THE EMPEROR FRANCIS JOSEPH.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7973, 26 February 1906, Page 7

THE EMPEROR FRANCIS JOSEPH.

"Whether the Emperor Francis Joseph is, or is not, at the end of bis strength, he is certainly," said a prominent Austrian recently, "at the end of his patience, and takes no trouble to conceal the fact. . . To him with his fervent patriotism, his high sense of duty, and his complete unselfishness, the conduct of latter-day politioal leaders in Austria and Hungary alike is simply incomprehensible. That men who profesa to love their country can take thought for their own concerns and consider party interests appears to him monutrous, especially in such troublous days as these, when he knows-i-and they, too, would know were it not that their eyes are holden—that the very existence of Austria aB ao Empire is at staue. . Among the higher classes in Austria, the landowning classes, the Feudalists and lesser nobles, there ia much .. sullen , finger against the Emperor at the present time, and with it something near akin to a panic. He has deserted them because he had no alternative; bepause they are so thoroughly demoralised that to stand by them longer would have been to sacrifice to them all the other sections of his people. If, in his old age, be has turned to the demooraoy. it is because the aristocracy! have failed him. For more thanl 50 years he tried hard to rule through them, by their help; but the task, always difficult, has now beoome impossible—through their fault, too, not his. As one of themselves recently remarked, 'The higher classes in Austria are now quite Regierungsunfahig that is, incapable of ruling because out of touch both with their times and with the great mass of their fellows. The Emperor has done bis best to make them understand that sixteenthoentury ways do not tit in with twentieth - century notions; but he baa uol succeeded, and the outpome of it is he has lost all patience with them. Probably no one is more keenly alive than the Emperor Francis Joseph himself to the dangerous nature uf the experiment (universal suffrage) he has decided to try. . . . Again and again each Minister-President has in turn appealed to the constituencies, but only to find that they sent him a new Reiohsrath more unreasonable than the old one. Meanwhile the business of the Empire has been at a standstill, with the result that trade has suffered, poverty has increased and socialism has spread like wildfire.