AUSTRO GERMANY.

Taranaki Daily News, 2 November 1917, Page 5

AUSTRO GERMANY.

/ ___ , FEAR OF REPRISALS. VALUABLE STAINED GLASS REMOVED. Received Nov. 1, 5.5 p.nj. . Amsterdam, Oct;. 31. Owing to the fear of raids valuable stained glass in Cologne, Cathedral has | been replaced by ordinary glass. ■ MUTINY OF VETERANS. OVERPOWERED AND PUNISHED. Received Nov. 1, 5.5 p.m. Loudon, Oct. 31. German soldiers at Bnverloo camp, .including veterans, nmtined when ordered to tiie front. The mutineers (led on their officers ami destroyed their rides. They subsequently were overpowered and dispatched to an unknown destination. Soldiers guarding the frontier at Boehold deserted. DR. MICHAELIS' END. NEW CHANCELLOR'S CONDITION. Amsterdam, Oct. 31. A wireless menage to the Cologne Gazette states that l)r. llertling accepted the Chancellorship on condition that Dr, Michaelis was not retained in a Government position. Dr. Michaelis retires to private life. DR. HERTLING'S REFUSAL . CANNOT COMMAND A MAJORITY. Received Nov. 1, 0.5 p.m. Amsterdam, Oet. 31, The Pan-Germans are dissatisfied with Baron von Hertiing. particularly because the Bavarian Catholics sympathised .with Austria and opposed increased armaments before 'the war. The Reichstag was in no way consulted. Berlin reports that von llertling refuses the Chancellorship, because ho is unable to secure a majority in the Reichstag. Other eandidatcs arc Prince Hatzfeldt, Count Brockdorll', Koehlmanu, and Ponttdowsky. t EXHAUSTING THE KAISER'S PATIENCE, BETIIMANN-HOLLWKG'S RJiTURN WANTED. Received Nov. 2, 1,20 a.m. London, Nov. 1 The Dailv Chronicle's Amsterdam correspondent states that Dr. llertling finds the 'Chancellorship difficulties insuperable. A majority of the party representatives declared themselves against Dr. Hertiing, because he is opposed to Al-sace-Lorraine being made a federal state, and also opposed to all kinds of parliamentary government. It is reported that a plot exists to put forward as many impossible candidates in ail ell'ort. to exhaust the Kaiser's patience, and .secure Betlunann-Hollweg's return to office. GERMAN CASUALTIES. ESTIMATED AT SIX MILLIONS. "Washington, Oct. 31. Official advices state that Horr Ledehour (Socialist), speaking in the Raichstag, admitted that the (Jerman lossq* were 3ix millions, comprising a million and a half dead, and four, million and a half wounded, including half a million permanently crippled. GERMAN OFFICIAL MESSAGE, Received Nov. 1, 10 p.m. London, Nov. I. AVireless German official: In addition to the main attack by the English yesterday, they attempted to advance upuu Gheluvelt, but were driven back. Our movements in the Carnic Alps continue in accordance with our plans, FUTURE OF AUSTRIA,, THE THREATENED COLLAPSE, FORCED VASSAL OF GERMANY. ■ The prospects of a collapse of AustriaHungary is an evergreen subject upon which there are the widest differences of opinion, Though the following artlpltf V Professor Bernard 'Pares (until recently 1 representing the London Daily Telegraph with the Russian Array) was written last November, it is an interesting dieoussion of the Austrian situation, It was recently printed in the Telegraph:—I What will happen to Austria? This is a question which, it has been anticipated for years, would beoome critical the moment that the long reign of Francis Josoph came to a close. The present moment finds' mo in Austria with an invading army, whose object is to impose our own will. We cannot lose time in knowing what wo want. If tha moment, is critical for us, it is still more so for the enemy. I would put. a question to the man in the street who has read but little about Austria. Suppose your own country engages all Europe in war, a war closely connected with the asßiwslnation of your heir to .the throne. Suppose your Sovereign was over 80 years old, and, everyone waiting for him to die. Suppose the war put your country through the severest crisis through which if had ever passed. Suppose your country consisted of over ton dill'erent nationalities, brought together only by the person of the Sovereign. Is it thinkable under such conditions that you should keep your next heir to the throne somewhere away in a cupboaro, that hardly anyone should know who he

is, that a foreign Sovereign should take full control of your at-my, and that there .should be open talk of the complete economic union of your country with. Ilia, that lie should address publje letter# to your dying Sovereign as "My dear Father"? What is the meaning of this simple puzzle which we are bo late in deciphering? Austria belongs to ana lists for years past been nothing but an additional weapon in her jband. And, we may add, Austria, so far as there ie an 'Austria, hates Prussia rather more than we do, and that is why hundred* of thousands of Austrian soldiers haVe coma qvit to our aide of themselves, Austria, I would repent, was a bundle of various nationalities, each of which is a severed fragment of some other country; In Transylvania ltve Rumanians, in Eastern Galicia Russians, in Western Galiciu Poles, in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, and Dalmatia Berbo-Croats, in Austria proper Germans. Hungary is an independent nationality, possessing an independent State. The Czechs of .' Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia are an. other independent nationality, which was once an independent State, and is still ft Kingdom. A FICTITIOUS STATE. The natural solution, on the ground of nationality -and national desires, wilt, therefore, not increase or diminish the number of States in Europe. It will reassert the existence of the Czech nationality, and it will Bweep'away the fictitious State of Austria that rests on no basis of nationality. There is not even a German who will have a right to be offended. This solution would prevent a repetition of the actual cause of the present war, the dosire of Germany to break out upon the neighbour nations and conquer for herself, whether by alliance or war, a direot road to Turkey, Egypt, Persia, "and India. The liberation of the subject nationalities of Austria, subject to the domination of ou* ono mnin enemy. .Prussia, will turn the Prussian dream of conquest into an ab« surdity. It will also draw the teeth, not only of Prussia's policy of economia aggression, but of the militarist system which makes so many non-Germane unwilling instruments of a policy which they detest,.. ; The lato Emperor, Francis Joseph, who was loved by all his subjects, came to the throne when Austria was already smashing up. In 1848 the Czechs, the Hungarians, Vienna itself were in insurrection, Through one of the longest ■reigns in history the inevitable was postponed: but only by many concessions to the various nationalities that compose Austro-Huugary. In these concessions ■ the Slavs, who form three-fifths of the monarchy, were still for the most part passed over; only, tlia Polf« were favoured, in order to 'turn them into a weapon against Russia. In the main, nu the'; contrary—and more especially as the reins of power slipped more and more out of the hands of the used Emperor— Austrian'policy became more and more a weapon of German ambitions, in which Hungary was allowed to share. When In 18(10 Bismarck, for the war was entirely his, defeated Austria, he did not, to recall his own words, ask of Austria "an inch of her territory or a stone of her fortresses." On the contrary, he actually pushed German au»» tria out of Gernunv in order that she should beoome an ndvaneo agent of German polioy in her economic and political dreams of aggression further eastwards, THE ONLY SOLUTION. Austria, as she became less German, came to bo more and more German-rid-den. She took a new tone, that of a national aggre«3ivc State, which few of us could understand when this bundle of faggots began to talk Chauvinism through the lips of Count von Achrenthal and the late Archduke Francis Ferdinand. The riddle was clear enough when Austria drew all Europe into_ war through her attempt to crush Servia. _ It is clearer still now when' the Austfian army and ihe Austrian economic policy are entirely under German direction. The choice is being made clear to tha jnqst distant of observers. There will either lie a Germany for the Germans that includes German Austria, *nd does not include Poscn, Silesia, We«t 'Prussia, Alsace-Lorraine, or Schleawig, That l» the natural policy of the Allios who have flown the flag of nationality. Or there will be two Germanics, a Germany and ft so-called Außtrla, which includes the maximum possible of non-German subject*, and will be pushed forward as a wedge of German aggression into Asia and Africa. For the Emperor William, too, the moment of crisis ha* oome. If there is a real Austria, will Ita existence be attested by a renewal of the older and independent Austrian tradition under a young Emperor, or will the,- Prussian grip fasten closer still? We are in the middle of world events that are too strong for any one faint and unknown personality; and the issue can only go °uc way. Austria ■is already breaking up under our eyes, and all that Is meant by Btate there is passing into Prussian hands. For us the old happy Austria did not represent any single national ambition. There is now no other solution for us than to esll to- polltic|l life the hindered fragmonts of this mot- * ley Empire, to restore each of them to its own place in the national scheme, and to sweep away the worn-out State J mechanism which hat lost all meaning except a* an instrument of Pruwlan ambition.