The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1914. AUSTRIA'S SAD PLIGHT.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 277, 20 November 1914, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1914. AUSTRIA'S SAD PLIGHT.

The position of Austria, broken and almost bankrupt, with her tenitotj invaded and her trade at a standstill, is indeed pitiable. A special correspondent who was recently in Vienna and who knows Austria well, reaffirms the statement that the army did not want to fight, and entered most reluctantly into the fearful struggle which German machinations precipitated. About the latter fact there can be no doubt, if there ever has been, for Herr Dernberg’s outburst has torn the mask of treachery and falsehood away. The Austrian army policy of mixing in each regiment, and even in each company,

men of the different races which make up the Austro-Hungarian Empire, has had the result that in the Army there is no esprit de corps. Slav did not want to fight Slav. Men were driven into the troop trains, at the point of the bayonet; scores were shot offhand by the officers to terrorise their fellows into sullen obedience. It is not therefore at all surprising to read of officers shot in the back by their own men, of sullen, rebellion and mutiny, and of wholesale surrender. Troops were hastily driven from one part of the Austrian front to another and changed about with feverish haste in the hope of effecting some improvement in the state of affairs, but now the army is hopelessly beaten as well as mutinously discontented, and the Austrian fcarmakers are at the end of their tether. Xo wonder then that there is talk of Austria abandoning her ally, and laying down arms to save she can of her broken Empire. The writer referred bo above also states that Austria is bankrupt, for encumbered by enormous debts the Government has no credit anywhere. ' Trade is at a standstill. The hanks dole but driblets, despite hurried minting and issuing of paper. Hundreds of thousands of business men areruined by the war they bate. The harvest remains uncut. Vienna, whose food problem is always serious, is menaced with famine; there is onlyj rough army bread, and not much of; that. Meanwhile, for the misery of the poor and unemployed, prices are steadily rising. In resentment popular anger turned against the foreigner. Sorbs have been torn to pieces in the streets. The shops of Serbs have been sacked, while the police looked on indifferently. And to all the terror of the invading Cossack and Serb will, it is practically certain be added the horrors 1 of revolution and famine. Concluding his review of the dreadful situa-

tion, the correspondent says: “Now 1 Austria realises that she has been duped; now she sees that her bully is not the supreme force he posed to be. Aghast, she sees the arms and, the. opinion of the world arrayed against her. But it is too late. Aus-j tria, the oldest and stateliest Empire of our world, is plunging to ship-j wreck like some huge storm-caught hulk without mast, rudderless.”