] mans desire, and the visit of Count i Bubian de Rajecz to the Kaiser suggests that he is not unwilling to : fill the allotted role. The substitu- ' tion which has been effected at tho ' Austrian Foreign Ministry repro- ' sonts not the beginning but the culmination of the process by whioh < Austria has been relegated to a ; purely subordinate position in relation to Germany. At a compara- \ tivoly early Btagothe latter country took the conduct of the war com- : pletely into her own hands and Austria became a mere cipher. The Austrian Army commanders, and the Austrian Chief of General Staff, were dismissed, and the Austrian Array for months past has been a mere adjunot to that of Germany. Looking at the past history of the Dual Monarchy the poor showing which it has made in the war and the ignominious position in which it is now placed afford little ground for surprise. It has been well said that Austria-Hungary is not a modem State, but_ a medieval survival. Instead of being erected on the broad basis of a common nationality it is an agglomeration of conflicting nationalities, the mombers of which ' have little in common and hate and persecute ono another. The so-called Ausfcro-Hungarian Empire is au arbitrary grouping of some ten distinct nationalities which have never shown any tendency to weld into one groat nation, and it has been the greatest obstacle to that natural grouping of people of kindred race, the desire for which has given rise to so many European wars. It has been the standing policy of the Hapsburg rulers of Austria to suppress every nwjifeafcftfcwn of fchfj rio»

tend their despotic sway by playing | off one nation against another. The facts are ably summed up by MB. J. Ellis Barker in an article in the Nineteenth Oenturu. "ThoHapsburgs," he remarks, "nave been the most successful family of matrimonial and land speculators known to history. _ While most dynasties rose to eminence by placing themselves at the head of great nations and by conducting successful wars of conquest, the Alsatian family of the Hapsburgs rose from obscurity to the greatest power by acquiring territories in all parts of the world by judicious puronase, by exchange, aud specially by profitable marriages. Spam and the countries'of the New World were one of the dowries gathered in. by tho Hapsburg princes. . . ." As to the methods by which tho Hapsburgs have contrived so far to maintain their composite Empire the position is equally clear. Francis the Second, who ruled Außtria at the time of the Congress of Vienna, said to the French Ambassador of that date: "My peoples are strangers to each, other. That is all tho better. They do not catch the same political disease at the same time. If the fever takes hold of you in France all of you catch it. Hungary is kept in order by Italian troops, and Italy is kept down by Hungarians. Everybody keeps lis neighbour in order. My peoples do not understand each other, and hate each other. Their antipathies make for security and their mutual hatreds for the general peace." That an Empire so constituted should be orumbling in the test of a great war is much less astonishing than its survival would have been. As regtvrdß the position between Austria and her eastern and southern neighbours, it is worthy of note that in the south Austria possesses two almost purely Italian districts, tho Italian Tyrol and the western part of Istria and a narrow strip of the eastern Adriatio Coast, indented with fine harbours. Apart from her natural desire to possess these territories, largely peopled by Italians who are very badly treated by the Austrians, the possession of the Tyrol would give'ltaly a northern frontier protected from end to end by the Alps. The possession of naval ports in the eastern coast of the Adriatic is necessary to enable Italy to efficiently defend her present weak eastern frontier, but as regards the Adriatio her claims may be to some extent in conflict with those of Servia. Rumania, which is now reported to contemplate taking the field a fortnight hence, has quite as strong reasons as Italy for entering the war. There are about three million Rumanians in Transylvania who have for many years been > subjected to bitter persecution by the Magyars, and there is every reaßon to expect that Rumania will seize Transylvania and possibly also tho smaller territory of Bukowina, which also is largely peopled by Rumanians. In all _ likelihood both Italy and Rumania will shortly bo in active cc-oporation with the Entente, but in any case the collapse of tho ill-constructed and misgoverned Austro-Hungarian Empire seems inevitable, _ and, although the transition period may produce its own problems, the ultimate effect of tho downfall of the Hapsburgs and the division of their Empire into its elements will undoubtedly be to promote the future peace of Europe.