WATCH AUSTRIA.

Hokitika Guardian, 20 July 1918, Page 4

WATCH AUSTRIA.

(By J. M. N. Jeffries.)

North Italy. The only part of the Austrian dominions which was at all regnlarly

visited by British tourists before the war was Tyrol, and tbe Tyrolese they found to be a pure, simple, and Godfearing people, apparently leading contented lives and presumably being well governed. A small band of oui’ compatriots went to restore their health at Marienbad and other watering places, where they met another class of Austrians, neither especially

pure nor simple nor God fearing, but also leading contented lives, since they were carring on all the government. And no doubt a modicum <>f travellers reached Vienna, and at the cafes and in the Prater admired the officer’s uniforms almost as much as those officers admired them themselves. From such contact, in line, as took place the only impressions carried back to Great Britain were good ones, or at least impressions of a country which had no cause for complaint.

In all this, however, nothing but j the surface of one part of Austrian life was seen. The Tyrolese were in tbe position of tbe servants in a tyrant’s castle reasonably treated, praised every now and then, made into a faithful bodyguard, ignorant or incredulousof their master’s exactions or cruelties elsewhere. The inhabitants of the other Teutonic provinces were in even worse case, for they were cognisant of what evils were going on, provided the taskmasters of the oppressed populations, and drew i,he minor profits of misrule. As for the Hungarians, regarded by most Englishmen through their grandmothers’ eyes as so many Kossuths still struggling against repression, they have unfortunately proved to be a race which has learnt nothing better from adversity than to inflict it on others. They continue to have quarrels with Austria proper, but these are merely quarrels between pirates for the mastership of the lugger. To three million Slovaks, for example, the Hungarians (or Magyars, as they are often called) only conceded three members in the Parliament that meets at Budapest. » # * * *

Thus it so fell out that the pro-

vinces, the countries on the visitir.g-

fist of Britain and France —for the French moved about much as we did —seemed comfortable, happy places. They wtre, in tiuth, enjoying all the comforts of nepotism. A very 7 different story was that of the lesserknown provinces, the stolen jewels of the Hapsburg crown. These wenruled by the police, who had a shin t way with men or women who did not agree that to he subjects of the late Francis Joseph was the only possible expression of national life

Since the outbreak of the war this government by the police li s snr-. passed itself in cruelty. For example, in the sole Orthodox .or Greek Church) diocese of Sarajevo, in Bosnia- ; Herzegovina, 67 prie-ts had been , hanged or imprisoned, as far back as j 1915, for being Slavs and having the j sympathies of their race. A French j writer, citing official reports, cpn affirm j that in one month - from February 20 | to March 23 of the same -9-5 4.861 j families were thrown out of their j homes and their possessions seized by j the “ authorities ” of Bosnia, who at the same time drove the able-bodied members of these miserable families to enter the Army’s ranks and fight, presumably for the inalienable right of being homeless. An engineer told the writer of how he sa w -37 persons, six of them women, hanged together • in the town of Trehiujn. The A ustrians take photogra.ps with gusto of these horrid giblF-tings and spread them about in their faithful provinces. Sometimes they get abroad, and some have come into my possession. However, the immediate scope of this articl" is not to give lengthy details of Austria-Hnngarv’s government by atrocity. It has a more primary aim. that of getting things into the first stage, of asking people when they see certain names to read about them just as if they were German. Too many, when they see the names that herald the Austrian question, Czechoslovaks, Jugoslavs, Croats. Slovenes, and the rest, shrink from all this impenetrable orthography, opine that either re-unions or dissensions are going on between these persons (or is it places ?), and. anyhow, regard these places (or is it persons ?) as side issues.

Too many believe them to be in’t, he mass a hunch of wild humanity leading romantic lives in jiictnrescjuc costumes on steppes and providing Europe with its gipsies, in return or amendment for which they are given as counters to diplomatists to stake and spend as they like. But, really these are in the main men with much the same hopes and clothes and f.•chugs as ourselves, and we shall never have a proper world till their problems are settled. So the Briton should cultivate a determined interest, in their ea=e, which otherwise will drift into that most abandoned of all things a question entirely in the hands of the experts. Let ns get Austria-Hungary into the open, and wo shall run down that old fox and break it up.