In the middle of October, 1918, Marshal von Hindenburg telegraphed to Vienna that it would be impossible to hold the western front any longer unless Austrian reinforcements were immediately forthcoming. From a purely military point of view the appeal was reasonable. Although the June offensive had failed, the Austrians were still superior to the Italians; and there was no reason to believe that the Austro-Hungarian armies could not continue to hold their lines, even though they detached a considerable body of troops, until winter made an Italian offensive impossible. Because he was unaware of the moral factors in the situation, von Hindenburg was surprised when he received a refusal. It was at this moment that the handwriting upon the wall appeared before the eyes of the German General Staff.

But it had long been evident at Vienna that the war would be won or lost on the western front and by the Germans alone. With the composite and mutually antagonistic elements that composed the armies of the Hapsburg Empire, it was nothing short of a miracle that Austria-Hungary had held out so long. The authority of the Vienna Government was sustained only through the belief of the peoples of the Dual Monarchy that Germany was invincible. The collapse of Russia had come in time to check serious disloyalty in the non-German and non-Magyar portions of the Austro-Hungarian army. Until Germany appealed for aid, most of the Hapsburg subjects felt that they would be playing a losing game if they mutinied.

Study of the records shows that demoralization began in the rear, and that it was the result of news leaking through of disasters falling upon the coalition of the Central Empires. The capitulation of Bulgaria and Turkey came nearer home to Vienna than to Berlin. And yet, if the Germans had been successful on the western front, these events would not in themselves have led to the collapse of Austria-Hungary. It was the German appeal for aid that suddenly made the Vienna Government realize the hopelessness of the situation. There was a revolution at Prague. The Croats proclaimed their independence at Agram. Count Karolyi and Archduke Joseph called the Hungarian divisions back to defend their native land.

For some days the news was kept from the troops. In the fighting from October 24 to 28 the Italians had failed signally to achieve on their front results comparable to those of the French and British and Americans on the western front. The Austrian army group at Belluno fought wonderfully—even the Czechs, whose crack Prague regiment distinguished itself. The change came on the night of October 28, when the news of happenings in the rear reached the soldiers in the trenches and in reserve. Ordered to undertake a counter-offensive on the morning of October 29, the soldiers mutinied. The signal was given by the 26th Czech Rifles. The armies began to leave the front. The Hapsburg Empire collapsed in a few hours!

At the suggestion of Admiral Horthy, the imperial fleet was presented to the Jugoslav Government that had been formed at Agram. No opposition was made to the Prague revolution. The imperial authorities made no effort to prevent a revolt in Budapest.

When Austria asked for an armistice and signed the terms of the Entente Powers on November 3, 1918, there really was no longer any Austria. The Vienna Government was not in a position to accept the responsibility for the whole country. Czechs, Poles, and Jugoslavs were out of the empire and were dealing directly with the Allies. Under the armistice terms Italy occupied the territories that all the world knew had been definitely promised to her by the secret Treaty of London in 1915. Several million of her German-speaking population passed immediately under the control of the new Czech Government at Prague, and several hundred thousand Tyrolese came within the zone of military occupation of the Italian armies. Austria at the outbreak of the war had a population of about 30,000,000, of whom not more than 10,500,000 were Germans; the Czechs and Slovaks were 6,700,000; the Poles 5,000,000; the Ukrainians 3,700,000; and the Jugoslavs 3,000,000. Thus, while Austrians were more numerous than any other element, they comprised only a third of the population, and more than 3,000,000 of that third were in Bohemia. These figures show how radically different was the situation of Austria from that of Germany. Many of the leading generals and statesmen and a very large number of the functionaries of the Hapsburg Empire were from the non-Austrian and non-Magyar peoples. Throughout the war the army had been composed, officers and men, of the entire population, and the Austrians and Hungarians contributed only about 50 per cent—perhaps less than that—to the fighting forces that had invaded and imposed their will on Serbia and Rumania, had successfully withstood Italy and Russia, and had contributed to the success of Germany on the western front. The major part of the Austro-Hungarian artillery was manufactured in Bohemia.

And yet, when the Paris Conference assembled, all the Hapsburg peoples except Austrians and Hungarians were represented and were regarded as co-victors with the Entente Powers. On the other hand, the Austrian element in the Hapsburg Empire was held to be the culprit, responsible for the war, guilty of its excesses; and in the settlement all the sins of the Hapsburgs were visited upon the heads of less than 7,000,000 Austrians. The inconsistency in the attitude of the Peace Conference toward the Hohenzollern and Hapsburg Empires is amazing, and shows that neither logic nor a sense of justice inspired the victors, but simply the desire to impose treaties that would serve best their own interests. The Germans were told, when they protested against the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, that no government could have initiated and carried on the war without the consent and support of all the people; therefore, the inhabitants of Germany could not escape punishment by doing away with their government. Germany still remained a powerful nation; therefore prudence inspired guarantees for future good behavior, and a sense of justice demanded the payment of reparations and the punishment of war criminals.

Less than 7,000,000 Austrians, a third of whom lived in the city of Vienna, were indicted, tried, found guilty, and punished in the Treaty of St.-Germain for the misdeeds of the Hapsburg Empire. Nothing could have been more absurd than to suppose that these people were a super-race who had dominated for five centuries the peoples round about them, and that from 1914 to 1918 6,500,000 people could have held the other 23,000,000 inhabitants of Austria so completely at their mercy that the latter, bowing to force majeure, should have fought against their will for those who held them, terrorized, in complete subjection. In the great Austrian armies, according to this assumption, Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians, Croatians, Dalmatians, Slovenes, and other peoples were no more than unwilling slaves, doing their master’s bidding. At the same time these non-Austrian elements were assumed to be so superior in culture and inhibitions to the Austrians that all the violations of the laws of warfare, all the crimes, were committed solely by German-speaking soldiers and officers!

If any one thinks I am exaggerating, let him read the Treaty of St.-Germain and bear in mind that this treaty was imposed upon less than one fourth of the inhabitants of pre-war Austria with about one fourth of the area of pre-war Austria, and that a third of the inhabitants of the new state live in one city, whose size and equipment for industry and commerce (Vienna is the fourth city of Europe) are the result of economic evolution as the center of a great nation. Read the Treaty of St.-Germain, I ask, and then judge for yourself what must have been the state of mind of the men who framed it.

The Hapsburg Empire was a governmental system, not a nation; and after the rise of the principle of nationality in the nineteenth century it had held together against powerful currents of disintegration because the ruling classes of its various elements believed their prosperity and security were better guaranteed by remaining in the empire than by separating from it. Irredentism became a powerful influence with peasants, when sufficiently worked upon, and with petty politicians, students, and a portion of the professional classes. Landowners, business men, manufacturers, and clergy among all the Hapsburg peoples supported the governmental system, indorsed its foreign policy, and worked as hard as the Austrians and Hungarians up to the very end for the success of the coalition of the Central Empires. The sinking ship was deserted when it was realized that Germany was going to lose.

In the general sauve qui peut, the non-Austrians at Vienna and in the provinces suddenly discovered that a new citizenship would save them from the moral and material consequences of defeat and that attention could be diverted from their own war activities by capitalizing the world-wide distrust and hatred of the Germans to include the Austrians. The Treaty of St.-Germain punished a German-speaking people, but it was more cruel and disastrous to the Austrians than was the Treaty of Versailles to the Germans. The Treaty of St.-Germain closed the only door left open to the Austrians for rehabilitating themselves economically and for finding an opportunity of consoling themselves in their ostracism. They were condemned because they were Germans, but they were forbidden to unite with Germany.

Austria lost not only her non-German population and provinces but also one third of her German population. She was rendered militarily impotent, cut off from her access to the sea, deprived of the southern part of the Tyrol with a purely German population, made dependent upon her former provinces for food-stuffs and coal, and left without the means of manufacturing sufficient to pay for the food-stuffs and coal she would have to import. She was left saddled with the great city of Vienna, containing a population of more than 2,000,000, and every effort was made in the treaty to destroy Vienna’s one chance of making ends meet, i.e., by remaining a center of distribution on one of the world’s main trade-routes. The route of the Orient Express was changed to run by way of Venice and Triest; through express trains with Germany, the one friendly country, were forbidden; and a new regime for the Danube was created for the purpose of stifling Vienna’s Danube trade. The Austrian delegation at the Peace Conference, through its able spokesman, Dr. Renner, pointed out from indisputable statistics that the Treaty of St.-Germain condemned the Austrians to poverty and slow starvation, and pleaded either for permission to join Germany by the exercise of the right of self-determination (which was the justification of the treaty!) or for guarantees that the lost provinces should arrange to give Austria stipulated amounts of coal and food-stuffs to enable her to exist. The Peace Conference refused to admit the necessity of either alternative. On the other hand, heavy reparations in cash and in kind were inserted in the treaty.

The hopelessness of the situation in which the Peace Conference put the Austrians is demonstrated by the fact that the new Austria is a mountainous country, with less than 25 per cent of its area capable of producing food-stuffs. The hilly country is suitable for breeding cattle but is unable to provide the requirements of the people as regards meat and fat. Before the war only 14 per cent of the meat and fat consumed in Vienna came from the provinces left to Austria by the Treaty of St.-Germain. The new Austria’s forests contain soft woods. By the most optimistic calculations she can supply only one fifth of her fuel requirements. Thus manufactures are bound to languish and the people to be permanently undernourished unless Austria joins Germany or is admitted into a customs union with her former provinces. Nearly five years of despair and agony have sufficiently proved this statement. In Vienna the people feel that they are doomed.

The Entente Powers have realized that common humanity as well as policy demand that the Austrians be saved from the fate imposed upon them by the Treaty of St.-Germain. They have come to see that the geographical position of Austria makes it impossible for them to leave her to her fate, as they have done in the case of Armenia. The Succession States also are beginning to come to their senses. Statesmen are now in agreement with economists, and are willing to waive reparations payments and admit that the great highway of Europe by the Danube must continue to be traveled. When Chancellor Seipel made the rounds of the European capitals in the summer of 1922, begging for an international loan and for the indefinite postponement, if not the wiping out, of reparations claims, he was received favorably everywhere. The Entente Powers and the Succession States agreed that something must be done, and to the League of Nations was entrusted the task of helping Austria to her feet by means of an international loan. Credits recently granted Austria have enabled the Government to begin a policy of currency reform; and Viennese importers and exporters have been enabled to arrange for a sufficient exchange of Austrian products against coal and food-stuffs to prevent the country from going to pieces.

The scheme of the League of Nations for the financial reconstruction of Austria was embodied in the Geneva protocols, signed on October 4, 1922, and provides for a rigorous control of Austrian finances up to the end of 1924, when it is hoped that the budget will be balanced. The Austrian Government was required to secure from Parliament full authority for two years to go ahead without parliamentary control and to carry out financial rehabilitation—with the reforms necessary to assure it—under the supervision of a Commissioner-General appointed by the League. Dr. Zimmermann, burgomaster of Rotterdam, accepted the task and took up his work in Vienna on December 16. Not the League but Great Britain, France, Italy, and Czechoslovakia guaranteed 84 per cent of a total loan of 650,000,000 gold crowns, with Spain taking 4 per cent, Switzerland 3 per cent, Belgium 2 per cent, and Holland 1 per cent. The first four powers, however, agreed to guarantee all the first short-term loan. It was agreed that Austria should dismiss 100,000 officials before July 1, 1924, 25,000 each half-year. This drastic measure was necessary, but it will only add to the unemployment and suffering. Between the time of the signature of the Geneva protocols and the end of the year, the number of unemployed in Vienna rose from 57,000 to 120,000, and by April 1923, had reached 170,000.

The measures imposed and the aid given by the League of Nations are only palliatives. They have not solved the problem; they have only postponed for a brief time the solution. “Austria,” I was told by Dr. GrÜnberger, minister of foreign affairs, “is like a man whose arms and legs have been cut off, but who is all the same expected to walk and work. We are being given alms, but are told that this is just to tide us over. Tide us over to what?” Dr. GrÜnberger was food administrator during the trying period immediately after the war, and later minister of commerce. He has taken an active part in Austrian affairs since the first days of the republic. President Hainisch and other leaders of political and financial life express the same opinion as Dr. GrÜnberger, that under the conditions of the Treaty of St.-Germain Austria cannot work out any scheme of independent existence. Nor have the alms-givers presented to the Austrian Government a way of salvation. It stands to reason, therefore, that there must be either a liberal economic arrangement for interchange of raw materials, manufactured articles, coal, wood, and food-stuffs among the Succession States or union with Germany.

A conference of the Succession States, in which British and French representatives participated, was held at Porta Rosa in November, 1921, for the laudable purpose of finding a way to settle some of the practical difficulties arising from the dissolution of the Hapsburg Empire. Postal and telegraph relations and a modus vivendi for transport were arranged, but it was impossible to come to an agreement about the question vital to Austria, that of tariffs. The Succession States, including Italy, needed to arrange with Austria about communications. They did not need to trade with her so much as she needed to trade with them.

Two years have passed since Porta Rosa. Little progress has been made in the establishment of normal and reasonable economic relations among the Succession States. This is only partly due to the intractability of the emancipated Hapsburg peoples. For while there are dangers in any such arrangements where it is Hungary who would benefit, the neighbors of Austria do not have to fear from Vienna what there is reasonable ground of fearing from Budapest. Sinister outside influences are at work to prevent the consummation of the movement begun at Porta Rosa. Austria is suffering from the conflicting policies of France and Italy. France has no objection to the regrouping of the Danubian states into an economic federation, if this be necessary for the salvation of Austria. Italy, on the other hand, is determined to prevent the adoption of any plan that might lead to a Danubian federation, in which the Slavs would predominate. Rather than see this accomplished, she would prefer the union of Austria with Germany. To France and Czechoslovakia the incorporation of Austria into Germany is a contingency the possibility of which both countries refuse to admit.

But if an independent Austria is impossible, and Italy, herself the most powerful of the Succession States, blocks the way to the economic agreements Austria must have to exist apart from Germany, what alternative is there to the Anschluss (union)?

Many Austrians are opposed to the Anschluss and point out to you that there is no more reason for them to favor joining the German Empire than for Americans to favor joining the British Empire. These irreconcilables, however, admit that the Anschluss is inevitable, on the ground that Austria cannot live alone, and must be either a member of a Danubian federation or a province of Germany. They think that the latter solution is not for the best interests of their country; the prospect wounds their pride; and, from an international point of view, they see only trouble ahead for Europe in the union of their country with Germany.

The acceptance of the present status of Austria as permanent by the League of Nations indicates the subserviency of that supposedly international organization to the interests of certain powers. The Council of the League has postponed the collapse of Austria in the same way as it settled the Upper Silesia and Vilna questions, by offering a solution that took into account the transcendent interests of members of the Council. Austria had to be helped to her feet financially to repair, if possible, the damage done by the Treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon, which broke up the Hapsburg Empire without providing for economic safeguards for Austria or the alternative—union with Germany.

That the danger remains—a danger that may well lead to a new war—is evident from the significant and dramatic participation of Austria in the seventy-fifth anniversary of the first German Parliament at Frankfort-on-Main, on May 18, 1923. Professor Hartmann, Austrian Ambassador to Germany, declared that the Austrians “are hard and fast in their yearning for the union of Austria with Germany,” and he asserted his belief that the Anschluss would be effected eventually. When he reached his peroration, “The revolution of 1918 will bring us as its fruit the unity and coÖrdination of German middle Europe into one state,” the audience rose to its feet in frenzied applause, led by President Ebert, Herr Loeb, president of the Reichstag, and other leading officials of the German Federal and State Governments.