The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19, 1918. AUSTRIA'S INTERNAL DISORDERS

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 232, 19 June 1918, Page 6

The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19, 1918. AUSTRIA'S INTERNAL DISORDERS

One of yesterday's cablegrams relating to Austria-Hungary deals with events which may yet prove to have a vital bearing on the course of the war. ; It is to the effect that Austrian Slav prisoners returning from Russia have produced a highly mutinous feeling in many parts of tho Dual Monarchy, particularly in the Slav units under German offi'ccrs, and several instances arc quoted in which Slav regimonts shot their officers and fought pitched battles against troops still amenable to discipline. Very possibly the account of theso revolutionary disorders is in no way overdrawn, for it is the most natural thing in tho world that the Russian upheaval Bhould react potently upon the Hapsburg Empire. It was from the first evident that the forces of anarchy which Germany did so. much to stimulate in Russia were liable to rccoil upon hoi- own head, and that they were even more likely to bring disaster to her principal ally. The conditions imposed upon the Slavs and other subject raccs in Austria-Hungary arc in many respects much worse than those'i which gave rise to the Russian Revolution, and feelings of closc sympathy are bound to unite the more active revolutionaries in Russia and their kinsmen living under Hapsburg rule. How many of the Austrian Slavs who became willing prisoners in Russia have been repatriated is not known. A considerable proportion of them have undoubtedly preferred to remain in Russia, and late, reports indicate that organised,.bodies of Czechs and Slovaks are holding some sections of the Trans-Siberian railway. But it is fairly -certain that most' of the Austrian Slavs who return to their own country wi-JI do so as missionaries of revolution. As a military Power' Russia is impotent, and it is doubtful whether she will bo enabled, either by her own efforts or by external aid, to escape from that condition for a long time to come. But as a centre- from which revolutionary ideas are liable to spread she still represents a deadly danger to the Germanic Alliance. Bereft as they are of other weapons, the extremists who meantime take the placo of a government in Russia retain the weapon of propaganda, and the repatriation of Austrian Slavs offers them a ready means of bringing their propaganda to bear where it is most likely to tell. The possibilities attending the widespread introduction of Russian revolutionary ideas in the Dual Monarchy are measured by its existing political conditions and the strain it has suffered and is enduring in the war. The position was summed up not long ago by the Vienna Arbeiler '/,tilling, a Socialist paper -which is no longer allowed to circulate in Germany, when it declared that the Austrian Government was playing with fire, and that tho adjournment of Parliament screwed down the last safety-valve at the. time when an explosion of popular feeling was likely to bo provoked by extreme economic pressure. "Extreme economic pressure" very faintly indicates the conditions the subject races of the Dual Monarchy arc. called upon to endure. Withholding all political redress, the Government has kept theso races under control only by most brutal methods of terrorism and oppression of which wholesale executions arc by no.means the worst feature. A glimpse of these'methods and of the results they have produced was given recently by tho Hungarian newspaper Gl'aslo■

bocla, in an article which observes that only two provinces in the Austrian Empire have suffered move terribly from the war than Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Thoso two provinces (it continues) are Galicia and Jiukowina, which were tlio cockpits of great conflicts between tlio Austrian and llussian armies. Nevertheless, tho situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina is horrible. Entire districts of eastern Hosnia and the whole of tho eastern part of Herzegovina are to-day depopulated and devastated regions which look as if a typhoon had visited them. A great number of inhabitants were deported mid have since died in internment camps. Those who remained were massacred by Austrian soldiers. In other districts the population is dying of starvation. As a result of such economic misery tho deaths exceeded the births by 5000 in 1915 and by 23,711 ill 1916. The number does not include dead found on battlefields. All the live stock has been destroyed and consumed by the army. In consequence it is impossible to till the ground, which was formerly don'e exclusively with oxen.

With such a record, the rulers of Austria-Hungary have every reason to fear the infiltration of Russian revolutionary ideas and propaganda to which the events reported yesterday bear witness. it is highly' probably that the forces of revolt would long since have found •vent but that Austria has to an extent, though much less effectively and efficiently than Germany, continued to make her military forces tho instruments of ruthless tyranny. But while overwhelming military defeat is almost certainly an essential preliminary to anything in tho nature of 'political revolution in Germany it is very far from certain that as much can be said of the Dual Monarchy. The great difference between Russia prior, to the Revolution and Austria to-day is, of coursc, that the Austrian tyranny is backed and- supported by the German military machine. But for practical purposes this differcncc is much modified by the extent to which Germany is engrossed in her desperate attempt to ovpnvhelm the Allied armies in the Western theatre. It seems distinctly possible that Germany and the German ■section in Austria may not much longer be able to cope with the internal and external influences which make for revolution in the Dual Monarchy.