FUTURE OF AUSTRIA.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1700, 19 April 1917, Page 4

FUTURE OF AUSTRIA.

In an article*on the future of Austria in relation to peace projects, Mr H. W. Steed, who was for many years Times correspondent at Vienna, says: —“H is necessary clearly to recognise that in no case can Austria-Hungary continue to exist as a self-controlled monarchy. If she be not dismembered by the allies in the intrests of European security, she will be transformed and directed by Germany in the interests of Pan-Germanism. Unless the new European settlement removes all the main causes of Slav unrest by re-uniting the Poles, and uniting the Czeeho-Slovaks and the Southern Slavs, it will be halting and precarious. There is the less reason to run this risk in that a fair and amicable settlement of the Italian and Southern Slav claims in and around the Adriatic is perfectly feasible without doing grievous wrong to either. The work of conciliation is eminently a task for the allied Governments, and especially for that of Italy. The conviction that only by the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary can the power of Prussian militarism be effectually destroyed is shared by all experienced allied students of Central European affairs. If the allies wish to give a clear direction to the ‘will to victory’ which burns in all their peoples, they should lose no time in defining the precise objects they have in view and in canalising that will towards the attainment of those objects. As regards Austria-Hun-gary, the essential objects are clear. Unless the war is to end in a bad draw, or worse, the western half of Galicia must be included in a reunited Poland, and the —mainly Ruthene —eastern half, with the north-eastern or Ruthene countries of Hungary, must go to Russia, Bohemia, with Moravia and (he northwestern or Slovak counties of Hungary, must form an independent or at least a self-governing State, linked up, possibly, by some form of agreement with Poland. Transylvania and the Rumane districts of Hungary, with the Rumane section of Bukovina, must become Roumanian, duo provisison being made for the fair treatment of the Saxon and Magyar minorities. The southern Slav provinces must be united with Servia. The Magyars would retain the central Hungarian plain, and, once freed from the rule of their own oppressive oligarchy, would find it easy to maintain profitable relations with their neighbours. The Italians naturally belong to Italy. As to the Austrian Germans, little harm would be done should they elect to enter the German Empire with the Hapsburgs at their head.”