Ignatius Seipel

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 152, 17 September 1927, Page 24 (Supplement)

Ignatius Seipel

The Strong Man

of Austria HO one probably deplores the recent riots in Vienna more deeply than does the Austrian Chancellor, Ignatius Seipel, who has triumphed over them. And no one will exploit them more shrewdly for the benefit of his country, and, incidentally, of his party, than Mgr. Seipel. His bearing is quiet. His manners are that mixture of unhlatant affability and unpretentious courtliness that contributes in such pleasant measure to the charm of the Viennese. He speaks English with an apologetic accent. German he speaks in a soft voice that makes one wonder why so many other Germans insist on making the formidable combinations of consonants in that language as guttural and harsh as possible. His face —the straight lines of its under portion, the lips set distinctly apart, the prominent aquiline nose, with glasses set just above the hook and far from the eyes; the forehead sweeping up and back—and somehow even his bald head, have the austerity of the ascetic priest, even more that of the ascetic scholar. The Socialist caricaturists of Vienna love to play with that profile, making it appear that of a distinctly peevish bird. The temptation is so great that they cannot be blamed. But Mgr.| Seipel is not at all peevish. Since Mgr. Seipel welded the Christian Social Party and the Pan-Germans into the coalition which made him chancellor in 1922, and has governed Austria ever since, he has retired to the comparative ease of the casino office only once. That was in 1924, when Karl Jawurek, an unemployed workman, mad with his misery, shot him twice with a revolver, severely wounding him in the right lung. The crowd at the Southern Railway station in Vienna, where the attempt at assassination occurred, were on the point of lynching the assailant when his victim cried out: “Don’t hurt him! ”

Two years later, at Christmas, Jawurek, who had made evident his repentance, was pardoned at the instance of Mgr. Seipel, who had a few months previous resumed the chancellorship. It is not surprising that the priest who thus forgave his personal assailant has not shown himself to be influenced by bitterness in dealing with Socialists, whose protest meetings flamed into the recent riots, nor with the handful of Communists who are charged with lighting that conflagration. Even if Mgr. Seipel were so minded, the situation with which he has had, and has, to deal does not call for such methods. His right to the title “strong man of Austria” does not spring from sensational, simple rutlilessness. Any mail, as Cavour said, can govern in an emergency—all he has to do is shoot. His is the strength that keeps the peace, that brings in care-free Viennese gemuetlichkeit, rather than frightfulness, to calm a scene of carnage, and make nervous people realise in a few days’ time that what they were so sure was a cloudburst of revolution was only a July thunderstorm.

Mgr. Seipel’s character is singularly adapted to the problems of Austria. It explains how he has played roles for which his previous trap ig would make him seem most unfixed. Under the Austrian Empire Mgr. Seipel was a loyal supporter of the Hapsburgs. An inconspicuous teacher in a fashionable school for girls, lie rose to become a professor of moral theology and social science in the University of Vienna. He attracted there the attention of the last Hapsburg emperor, Karl, who made him Minister of Social Welfare in the Cabinet that saw the empire crash. Whether he has any interest now in a Hapsburg restoration no one can say, hut anyone can see that, in his office of chancellor of a republic, he has always acted as a most scrupulous republican chancellor. Meanwhile, the problems at hand demanded all attention. Austria was

starving. Her currency was giving the world the first example of the astronomical heights that currencies can reach. The Allies would permit neither union with Germany (“anschluss”), nor Hapsburg restoration, and while awaiting either solution six million Austrians had to live. Mgr. Seipel took the helm of a sink’ng ship of state in June, 1922. He did not send out distress signals. That had been done before, and none of the Allied men-of-war anchored all around had paid any attention. The new captain of Austria got into a rowboat and set out to v' it the:.- He went to Prague. The Czechs wanted Austria to live as an independent State, he pointed out, but the Allied policy of depriving her of the means of living was forcing .her into the arms of Germany, the very thing that the Czechs most of all wished to avoid. So he argued, but he could not stir them to action. Mgr. Seipel then calmly set out for Berlin. What? The chancellor of Austria, the outstanding opponent of “anschluss,” conferring with German officials? What could he be doing except secretly preparing for the union of the two countries? Things must have reached a pass if this Hapsburg loyalist thus despaired. While the victorious capitals grew alarmed, Mgr. Seipel, smiling enigmatically, came back to Vienna. A little later he set out again. This time he went to Italy and conferred with its Foreign Minister. “Like Dante of old,” he remarked once, “I went from door !c door begging bread, and I found Us taste was bitter.” But this time tnwas not rebuffed. His trip to Berlin had had its effect. Italy promised aid. Within four months after he took office Mgr. Seipel had obtained for Austria the loan from the League of Nations that has enabled her to live.