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THE GIFT OF R. G. Adams
CENTRAL EUROPE
THE NEWEST BORZOI BOOKS
ASPHALT By Orrick Johns
BACKWATER By Dorothy Richardson
CRIMES OF CHARITY By Konrad Bercovict
RUSSIA’S MESSAGE By William English Walling THE BOOK OF SELF By James Oppenheim
THE BOOK OF CAMPING By A. Hyatt Verriil
MODERN RUSSIAN HISTORY By Alexander Kornilov
THE RUSSIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING By Alexandre Benois THE JOURNAL OF LEO TOLSTOI (1895- 1899) THE SHIELD Edited by Gorky, Andreyev and Sologub THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A SUPER- TRAMP
By William H. Davies With a Preface by Bernard Shaw
CENTRAL EUROPE
A translation by Christabel M. Meredith from the original German of MIT TEL-EUROPA By
Friedrich Naumann Member of the Reichstag
Da
New York Alfred A. Knopf Mcmxvii
N3)3 )497
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
MOO Ag be
e thas NS
12- 19-23
CONTENTS
I. PARTNERSHIP IN THE WAR AND ITS RESULTS
We must know in the midst of the war with what mutual relations Germany and Austria-Hungary intend to emerge from it : Each of the two Empires is too small by itself : The formation of new military boundaries between unallied States : The lack of programme at the outbreak of war : The test of Mid-Europe by history. Necessary reflections : Considerations of foreign- speaking partners in the union : The differences between the two allied Empires : Dissimilarities in the history of the countries, in their stages of capitalist development and in their rhythm of life : Currents in the German Empire setting against the Central
' European alliance : Opposing currents in Austria and Hungary :
II.
III.
The political independence of the two Empires can only be main- tained by the union : Whether or no Austria-Hungary must separate into its component parts? : Optimism : Criticism of the existing conditions of alliance : Whether or no a pro- gramme can be drawn up for Mid-Europe? : A single nation of brothers | : e
OF THE PREVIOUS HISTORY OF CENTRAL EUROPE
A new historical consciousness is needed for the formation of a union of Central European States : The extinction of the dis- putes between Austria-Hungary and Prussia : The political task of historians : The historians of Bismarck’s founding of the Empire : The Central Europe of the old German Emperors : The period of the two disputing Ostmarks and of the pressure from the West on the German Empire: The Napoleonic period—between East and West : The Vienna Congress and St. Paul’s Church at Frankfurt—‘‘ Lesser Germany” and ‘Greater Germany” tendencies : Bismarck’s fight against Austria : Bismarck as a Mid-European in 1866 : The deliverance of Central Europe from France : The liberation from Russia : Bismarck and Andrassy—the Dual Alliance : Bismarck’s legacy.
CREEDS AND NATIONALITIES
Temper on the journey towards Mid-Europe : The Mid- European type has still to be formed : Ancient struggles between West Rome and East Rome in Central Europe : Refor- mation and Counter-Reformation : Prussia as leading Protes- tant Power and Austria as Catholic State : Protestant apprehen- sions : Austro-Hungarian Catholicism is not a political unity : Church and School questions must never be the business of the union : The Central European Jews : Nationality questions in
PAGE
35
63
XViii CONTENTS
IV.
all Great States : The treatment of national minorities in the
PAGE
German Empire up to the present : Prussian Polish policy’: ©
The German spirit in the old Austrian State : Metternich : The democracy of 1848 : The awakening of the masses to a share in politics : The vanished energy of the earlier German- ising influence : The peculiar character of the Magyars : The Hungarian Nationality Law and its enforcement: Roumanians and Southern Slavs : Austrian nationality disputes : The Polish question : The greatest danger for the Dual Mon- archy is past.
THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF CENTRAL EUROPE
Historical evolution of the character of work : Capitalism of the first and second stages : Why do other nations not like us ? The organised German type : English and German methods of work : Militarism in work during war and peace : The German economic creed must become characteristic of Mid-Europe : Individual economic output in Austria-Hungary : The back- ward sections of the people : The difference in the productivity of labour : The common rhythm of work to be striven after in Mid-Europe : Popular reasons for opposition to the systematisa- tion of work : What the Hungarians might make of their land ! : The worker as economic force : Apprehensions concerning an economic union owing to differences in the possibilities of pro- duction : Objections to be expected : The entrance into Mid- European partnership in work as a heartfelt resolution : The artistic task for Vienna and Austria : The example of the South German union with North Germany : The gradual fusion of the bonds of ufiion.
JOINT PROBLEMS IN WAR ECONOMICS
Share in the world’s economic system : Exclusion from international trade through the English war policy—self- contained commercial state : Our stores have saved us : The State Socialism of war economics : War finances : The further development of Socialism owing to the war : State syndicates with workers’ guarantee : State storage system : The ap- proaching transition to peace economics after the war system : The organised economic State : Is Austria-Hungary one economic State or two? : No joint war economic system exists : A military partnership combined with economic separa- tion ? : Association in syndicates in virtue of the war-storage system : The Austro-Hungarian exchange : The financial problems after the war : The Germans of the Empire must only wish to help if they are called upon.
OUR POSITION IN THE WORLD’S ECONOMIC SYSTEM
The development of Great States and world-group economic areas : Russian, English and North American types of super- national government : The previous history of the inter- national idea : World-group provinces as preliminary stages of internationalism ? : Possibilities of joining with Russia to England : Small and solitary ? : Our ability to understand her other Central European nations : The neighbouring States and their colonies : The area of the economic world-groups :
Itt
146
179
CONTENTS
The population of the economic world-groups : Are the world- group areas statistically comparable ? : Greater Britain : The United States : Russia : Mid-European possibilities : The value of the world’s economic system for the smaller folk.
VII. TARIFF PROBLEMS
A customs partnership without a further economic part- nership is not practicable : The dangers of a mere reduction of tariff for Hungary, Austria, Germany : Why the customs partnership is more discussed than the other forms of economic partnership : Friedrich List and the Minister Bruck as the forerunners of the customs partnership : The Prusso-German Customs Union : Personal confessions about the tariff question : Formation of a uniform tariff : Imports and exports between Germany and Austria-Hungary : Partnership in demand, supplementary partnership, competition : Tariff rates : The opposition of interests in the Balkan States : Joint regulation of foreign markets : Customs union, preferential treatment, intermediate duties on the basis of a joint tariff classification : Storage treaties, syndicates’ treaties, and commercial treaty : Financial results of the customs approximation.
VIII. CONSTITUTIONAL PROBLEMS
IX.
Who will undertake the foundation of Mid-Europe ? : Demar- cation of the political activities not touched by Mid-European centralisation : Mid-Europe can be no Federal State : Questions relating to religious creeds and to languages are and remain the business of the individual States : State treaties as the foundation of the union : Mid-European central administration for defined special activities : Law as regards the conclusion of treaties in the German Empire and in Austria-Hungary : The Austro- Hungarian Ausgleich as a permanent situation : The separa- tion of the military and economic State from the nationality States : The danger to the parliamentary system through the foundation of Mid-Europe ? : How the central administration May appear in ten years’ time? : Military conventions : Joint foreign policy : Conclusion.
STATISTICAL AND HISTORICAL’ BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX
xix PAGE
217
251
288 328
347
Central Europe
CHAPTER I PARTNERSHIP IN THE WAR AND ITS RESULTS
As I write this fighting is going on in the East and in the West. I write of set purpose in the midst of it all, for it is only in war time that our mood enables us to entertain broadly transforming thoughts of reconstruction. Once the war is over our everyday spirit will quickly take possession of us, and in the everyday spirit. Mid-Europe can never be fashioned. Bismarck founded the German Empire during and not after the war of 1870, and our statesmen must lay the foundations of this new structure during this war, in the midst of bloodshed and the upheaval of the nations. Later it might, and it would, be too Iate.
The subject I wish to discuss is the growing unity of those nations which belong neither to the Anglo-French western alliance nor to the Russian Empire. But more particularly my subject is the welding together of the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, for all further schemes for a union of the Central European nations depend on whether or no, in the first instance, the binding together of the two Central Powers themselves is successful.
When war broke out many of us, myself included, thought that an understanding with France might still come about, since there is no enmity towards France either on the German or the Austrian and Hungarian side. Whenever the French are willing we shall be able to offer them the hand
I A
2 CENTRAL EUROPE
of friendship, but of course each additional month of war makes any mutual approach more difficult. France has chosen to link her fate with that of England and from henceforth will be made use of by England. She will no longer be willing to conclude an independent peace for herself, and will, unfortunately, for the immediate future, become a larger and more important Portugal at England’s side. Hence, in what follows, we leave the French outside the discussion, whilst always hoping that in a more distant future they will rank themselves with Central Europe.
Nor can we speak of Italy except with reserve and caution. Italy, disregarding her old union by treaty, has, it is true, gone over into the camp of the enemy, yet she can hardly by this act have determined her political and economic alliances for all time. National humours and economic interests are indeed frequently inharmonious in Italy. Economically she belongs to Central Europe, but we recognise that her Latin nationality and the Adriatic- Alpine boundary problem have turned Italian thought into another direction. Now the armies on the Isonzo have the first word, and hence we shall discuss Mid-Europe without reference to Italy.
Of the Northern Powers, the Roumanians, Bulgarians, _ Serbians and Greeks, and also of Holland and Switzerland, we shall have something to say later on in our book. We shall not say very much however, for it would be a mistake to include these smaller Central European States in our scheme from the outset as fixed quantities, whilst actually they still have a breathing space before making their decision. They wish to see and they ought to see for themselves first whether the nucleus of Mid-Europe will form itself, whether the German Empire and Austria- Hungary will crystallise.
During the war we Germans, the Austrians and the Hungarians stand in friendly alliance with the Turks. In this alliance the Turks are fighting in their own interests. They are engaged in a brave fight for life for the remnant of a once powerful State, and for the political existence of
'- PARTNERSHIP IN WAR AND ITS RESULTS 3
the faith and being of Islam. A strange turn of history has brought us and the Turks together in that their enemies were ourenemies. Their only hope of holding their own was an alliance with us, and hence also with the Austrians and Hungarians. We hail them, and hope that in the future too our paths may lie together, but Turkey is not in the first instance concerned in the formation of the Mid-European nucleus. It is not in direct contact with us geographically, and is a country of a very different type both nationally and economically ; it is southern, oriental, antiquated and sparsely populated. In this case too the nucleus of crystal- lisation must first be in existence before the conditions of accession to the union can profitably be discussed. —.
Thus our attention must first be directed towards that portion of Central Europe which extends from the North and Baltic Seas to the Alps, the Adriatic Sea and the southern edge of the Danubian plain. Take a map and see what lies between the Vistula and the Vosges Mountains, and what extends from Galicia to Lake Constance! You must think of these stretches of country as a unity, as a brotherhood of many:‘members, as a defensive alliance, as a single economic district! All the traditional separatism of these lands must be so effaced in the stress of the Great War as to make the idea of union tolerable. This is the demand of the hour, the task of these months. History speaks to us of it in the thunder of the guns, but it rests with us whether or no we listen.
# * # * * *
It may be questioned whether our partnership in this war is due to chance or to necessity. Wemaintain thelatter. In old days indeed it was chance when, or if ever, Austria and Prussia combined. They united when they had some common task to complete such as the division of Poland or the conquest of Napoleon, but they fell apart again as soon as they had settled their own frontiers, or were attracted in diverse directions by other Powers. In the long years of the past there was much more fighting than harmony in Central Europe. Each section went its own way, and
4 CENTRAL EUROPE
there were as yet no constraining reasons for a lasting unity. The States were merely territorial divisions, disput- ing sovereignties, and in no sense historically determinate political groups. They grew and fell apart like clouds. Even the partnership in the old German Empire involved no solidarity, for hardly ever, if at all, during the later centuries did this ancient Empire emerge as a complete political entity. It was broken in the Thirty Years War, it crumbled in pieces in the Seven Years War, it split in Napoleonic times and it was divided in the Civil War of 1866. We shall discuss the earlier history more in detail later on. For the present this statement is sufficient : there is more unity to-day than ever before in the old German Empire! To-day all the ancient States, large and small, in the stretch of country described above, have become a single united fighting entity, and victory and defeat are a like experience for all, from Heligoland to Orsova. This is no mere political intrigue, no patched-up defensive alliance. The war has come as a creator of the Mid-European soul, which is now coming into existence in advance of the ex- ternal forms appropriate to it. It is this soul that we shall discuss, and its external embodiment that we shall examine.
All the allies in the Great War feel without argument that neither now nor in the future can small or even moderate- sized Powers play any large part in the world. Our concep- tions of size have entirely changed. Only very big States have any significance on their own account, all the smaller ones must live by utilising the quarrels of the great, or must obtain leave if they wish to do anything unusual. Sove- reignty, that is freedom to make decisions of wide historical importance, is now concentrated at a very few places on the globe. The day is still distant when there shall be ‘ one fold and one shepherd,” but the days are past when shep- herds without number, lesser or greater, drove their flocks unrestrained over the pastures of Europe. The spirit of large-scale industry and of super-national organisation has seized politics. People think, as Cecil Rhodes once expressed it, ‘in Continents.”” The country which desires to be small
PARTNERSHIP IN WAR AND ITS RESULTS 5
and isolated will, in spite of this, become of its own accord dependent on the varying fortunes of the Great Powers. This is in conformity with an age of intercommunication and with centralised military technique. The country without alliances is isolated, and the isolated country is endangered. In this age of extending State federations and Great Powers, Prussia is too small, and Germany too small, and Austria too small, and Hungary too small. No single States of this kind can survive a world war. Suppose that we of the German Empire were fighting alone, or that Austria- Hungary had to offer a solitary defence. Such things are no longer possible. Their day is past. Hence to-day the Central European union is no chance but a necessity. People who do not feel enthusiastic about it must yet desire it, since the alternatives are even worse. The intelligent man is he who does of his own free will what he recognises as necessary. * * * * * *
Nevertheless it will be very difficult to found Mid-Europe, and no one act or decision can be at all adequate to the task. It will occupy at least a generation. But for the moment it is for the Governments and the peoples to deter- mine and say whether or no they desire Mid-Europe at all or not. For the representatives of the German Empire, equally with those of Austria and Hungary, will enter upon the coming peace negotiations in an entirely different spirit according to whether or no they mean to remain united in the future.
We have no intention of saying anything about the actual terms of peace, partly because at present publicity is still forbidden, partly because we ourselves think it a useless and doubtful policy to discuss something which is as yet subject to military successes or failures. But whether or no the frontiers of the two Central Empires of Mid-Europe be shifted somewhat more to the east or west as the result of military victories, this question will arise: Will the ambassadors from Berlin, Vienna and Budapest enter the hall of the International Peace Congress as declared and
6 CENTRAL EUROPE
honest friends, or as secret opponents? We want them to return to their countrymen with the watchword: United for ever! Then they will indeed bring back something real for every one, a new creative work, a great hope, the beginning of a fresh epoch. Thus only shall we Central European nations appear finally justified for having shed our blood for one another. What was Serajewo to us Germans of the Empire? What were we seeking in the Carpathian passes? Why did the Hungarians or the Southern Slavs trouble themselves about Zeebriigge ? Why should German Bohemians or Tzechs have defended the ridge of the Vosges? The entire history of the war with all its sufferings and heroic deeds becomes purposeless, meaningless, if the war ends with a misunderstanding between those who, throughout it, have been allied. But this misunderstanding is not so far off as many think, for even now the spirit of a unified Mid-Europe is no mere matter of course, and the approaching peace negotiations will supply to the full opportunities both small and great for friction and trouble. All coalition wars have, from of old, had difficult peace negotiations, for they end in gains and losses which must be equalised amongst the allies. But each allied Power can, and will, allow and make over advantages to its allies with a better grace, if it knows that they are certainly going to remain its allies. Both Powers will obtain much more from the Peace Congress if they negotiate throughout in common and do not enter into special settlements. These con- siderations ought to suffice, and will indeed be amply sufficient for those who remember the depressing history of the Vienna Congress in 1815. Then‘exactly that happened which now we must avoid. Temptations to break faith will creep in on both sides, since the future is assured to our opponents if they can succeed in dividing us. This weighs with them more than any other ga But for what then have we what are we Germans, Aus’ * 4
PARTNERSHIP IN WAR AND ITS RESULTS 7
It is occasionally said that the war will lead to a general slackening of the bonds between the Great Powers, and that every country must wish to emerge free and without obligations from this great tragedy of political alliances. There may be some truth in this in so far as the constraint of the State syndicates has been generally felt as such, but all the same, the outcome will be much what it is in the case of industrial syndicates: new ones are continually growing up when once the idea of combination has taken toot. It is contrary to history to believe that in these days five or eight Great Powers will leave the precincts of the Peace Congress without having some fresh treaties in their pockets. What is called “freedom” is nothing but the already conceived desire to change one’s alliance in the future.
It is not to be supposed that at the conclusion of the war the long jubilee years of an everlasting peace will begin ! It is true, doubtless, that there will be a widespread inclina- tion towards peace, for war sacrifices and war taxes speak an insistent language. Moreover, we shall be more careful than hitherto to suppress frivolous pretexts for war and to strive for understanding between nations. But, on the other hand, the war will leave behind it an immense number of unsolved problems, both new and old, and will lead to disillusionments which will express themselves in extensive armaments. All the War Ministers, General Staffs and Admiralties will ponder over the lessons of the past war, technical skill will contrive yet newer weapons, frontier
: fortifications will be made still wider and, above all, longer. Is it really credible that in such an atmosphere the isolated State can remain any longer in isolation ?
As far as Germany and Austria-Hungary are concerned,
they must either intrench their respective frontiers on the of the Erzgebirge, the Riesengebirge and the Béhmer- or they must regard this line as, in essentials, only an istrative boundary in a territory looked upon as one. This reasoning is as valid for Vienna the experiences of the present war no
8 CENTRAL EUROPE
isolated country can remain unintrenched. For the primary and most important military inference from the war is that in future we shall fight only in long lines, and that the trench will become the essential form of defence for a country. The policy of trenches means that every country must consider what frontiers can and what cannot be defended by trenches. The argument is somewhat as follows: if France before 1914 had not applied its expendi- ture on defences to the erection of heavy fortresses, but instead had protected its whole frontier from Belfort to Dunkirk with trenches, probably the German thrust into Northern France across Belgium would not have been possible. The same thing applies to our frontiers in East Prussia and to those in Austrian Galicia. After the war, frontier trenches will be made everywhere where there is any possibility of fighting. There will be a fresh system of Roman and Chinese walls made out of earth and barbed wire.
In consequence of this trench-making policy a country will be constrained to make certain, at the moment of planning out these military defences, with whom it proposes under all circumstances to live at peace. Europe will have two long ditches from north to south, one anyhow stretching from the Lower Rhine to the Alps, the other from Courland to either the right or left of Roumania. This will constitute the main and unavoidable triple division of the Continent. The problem for Central Europe to decide is whether or no another intermediate ditch, dividing Germany and Austria- Hungary, will be needed in between the two great north to south ditches. It will be needed if no unity of future policy can be guaranteed, but if it does become necessary it will be harmful and fateful in the highest degree to both parties.
The future trench-making policy will make it exceptionally difficult for small States to maintain their independence, for under this system military expenses will decrease as the size of the country to be defended increases in relation to its frontiers. A State like Roumania could hardly afford
PARTNERSHIP IN WAR AND ITS RESULTS g
to maintain its own trench system on all sides. This means that it must choose from the outset which frontiers it will leave open. Higgling over neutrality will be rendered much more difficult by this coming trench policy. Possibly trench-making will be the most effective instrument of Providence in making war into a delusion by means of its own technique. But in the first instance the long trenches must be made and paid for and manned. And when this is done Mid-Europe will either be established, or she will be debarred from unity in any future that can be foreseen.
It is on these grounds that a decision must be based.
* * * * * *
During the war the responsible leaders of the combatant States are so pressed by their daily duties that in the midst of strenuous work they can hardly find time for historical reflections. They are not in the fortunate position of Bismarck in the winter of 1870-71, who knew from the outset approximately what he wanted, for this unprece- dentedly serious war appeared, in the summer of Io914, undesired and diplomatically unprepared for. We purposely avoid entering into complicated discussions over the causes of the war, the time for this will come later, when all the documents have come to light. This much may, however, be stated with certainty : the two Central European Powers had no defined military aim because they were only prepared for defence. The war was not undertaken in order to secure this or that object. Hence it lacks any intrinsic unity of purpose, and the royal and ministerial proclamations calling the nations to arms lack a definite programme. . There is no single watchword for all the combatants from Apenrade to Fiume. The war began purely as a war of defence, and hence from the point of view of Mid-Europe its ideals are essentially somewhat vague. This, in our opinion, is felt even more strongly in Austria and Hungary than in the German Empire. In the German Empire two ideas were always present in the minds of Government and people: that some time or other a break would occur with the Tsar, and that some time there must be a fight with England
10 CENTRAL EUROPE
over the control of the sea. The only regret was that both things came about together with an overwhelming rush ; the war with France, the war in the East and the naval war. Austria and Hungary, however, had no interest in either the French war or the Anglo-German naval war, but instead they had serious tension in the Balkans, among the Southern Slavs and in Italy. Thus at the outset they were evidently more concerned about their southern frontiers than about the risks in Galicia. It was only during the war itself that the nations in the Danube kingdom became fully conscious of and impressed by the Russian danger, The military objective shifted from Belgrade to Przemysl and the Carpathians, and then swung back again to Trieste and extended into Polish territory. A situation arose in which the two parties had a joint campaign in the east, whilst, in addition, the German Empire had its special international campaigns and the Austrians and Hungarians their special southern campaign. Obviously we were mutually helping one another in this way, but nevertheless the war was regarded, and is still regarded, rather differently in Vienna and Budapest than in Berlin. There was no controlling idea of joint statesmanship and like responsibility in all directions. This controlling idea, however, appeared during the war in peoples and Governments, in spite of many individual differences of opinion. Then for the first time the belief took root in the hearts of those concerned that this war is not merely a German war, and not merely a Danube war, but is the historical test of Mid-Europe. But this inspiring thought has not yet risen to general conscious- ness. It is yet far from certain that all utterances about the war are tuned to this note. It-is our task to strengthen . this consciousness, until even leading men in their official statements speak of the rapidly growing unity of Mid- Europe as a self-evident fact. The Germans of the Empire in their utterances concerning the war have not always kept in mind the effect that an insistence upon purely German aims must have on their Magyar and Slav allies. To talk, for instance, of a decisive struggle between German
PARTNERSHIP IN WAR AND ITS RESULTS 11 ©
and Slav is a misconception, very natural indeed, but a serious departure from ideas proper to the alliance. Phrases of this sort necessarily sound very differently in the ears of Tzechs, or Poles or Slovenians than in ours. If we expect a hundred thousand Poles and other Slavs to join with us in driving out the Russian armies, we must never let these allies of ours slip out of our memories. This involves a certain sacrifice for us Germans of our accustomed national mode of thought, but we are faced ultimately by a definite alternative. Either this is a German war, in which case we have no right to complain if it is so regarded in Prague and Agram, or it is a Central European war, in which case we ought to, and must, speak of it as such and act accordingly.
The same thing applies to the preaching of “ the German idea in the world.”” My friend Rohrbach has done us all a great service by becoming the prophet of this idea in his admirable and widely read book, and no patriotically minded Hungarian or Tzech will think evil of us patriotic Germans if we sing and dream and study and work for Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles. We need this. It is our life’s blood. Only, in doing so, we must not fail to remember that our non-German partners too have a life’s blood, and want to realise for what they are prepared to die. In exalting our nationality we ought at the same time to exalt theirs.
Come what may we must not be petty. It is obvious that in a Germany at war all our old heroic traditions must be revived, and we must see around us the Prussian King Friedrich II., and Bliicher, Moltke and Bismarck. We fight as Germans, but we fight with millions of non-Germans, who are prepared to go with us to battle and to death, so long as they have our respect and can believe that our victory will also be their victory.
On the Austrian and Hungarian side too a like mode of thought must be acquired more definitely than hithertc. The feelings of dislike and irritability often aroused now by any strong expression of German national feeling must vanish and be overcome in a common appreciation of the
12 CENTRAL EUROPE
many-sided strength of our great and noble union. There are still in the Empire of the Danube some easily explicable remnants of the old temper of 1866, which are but ill-suited to the new Mid-Europe; anti-Prussian feelings which, when they are expressed, are just as unpalatable to the Northerners as the North German particularism, referred to above, is to the differently constituted South. Occasionally something appears which seems like envy, a grudging of the strength which yet is indispensable for us all as a body. To speak quite frankly: it sometimes happens that people accept help, and at the same time scold those who help them. The finer spirits in the Danubian Empire have always been sensible that this was unsuitable, but there, as here, there are people who have not such fine feelings. To such people on both sides the conception of comradeship in the joint war must be more openly preached than hitherto, and. the leading men in both States must speak to their country- men more frankly and decisively of the accomplished fact ; that the past is forgotten, that we cancel all our earlier debits and credits, and from henceforward press onwards hand in hand like good and honest friends. The war unites. * * * * * *
In the later sections of this book we shall have to discuss more in detail the difficulties in the way of the union, and even here we must briefly point out how different the two Empires are, so that we may face the whole complicated problem from the outset.
Austria-Hungary is a unit of long standing with strong disintegrating tendencies; the German Empire is a newly formed unit with ever-increasing centralisation. Over there exists a growing spirit of particularism or of provincialism, a constant effort to snatch something from the hands of the central authority and to make Maria Theresa’s monarchy a mere legend. With us, on the contrary, the creative energy lies more in the Imperial than in the State Govern- ments. To use an old phrase, Germany develops daily from a confederation of States into a federal State,
PARTNERSHIP IN WAR AND ITS RESULTS 13
whilst Austria and Hungary are growing out of a single State into a confederation of States, or rather, into a union of two States, one of which is almost a confederation of States, whilst the other is an attempt at a national State, but of a most difficult composition. With us political talents and aspirations are Imperialist, over there they are frequently provincial, separatist, or nationalist, but not centralising.
The German Empire is founded on the German national ideal, and finds its justification therein. The foreign-speak- ing portions, and especially Prussian Poles, are indeed a difficult problem for statesmanship, but they are neither sO numerous nor so powerful as to come into consideration as partners in the Government. Austria-Hungary, on the other hand, has dreaded for the last hundred years the national spirit of its peoples as a decentralising power. Hence its political thought is more colourless. In the place of a central nationalism there is what the French term datisme, the mere machinery of government: monarchy, bureaucracy, army.
Austria-Hungary is older; it had long been rich in land and honours when Prussia had still to seek recognition of its royal dignity ; it was one of the European Great Powers before the North had any serious word to say; it was not © so broken as the North either in the Thirty Years War or in Napoleon’s time; it has followed a prudent course through the centuries, and has many more traditions to uphold. The German Empire, on the contrary, is the most recently founded of the European great States, an intruder in the royal company, less inherited than fought for, a child of the nineteenth century. It is like mixing the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to think of working up Austria and Prussia into a single historical entity.
The German Empire is more northerly, colder, more uni- form, more technical. Austria-Hungary is more southerly, more brightly coloured, more a natural growth, more romantic. The difference noticeable within the German Empire between North and South Germany is in a yet
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higher degree the difference between Germany and Austria- Hungary.
The German Empire is more western, Austria more eastern. The same differences which we know as marking the districts east and west of the Elbe occur in more defined form in Central Europe, so soon as the country between the Theiss and the Carpathians joins the countries, distant to them, on the Mosel and Lower Rhine. (
The greater part of Germany is Protestant, most of Austria-Hungary is Catholic.
Germany is much more capitalist, and consequently much more socialist, than Austria-Hungary. For us Germans of the Empire a union means a reopening of the already half- settled disputes of the preceding generation; for Austria- Hungary it means a rapid transition to conditions and prob- lems which are there only slowly and gently approaching.
The rhythm of life is different. We work more methodi- cally. We think more in terms of money, are more punctual, more businesslike, hence also poorer in homely comfort and the art of simple living. This is carried so far that each country secretly regards the other with something of pity and forbearance, because each lacks just what the other regards as essential to civilisation.
Austria-Hungary possesses more past because it is the older organisation, and more future because it has more undeveloped land and labour power. It has less present, because it has held itself back with long hesitation from the technical skill advancing from the West, and is not so rich in sea-coast, coal, iron, and organising energy.
Germany is a country of large towns, and daily grows more so; Austria, and still more Hungary, will for a long time yet be a country of forest, arable land, and pasture. With us the factory takes precedence of the estate and the workman’s quarter of the country village; there the rela- tion is reversed, as it was with us a good forty years ago.
Berlin and Vienna, two different temperatures, more different even than Vienna and Budapest !
* * * * * *
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The amount of sentimental resistance and the number of opposing practical interests are considerable, hence it is not surprising that the question of Mid-Europe is ap- proached with much criticism from both sides. Here, truly, is no case of love at first sight. Rather is there evasion and refusal, a shrinking with instinctive fear from new and boundless complications. Known evils are better than unknown. Hence it is necessary to go more closely into the reasons for the foundation of Mid-Europe, and to refute opponents by showing that there is no other possi- bility for either Empire. We shall begin this inquiry from the standpoint of the German Empire, and undertake to discuss without reserve all unfavourable arguments, since only thus can they be met.
Bismarck’s policy in its first stage separated the Prusso- German Empire from Austria-Hungary ; in its second stage it established between the two Empires the treaty connec- tion which still holds. Taking Bismarck’s standpoint, then, a development and intensification of the treaty connection may be equally well desired or rejected according to whether we side more with the younger or with the elder Bismarck. The younger Bismarck, up to 1866, agreed with the “‘ Lesser Germany ” * party and successfully maintained the “‘ Lesser Germany ”’ ideal policy in opposition to Austria. This was the starting-point of all his subsequent immense successes, successes which were beneficial both to us and to Europe. Is it surprising, then, that there are still many of the “ Lesser Germany ” party amongst us, and especially in Prussia ?
So far as I can see, there are two principal forms of “Lesser German ” opinion: an Old-Prussian and a Liberal capitalist. The conservative, despotic Old-Prussian at the bottom of his heart regards even the German Empire as a watering down of his Friedrich’s State, and secretly distrusts the South Germans, whilst liking and esteeming them in other respects, as not quite capable of creating a
* Kleindeutsch, Grossdeutsch, terms applied in German politics, 1848-66,
to those who wished (2) to leave out, (0) to include, Austria in the recon- struction of the Empire.—TRANSLATOR’S NOTE.
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State. He wants clearly defined terms of authority, and this for their own sake, although he sees quite well what material and military advantages the extension of the Imperial German markets and authority has brought. He might, and indeed does, also recognise advantages, of which we shall speak later, in a closer union with Austria-Hungary. But primarily his traditions and political class lead him to feel any kind of joint government with Austria and Hungary as an infringement of his personal importance, and this in spite of the doubled area of territory to be jointly governed. The Prussian noble and his adherents are strongest in the Prussian Landtag, less strong in the Reichstag, and would probably have even less influence in any future Mid-European representative assembly, should such an assembly arise out of the present beginnings. Since he has witnessed the development of the German Empire he has grown prudent and inclined to take to heart the phrase, principtts obsta ! To call these principles of his merely selfish is inapt, since for him political ideals and his personal interests are so intermingled that it is unjust on historical grounds to deny his ideal aims. Devotion to his country makes him instinc- tively suspicious of all extensions that change the character of the State.
His political opponent, the Liberal capitalist, is of quite a different character. For him everything centres round the undisturbed development of industry and commerce, because he regards these as the means to national prosperity and a financially powerful State. The economic union with ‘Austria-Hungary appears to him as a drag on progress, a leaden weight on the foot. Partnership with Austria- Hungary will probably mean that the German Empire must live through again the last thirty years of its domestic policy, and there is no security that the second experience will be as fortunate as the first. It might be that we should remain involved in an agrarian economic policy against which hitherto we have fought with good reason. Economic union with Austria-Hungary signifies prolongation of the policy of protection, strengthening of middle-class efforts,
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difficulties in the way of joining in English international commerce, and a drag on modern enterprise. The Liberal capitalist, of course, knows well that the Mid-European union will, on the other hand, bring advantages to him also, since it will widen the market protected by tariff and will increase considerably the possible openings for his capital. As a Liberal he fears that an undemocratic spirit may be intro- duced by Austria, and more especially by Hungary, for Austria-Hungary has, it is true, many Parliaments, but all the same there is little effective Parliamentary spirit in Austria, and in Hungary, with a ngorously worked out Parliamentary system, there is little of universal democracy.
With these two “ Lesser Germany ”’ types is associated a third, ‘“‘ Greater Germany,’ * party, which for national reasons seeks the closest sympathy and union with the Germans in Austria and Hungary, but wishes to admit no foreign-speaking section into the German State, since it already finds our Poles, Danes and French a heavy burden. Certain members of this group, for reasons based on the principle of German nationality, are indeed counting even to- day on the approaching break-up of the Danubian Monarchy, and would gladly bring about a purely German State extending from the North Sea to Trieste, “ the German port.” This, at least up to the outbreak of war, represented the opinion of many Pan-Germans, whilst others among them always accepted the Danubian State as a given existing whole, and reckoned with it as such.
Obviously in actual life very varied combinations and gradations of these three modes of thought are met with. Any one who regards Mid-Europe as something to aim at, must come to an understanding with them. So far as this understanding is economic, or concerns domestic politics, we shall defer it to later sections, but here we shall speak of what is common to all three, of the desire to maintain German power. We believe that they will all recognise at bottom that this power is in itself more important than either the maintenance intact of the Old-Prussian despotism,
* See Translator’s Note on page 15. B
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“or the rapid development of industrial capitalism, or the setting up of the purely national State. By them and by us all it is accepted that the Fatherland is worth more than any individual interests however well founded. The ques- tion is then, whether the German Empire can face the future confidently without an alliance with Austria-Hungary, whether it is perhaps even. true that we are stronger without Austria-Hungary than with it? It is this that we deny. We have already said elsewhere that the German Empire is too small by itself to defy permanently future general attacks. This statement is an undeniable inference from this war up to the present, and needs no further support, for if we suppose that Austria-Hungary were merely neutral, then we should have to face all the Russian army corps alone ; but if we picture Austria-Hungary as one of the crowd of our enemies, then the position of Germany becomes a military impossibility. Hence the German Empire, for its part, can only give up the idea of a strong and binding alliance with Austria-Hungary if another equally safe and equally natural alliance can take its place. This is, however, difficult to imagine after all that has happened in the war. An alliance with France, as we have already said, would be very advantageous both to us and to the French, but what French Government could conclude it now? An alliance with England is still theoretically conceivable, not- withstanding the mutual ‘‘ songs of hate,’”’ but who would vouch for its permanence ? And how much would even a friendly England help us in the face of a second Seven Years War on the Continent ? An alliance with Russia offers less security for the Empire, and is less in accordance with national sentiment than union with Austria-Hungary, and its permanence could only be attained at the expense of a joint partition of Austria-Hungary. It must not be for- gotten that according to Bismarck’s Gedanken und Erinner- ungen the traditional understanding between Russia and Prussia was broken off from 1876 onwards, because Bismarck, with the approval of the whole of Germany, was prepared to offer our lives to protect the position of Austria-Hungary
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as a Great Power! This was the decision upon which the present war depends; this was the policy, at the height of his creative work, of that master whom we ought all to — endeavour to follow. The die was cast then in favour of Mid-Europe.
Think for a moment, please, whether it would be endurable if our Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs returned from the Peace Congress with the news that we were again in the same position as before 1876; that is, faced by the choice between Russia and Austria! We should all know what that must signify: the future sacrifice of the Danubian Monarchy! This is where the “ Lesser Germany ’”’ ideal leads us if it is logically carried out. Of course this final result would not be openly spoken of at the outset, but in Austria and Hungary a slackening of our friendship would at once be understood in this sense, and another alliance would instantly be sought at whatever cost. The international situation is such that no half security will serve Austria- Hungary. There a firm footing is essential. Moreover, the Germany which deserts its comrade after such a stupendous war would later on be betrayed in its turn by its fresh partner! This is of all things the most certain. We shall discuss later on the economic aspects of association with Russia or England.
* # * * * *
Strong opposition to Mid-Europe is also to be expected on the part of Austria and Hungary, and so far as I can see in the following five typical forms :
The Imperial privy councillor, well proved in the service of the Crown, has contributed largely to the maintenance of government in that country of complicated race problems without always meeting with the recognition he deserved. But he has grown up in such intimacy with the idea of the ancient Austrian dignity, and so full of dislike for Prussian forms and informalities, that he will admit Prussia as little as possible into his sphere. of activity. That North German embodiment of unrest would do more harm than good in ancient Austria, where delicate handling is required; and
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he simply does not believe that the Prussians would ever allow him to have any say in the matter. He regards the Prussian system as a strange machine, whose efficiency is not to be denied, but whose noise and mechanical accuracy make him shudder. He himself prefers to go on with good hand-work in the old style; even if it wastes time it is at any rate more human.
The Austrian, and also the Hungarian Slavs (Tzechs, Poles, Ruthenians, Slovaks, Slovenians, Dalmatians), as well as the Hungarian Roumanians, do not as a matter of course expect very much benefit from any fraternisation with the German Empire. For the most part they keep up a continual quarrel with the Germans lhving m then com- munal and provincial districts; consequently they look on them as thetr domestic enemies and are accustomed to judge the whole of Germany by them. Fortunately they hke the Russians even less, as a rule, than the Germans, and they are glad to remam Austrian, only they deplore that arrangement of the universe which compels them to hve between two great bodies of people who are so alien to them. They will endeavour m various ways to take the opportunity of the foundation of Mid-Europe m order to secure special national advantages for themselves, simce, as born particularists, they are only mterested m a mmeor degree m its formation; their first thought ts for ther special
The Magyar Hungarians are mm a very different posrtion. Therr authority depends on the defeat and restramt of the Russians, for tt is evident that one of the first principles of @ conquering Russia would be to humiltate the Magvars for the benefit of the Hungarian Slavs, and perhaps even of the Roumanians. The Magyar State can onlv continue to exist, in its present form, as an mdependent political factor, im alliance with one of the non-Slav Great Powers. This is what binds the Magyars of almost every shade of cpinton so firmly to the German Empire. Thev are well aware that Austria alone cannot protect them from the Russans. So far then as a German-Hungaran friendship ts concerned we
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and the Magyars agree perfectly, but when it is a question of the Mid-European constitution, which will sooner or later become necessary, it appears that the existing relations between Hungary and Austria are far too vague to admit of a new Mid-European adjustment being based without difficulty on the Austro-Hungarian Ausgleich. And since the Magyar is by nature and tradition a stickler for ‘‘ State rights,’’ and often more of a theorist than an opportunist, he may, even with the best intentions, prove a serious obstacle at some given later time. Since we must discuss these matters more in detail in another place, it will suffice here to direct attention to them.
The Austrian German, perhaps also the German in Hun- gary, and more particularly the German in Siebenburgen, is naturally eager to obtain any sort of political unity with the German Empire. But in many cases he asks for something rather different from what we Germans of the Empire could grant him. Hundreds of times the Germans of the Ostmark, left outside Bismarck’s Empire, have called to us: ‘‘ Come over and help us!’ Equally often they have been answered : “ It will not do, you owe your political allegiance to Austria or to Hungary and we must not interfere!’’ With us in the German Empire, thanks to Bismarck’s training, State policy comes before the policy of any nationality, hence we do and have done nothing which could seem like incitement to a German Irredenta. Italians, Serbs, Roumanians, or Russians from one side of the frontier are continually calling to and tempting their race-fellows on the other. But we, respecting the connection made by the alliance, have often been obliged to let our brothers call in vain. This has produced a definite feeling of annoyance; to what purpose is my Fatherland so powerful, if it cannot stretch out a helping hand to me across the border? The Germans in Austria have, in a difficult situation, done much for the German race and for the Austrian State, for which they receive no tangible reward from either side. Even now, in the Great War, they supply comparatively the largest number of soldiers in Austria; suffer, as they tell us, the
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most severe losses; subscribe relatively the most to the Austrian war loans; and yet are not certain for a single day that, after the war, when the Parliamentary majority becomes effective again, they will not be excluded from a share in the government and, in spite of this, have to bear the greater part of the cost of restoring Galicia. In this state of abandonment they once more stretch out their hands to the German Empire to demand that no fresh treaty be made with Austria which does not afford them guarantees against political exclusion and oppression. From their point of view they are not unjustified, but it is by no means certain whether the German Empire is in a position to delay its new Central European treaty of alliance until the very necessary regulations for the nationalities within Austria and Hungary are completed. And if they are completed, the question will still be a domestic affair for Austria and Hungary. The German Empire might indeed discuss it in a friendly manner, but certainly must not come forward from outside like a dictator, lest the whole movement for unity, so essential for all, be endangered from the outset. I know that one section of our German brothers m Austria were in such a position before the war that they would then rather have given up Austria for lost and have preferred to be included in the German Empire. But I believe that during the war insight into the coherence and responsi- bility demanded by all the evidence of history has so developed among these very Germans that they will now realise in future, better than before, that it is a national necessity for Germany to continue Bismarck’s policy of 1876 and 1879 of maintaining the integrity of Austria. Moreover, in many cases the racial impulse towards the German Fatherland is oddly counteracted by the Austrian interests of the German industrials. Of course there are a great many non-German industrials, but nevertheless the Germans form such an important and outstanding group among the rest that they must be counted here as a separate type. As a rule the German producer, as a man and a German, desires the closest possible union with his great
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and beloved home country, but as a man of business he occasionally remarks: ‘‘ God protect me from my friends ! ”’ This feeling is very different in different branches of industry. Often the competition of the German Empire constitutes the greatest danger for Austro-German industry, or is at least so regarded. We shall go into details later, here we only wish not to overlook the tendency altogether. Non-German industrials, too, may be possessed by a like anxiety.
Of the relation of the Crown and of the supreme command of the Army to the Mid-European scheme we shall purposely avoid speaking here, because this is beyond the range of our knowledge, and discussion might perhaps do more harm than good.
Of such a mixed, if not more mixed, nature is the recep- tion given to the concept of a Central European union in Austria and Hungary. But here, too, the ultimately decisive consideration will not be what advantage or disadvantage this or that group hopes or fears, but whether or no it is desired to maintain the Dual Monarchy asa State. Whoever desires this must also desire the Central European alliance, because an Austria-Hungary without allies would be even more wholly lost than a German Empire without allies ; and because no other alliance in the world can give the Dual Monarchy the necessary support.
We have before mentioned it as theoretically possible that, in the case of a weakening of Bismarck’s alliance, which Graf Andrassy concluded for Austria-Hungary in 1879 with the assent of his Imperial master, the Danube Empire, remembering the Seven Years War, might some time range itself with Russia and France. In fact, we admit that there are individuals in Vienna, or in the Slav districts, who do occasionally think something of this sort. This is the only effective threat which Austrian statesmen have available for us, for a bare alliance between Austria-Hungary and England would be just as platonic as a war waged by the Dual Monarchy alone against England. It is conceivable that a. Franco-Austro-Russian union against the German
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Empire might be a serious danger, and, in fact, almost must be so. It is questionable, indeed, whether the Austro- Hungarian Crown could rely on either its people or its troops for a new Seven Years War of this kind, but we are willing to admit this, with some important reservations, for the sake of theoretical accuracy. What would Austria- Hungary gain thereby in the end? Even in case of victory she would be reduced to the level of a crumbling Balkan State dependent on Russia’s goodwill, crumbling because the Slavs would be pulling with all their might towards Russia, and the Germans towards Germany. An Austria which adopted this course would have lost its eastern frontier, its future in the south, and its task in the world’s history, and therewith its inner unifying force. Such a policy might be contemplated in case of need for psycho- logical reasons, but not from political considerations. And since the old Austro-Hungarian Monarchy possesses a wealth of political feeling such as exists practically nowhere else in the world, we may safely reckon that if a choice has to be made it will be founded not on temporary humours, but on more fundamental laws of development, which means that the Central European alliance will be, in fact, supported and maintained notwithstanding all the politico-legal and other difficulties connected with it.
Many readers may think it scarcely fitting for us to discuss at all such grievous and dismal possibilities. But in a political discussion of this kind all imaginable cases ought to be reckoned with, because it must always be presumed that each such case is being taken into account somewhere or other. Such investigations do not make cheerful read- ing, but it is not our business to make an inspiring appeal, but rather to discuss in a manner intelligible to doubters and opponents. Before two Empires bind themselves for better or for worse they must have a thorough preliminary stock-taking. Austria-Hungary is as independent as the German Empire, has absolute freedom of action, and has the moral right to make any use of this freedom which offers permanence and prosperity to the Danubian Empire,
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even if it is displeasing to the North German Empire. Austria is concerned with Austrian policy, and Hungary with Hungarian policy. We do not dispute the formal right to adopt the position of opponent, we only assert that a dissolution of the permanent alliance by Austria-Hungary would and must be a kind of suicide. From the Austro- Hungarian standpoint the alliance with Germany is less a sentimental obligation than a pressing necessity for self- preservation. * * * * * *
But we have not yet got to the bottom of the matter. One final and most difficult question still remains to be examined: Whether the Danubian Monarchy can be kept in existence at all with or without an alliance? This ques- tion is actually discussed both within and without the black and yellow boundaries, and we must not overlook it, because there are serious German politicians who will hear nothing of the Central European union, for no reason but that they consider a split in the hitherto federated Dual Monarchy to be historically unavoidable, and because there were or are serious German-Austrians, and also members of other nations in Austria and Hungary, who agree with them. We, for our part, do not share this opinion. If we did ' we should not write about the future of Mid-Europe. We are optimists. But since pessimists exist, their opinions also must be examined.
Pessimists are no new phenomena in or out of Austria. When Maria Theresa, a queen unsurpassed by the ablest men, and founder of effective home government, ascended the throne, the doubters said that it was beyond human power to breathe life into the State. And from that time onwards the whisperings and mutterings about a fatal illness have never ceased, but the sick man has gone on living passably well all the same. There have been almost always symptoms of disintegration, but always new signs of life too. And the course of the present war speaks much for the possibilities of life in the Hapsburg State federation. If we Germans of the Empire find here and there less concord
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than we should wish, yet experienced and reliable Austrians tell us that the mobilisation, the conduct of the war, and the administration have gone on much better than they would have thought possible. Strife ceased, pettiness disappeared, slackness vanished, a sense of duty showed itself, the will developed, the State was at hand.
This is not the place to go into all kinds of details about unfortunate experiences during the war of which we hear in private, if for no other reason than that these assertions cannot now be checked. At the end of the war Austria will have the depressing but unavoidable duty of conducting an inquiry into loyalty and disloyalty to the State. Granted that as a rule, after the first mobilisation, it was harder to keep the army up to strength in the non-German and non- Magyar districts than with us, yet we must remember all that has already been said about the position of the Slav in Austria. If we take the past into account in regard to those matters, we shall say in spite of everything: the unity of the State has proved beyond all expectation ! What notions England and Russia had about the progress of the war! They imagined whole nations coming from the Danube to jointhem. There has never been the slightest sign of this.
The most severe trial of the: Dual Monarchy is, of course, connected, both now and in the future after the war, with the ideals of nationality. Without entering here upon an investigation of the nationality question we can yet assert that the highest tension in the disputes concerning it is now relaxed, and that the war is proving a stern master and educator in moderating the demands of the nationalist particularists. The impossibility of sovereign small States with mixed populations is obvious. This does not mean that the different nationalities will forget all their quarrels, but they will regard their disputes as a matter of home and not of foreign politics. They will recognise that a Tzech army, or a Croat General Staff or a purely Magyar Foreign Office, or a Slovenian economic policy or a Galician State Bank must be counted as impracticable. Centralised
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Management will emerge from the Carpathian campaign heavily burdened yet greatly strengthened. Even the Hungarians, who during the war have occupied prominent positions in this Central Management, will be obliged to recognise this. They do not contemplate abandoning any- thing of the principle of Dualism, but they are sufficiently keen-sighted to see that centralisation is technically unavoid- able for reasons of political necessity. If the Government makes use of its present favourable opportunity it will re-create and extend what Maria Theresa brought into being, political consciousness! Nothing will help more towards this than joint work at the new and important task of fashioning Mid-Europe: begin a fresh epoch !
So long as the Austro-Hungarian Central Government or the responsible representative of the dynasty has nothing else in view but to maintain the existing state of things with the help of small reforms, there will be little to grip the imagination of the youth of all the nationalities owing allegiance to it. But when once it raises the banner of a new epoch its gates will be thronged by able men. Austria- Hungary undoubtedly possesses amongst all its peoples proportionately numerous talents and noble and effective gifts. But hitherto political employment has offered too few tasks demanding a broad outlook, to attract ability. This may and shall be different now. A new State-creating enthusiasm will be wrung out by force and necessity. It rests with the Crown to awaken all spirits by the watch- word, Mid-Europe, and to let the fight for trivialities appear indeed trivial. It rests with the Crown whether there shall be Spring or Autumn after the war. It is optimistic to believe that it will unhesitatingly choose Spring, but there is surely no cause to give up hope.
An old State can endure much provided its foreign defences are assured. Turkey offers a remarkable instance ofthis. That Turkey lost one piece of territory after another was due to her old-fashioned army and the doubtful status of the advisers and instructors from the rival countries. Now that the Young Turk movement is beginning to
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revive in virtue of the Prussian reorganisation of the army, matters are rapidly beginning to look more favour- able. But Austria-Hungary was always more stable than Turkey, and has never become so weak from a military standpoint. Hence usually the area of the State has been maintained, even in the most difficult times, and hence, too, there is no reason now to regard the further salvation of the Danubian Monarchy as improbable. There is no natural law asserting that a complete cure will be attained, but it may be attained, and we desire to attain it. We Germans of the Empire must desire it.
The Austrians, however, must not take it in bad part when I remark that it is largely their own fault if pessimistic opinions about their country are too widely prevalent in the world. There isa special sort of political criticism in Vienna which thinks itself interesting and important when it paints gloomy pictures. This, in Vienna, is done with no very serious intention, but is rather like the daily grumblings of an old lady who would not feel it quite the thing to acknow- ledge that she had eaten and slept well. This artificial melancholy is, in fact, purely zsthetic, and has very little to do with politics, but foreigners attach a political meaning to such expressions of weariness. If, for instance, it had been rumoured in Paris before the war that the Bavarians were on the point of separating from the German Empire, we should have raised our glasses and cried, ‘‘ Good luck!” But if the news appeared one evening in the Corriere della Sera or in some other foreign paper that the Tzechs were threatening the Austrian State and had ready ears for foreign whispers of intrigue, the Vienna cafés would have sighed out, ‘ Just what we expected of those Tzechs!’’ No doubt there is occasionally reason to sigh, but it need not be done so openly or with such satisfaction. If Austria herself will recognise her attacks of pessimism for what they really are, that is for esthetic politics, then foreigners too will begin to respect her as more healthy. We have confidence in you, have confidence in yourselves !
* * * %* ok e
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The outcome of our inquiry, so far, has been to show the necessity for a close union of both Empires. Meanwhile we have assumed in various places without further argument that the new alliance must be richer in content than the present one, but we have not yet been able to explain why the existing mutual alliance will not suffice longer.
The present Dual Alliance, called for a time the Triple Alliance, and then again the Dual Alliance, which dates from October 16, 1879, was a defensive alliance in the event of one of the two Central European Powers being attacked by a third party. How and when exactly such a case would arise cannot be gathered from the text of the treaty. Indeed, so far as I can understand it, the event referred to in the treaty has never, in the strict sense of the text, actually occurred, indeed hardly can occur, for by the time the fact of being attacked is, so to speak, juridically evident, any readiness to help would be too late. The really effective content of the Dual Alliance was conse- quently in part more and in part less than a treaty. More in so far as mutual goodwill was genuinely ready for any sort of complication that might arise. But less in that any compulsion to recognise the event referred to in the alliance was lacking. We have seen in the case of Italy, the treaty with which in any case differed somewhat from the German- Austrian-Hungarian treaty, how pliable a carefully drafted text becomes in this respect if an ill will undertakes its interpretation. Since each new case is different in form it must, as a matter of course, be discussed as new by the two Cabinets. This is in the nature of things so long as there are two Foreign Offices with different aims, methods and leaders. But the two Foreign Offices must be retained, as we shall explain more carefully later. The consequence is that political treaties concerning defensive alliances cannot be regarded as in themselves binding on a nation.
When, for example, in Ig1I, in connection with the Agadir demonstration, we were in danger of a Franco- Russian war about Morocco, without its being possible for us to assert an actual attack by the French, it remained, so
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far as we knew, an open question whether the Austro- Hungarian army would help us at all, since it was not bound to do so by the text of the treaty.
When in the summer of 1914 the heir to the Austrian throne and his wife were murdered by boyish criminals at Serajewo, the German Empire was not obliged by the clauses in the treaty to trouble itself at all about the matter. That the Emperor Wilhelm and his advisers did take action was in excess of the treaty obligation. Germany offered her life-blood to Austria-Hungary, and the latter thereupon accepted the enemies of Germany as her own. The Great War is thus much more than a treaty war, it is a partnership of sentiment, as though we had already grown into unison.
Suppose now that the two Empires simply return to the old relation at the end of the Great War; that would be something less than what now exists during the war. Less just because this brotherhood of blood was not legally demanded of us, and we all know this well enough. But how ought the future relation to be put into words? We have forebodings both in North and South that the future will bring us face to face with yet more difficult matters, that the world will remain for us full of dark and strange dangers. How then can we mutually safeguard ourselves, lest one day, for whatever human reason, the partnership
_should prove non-existent ?
The safeguard certainly does not consist in mere political treaties. No treaty can be formulated between two sovereign States which has not its loopholes and omissions. The safeguard lies in a community of life in its many aspects, political, economic and personal; in the voluntary, syste- matic interchange between the two countries, in the com- munity of ideas, of history, of culture, of work, of legal concepts, of a thousand and one things large and small. Nothing less than the attainment of this common existence will bind us really securely. But even the will to attain it is of immense value. And this is the spirit in which we proclaim Mid-Europe as the goal of our development.
+ * * * * *
PARTNERSHIP IN WAR AND ITS RESULTS 31
In trivial matters, and those of minor importance, it is possible to draw up and determine upon complete plans or estimates, but for a scheme of the magnitude and difficulty of this in regard to Mid-Europe, such a proceeding would be most unprofitable. Nothing is easier for the expert than to enumerate ten or twelve points in a programme. Something as follows :
The same recruiting laws. . Mutual military inspection.
Joint committee for foreign affairs.
Joint boards for railways, the control of rivers, etc. The same coinage and measures.
The same laws for banks and commerce.
The same assessment for military expenses. Mutual liability for national debts.
Equality of customs tariffs.
Joint collector of taxes.
The same factory laws.
The same laws for companies, syndicates, etc.
This sort of thing might be continued for quite a long time, but it is meaningless. In real life problems come up in succession, and no one can tell beforehand in what order or in what selection. Even for political parties the list of demands in their programme is more often a source of weakness than of strength. On the one hand people are deterred by the list because they cannot tolerate one of the points enumerated, whilst they keenly deplore the absence of another. On the other hand the party leaders them- selves tie their hands unnecessarily, and often are quite unable to accomplish what they have pledged themselves to. They desire and ought to be judged by their deeds in each case as it occurs, and they ought to realise, step by step according to their best judgment, the common ideals and aims of the party. This practical conception, resulting from party experience, applies to a yet greater extent to the State. It is true that an able Minister President may be able to make one or two promises which can be redeemed
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in a comparatively near future, but he will never lavishly make all the promises that he would carry out were he a Zeus. If, then, a new and important political structure comes into the sphere of practical politics, a kind of super- State over other States, an Empire of Empires, it would be a direct sin against the ideal of this new creation to try to stuff it to overflowing from the outset with tasks that would occupy ten or twenty years. Each item on the programme given above will require years of work to accomplish. Many will be attempted in vain. Others, to which to-day we give no thought, will become urgent to-morrow. Politics are a work of real life done for the sake of that life.
It would be better to attempt to indicate from the outset those departments with which the super-State must not interfere, but we know from the history of the German Imperial Constitution how elastic the boundary-line between Empire and individual State has remained after more than forty years. We shall refer in the chapter on constitutional problems to some of the principles of division which are relevant in this connection. The essential thing now is not an academic general authorisation lasting through one or two lifetimes, but the establishment of an effective starting- point for the new institution itself. We shall investigate further, later on, how this may be done.
Nor must it be thought that Mid-Europe can be called into being merely by laws, regulations and penalties. It is at least equally important that the boundary between the federated States shall be non-existent for all important groups of intellectual and material interests, as is partly the case already: community in banks, syndicates, trade unions, craftsmen’s guilds, agricultural conferences, meetings of economists, historians, lawyers, doctors and many others. Hitherto such super-State groups have generally only ex- tended from us to the German-Austrians, but it is necessary that a common atmosphere should prevail throughout Mid- | Europe. All this must not be hindered secretly or openly by the Government, but must be definitely promoted, so
PARTNERSHIP IN WAR AND ITS RESULTS 33
that a community of life may develop from above down- wards as a result of comradeship in the alliance. # + # # # +
The cry comes to us from the midst of the war: “‘ We must be a single nation of brothers, inseparable in adversity or danger!’’ This sublime call from living and dying is the key-note for the coming epoch. Not, indeed, that there has been no friction in the conduct of the war! Such friction has occurred, and does still occur, and often seems so disturbing to those most closely affected that they have no great desire to let their neighbours become too intimate. Officers and soldiers of the German Empire who have come back from the joint fighting-lines often speak bitterly against the Austrians and Hungarians, condemning them for want of punctuality, lack of marching efficiency, and inaccuracy. In these matters the difficulties of the polyglot army are often much too little considered. People forget, too, that the Austro-Hungarian army missed the schooling of 1870. These Imperial German military critics do not realise that the new portions of the German army in 1870 were of varying values, and needed first of all amalgamation with the efficient Prussian army. Moreover there are mutual complaints occasionally in the German army itself. This does not mean that any doubt is felt of the indomitable courage of every section of the Central European Army. — Even the severest critics praise the genuine and unreserved devotion of the Austrian and Hungarian troops in the face of danger, and their good and faithful comradeship. On the other hand, both Austrians and Hungarians complain of the German, and especially of the Prussian, want of con- sideration and overbearing manners, and so on. On both sides there has been some stupidity, and disagreement in details has often gone deep. But all this only signifies a succession of incidental events. Comradeship in fighting and death is a much greater thing than these unpleasant matters, to which we only refer because they are more harmful if unexpressed. There is no progress without friction. And indeed such half and secondary tones are
Cc
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never absent from human endeavour. Even m the army of a single individual State not a single day of the war passes without collisions between transport wagons, without conflicting orders, without omissions and wrong judgments. Can it be expected that two armies that have not fought side by side for a hundred years should at once act like Siamese twins ? When at last the guns are silent and those who return home are at work once again in house and shop, then these transitory happenings will sink into confused impressions and ideas, but the vital will endure: so many nationalities faced by one death in one struggle! After the war only our common victory will illumine us.
And if once again, which God forbid, the storm-bell should ring for Central Europe, this war will form a memo- rable background; fathers will tell their sons how they were carried from the firing-line by trusty comrades with whom they could hardly speak. We do not yet know how different all we Central Europeans shall have become after the war. We have experienced the full weight and harsh- ness of international politics, we have lost more brothers and children than any one generation before, but we have also received more help from God and man than ever did heroes of an earlier time. We are losing much of our social harshness in the war, the class war for individual interests is relaxing, former enemies find themselves loyally united heroes, nations who formerly only looked askance at one another are mutually friendly. It is our high fate to experience what to later generations will seem like a sacred legend. With this war behind us we could remove mountains. Now or never the lasting unity between East and West will develop, and Mid-Europe will stand between Russia and the Western Powers.
CHAPTER II
OF THE PREVIOUS HISTORY OF CENTRAL EUROPE
Ir an historical entity is to be made of Mid-Europe, a fresh historical consciousness must grow up, for economic considerations, however serious they may be, will not of themselves suffice to arouse the necessary enthusiasm. Of course a scheme of this nature cannot be carried out without numerous calculations as to material advantages and dis- advantages, but it is a false rendering of history to believe or wish to believe that great political transformations can be accomplished by the spirit of calculation alone. Each new social creation has its birthplace in the human soul, and this soul is never merely economic; from time imme- morial and still to-day, it is compounded of impulses and desires, material and ideal, definite and vague, variously mingled but yet pressing forwards.
A revolution in thought is needed comparable to the change of soul which preceded or followed the founding of the Empire by Bismarck; a re-estimation, not indeed of all, but of many accepted values. If we go nowadays into our German Reichstag we notice that it is only for certain minor affairs that Prussians, Bavarians, Saxons, Wiirttem- bergers, Hessians, Hanoverians or Mecklenburgers sit together. Our political parties have throughout lost their provincial character in. relation to general questions of State: they think Imperially! During the war this Imperial consciousness has shown itself with especially remarkable power. There may indeed still be daily conflicts of interests among us Germans, but there is no spirit of separatism. Things are naturally somewhat different in
35
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the case of our foreign-speaking fellow-citizens, but they too hold their own in the war with courage and endurance, for the unity of the Empire. This complete agreement in principle is the greatest triumph of Bismarck’s work as founder ; for when the German Empire was “ constructed,”’ as people used to say in those days, the Prusso-German spirit of unity existed only in desire, not in fact. In those days the individual States still had their own history, their own pride and their own sensitiveness. Many centuries of quarrelsome and turbulent individual history lay behind them. Often the trivialities of their mutual relationships are hardly to be called history. The Germans were a non- politically minded race of good fellows and servants, intellectually active, but with little mind for the interests of the State. They went each his own way, like sheep without a shepherd. But in the interval, out of all this rusticity and confusion a Prusso-German tradition has developed, that is, we have each saved out of our very chequered pasts something that we as Germans can carry on with us as our joint inheritance, whilst we have let much sink into oblivion of the old quarrels and envy and injustice. Some wounds, indeed, are not yet quite healed, as we see in the case of the Guelphs. But who still deplores nowadays that Prussia deprived the Saxon royal house of its most fertile territories ? Who nowadays gives a thought to the fact that nearly all the federated States took the field against Prussia in early days and again in 1866? Who now objects to the fact that Frankfurt-on-Main was annexed in those days? The whole nation is conscious, without putting it much into words, that no progress can be made as an historical entity without a cancelling of old. bonds. The past is past! Let the dead bury their dead. They have served their age as we wish to serve ours. Honour to their name and to their ashes !
The political spirit of Mid-Europe, if it is to be of much value, must now take possession of us to the extinction of numerous old disagreements, for there have been many harsh, acute and cruel wars between Austria and Prussia,
. PREVIOUS HISTORY OF CENTRAL EUROPE 37
and between Austria and Bavaria. Here, too, the rubbish of centuries needs to be cleared away before the new building can be put up. Silesia, Bohemia and the Tyrol have witnessed amazing struggles. We are not at present con- cerned with the fights with and about the Tzechs, the Hungarians, the Poles and the Serbs, but are considering in the first instance the battles waged between the old German Austria and the equally German Powers, Prussia and Bavaria. Our ancient banners have all been carried in opposition to one another throughout the old German Imperial territory. ‘We will leave them hanging peacefully on the walls, for no stalwart regiment is ashamed of its earlier bravery. But we may well allow some dust to ' gather on these symbols of bygone strife, for new banners are now coming to the front, honourable insignia of our indescribably great common war. Let us act on the principle: to understand all is to forgive all. We, for our part, can understand how the golden kingdom of Austria had to resist the rise of Prussia with all its might. You can understand that the energy existing in the North German States had to work out its course. We can both understand that the politics of the eighteenth century were the politics of conquering princes, and that under the conditions of the time it could not be otherwise. You went to Upper Italy as conquerors just as King Friedrich II. went to Silesia. A hundred wars, little and big, were fought out within the boundaries of what is now Austria so that it might become Austria ; a hundred fights were necessary so that Prussian- Germany might come into existence. This was and is the way of the world. To-day we can hardly realise how at. one time neighbouring towns and princedoms could con- template feuds with each other. Formerly they laid siege to one another, now they talk and eat together. Now, too, the honoured successor of the Empress Maria Theresa can receive the descendant of King Friedrich II.: we are partners in victory ; your enemy is our enemy !
We must extinguish between North and South the feud that existed before Napoleon’s time, that showed itself
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during that time in bitter misunderstandings, and has since embittered the common life. Looking back we shall - see both Friedrich II. and Maria Theresa as two splendid "warrior types of the same period, souls in the same Valhalla, sovereigns inspired by a like spirit of uncompromising foresight. We shall even accept Metternich and Baron von Stein as part of the same picture, far apart though they were in real life: the one a scientific statesman full of a facile, industrious elegance, the other a prophet inspired by a difficult national morality. We of the German Empire will purposely forget the suppression of the joyous youth of our national movement in the Conferences of Aachen, Karlsbad and Vienna, we shall know no more about Olmiitz, or about the pressure on the Frankfurt Federal Diet ; we shall be patient when we think of the negotiations against Prussia which Beust in Vienna carried on with France, for all this is past and has an adequate explanation in history. In like manner, too, Austria will forget that at the Vienna Congress Prussia was ready to take the field with France against her, that the Customs Union was directed and carried on by Prussia against Austria, that in 1859 Prussia did not help Austria against France and Italy. Both sides must shelve the irritations roused by the Crimean War. Our common frontiers, formerly so often overstepped, are from henceforth to be permanent boundaries, no longer frontiers dividing two foreign Powers, but inland boundaries between federated countries. And the Emperor Wilhelm I., dead a quarter of a century ago, will figure in the history of our Central European union as a brother of the Austro-Hungarian Emperor and King Franz Joseph I., who, by a miracle, still dwells among us, to pronounce the blessing of a revered and beloved old age upon the new epoch, after so many ancient quarrels, an Attinghaus of the newborn and saving peace of nations.
Were Bismarck, hero and centre of many combats, to appear amongst us again for the peace negotiations after the Great War, not only would he be hailed with infinite confidence from all sides and by every party in the German
PREVIOUS HISTORY OF CENTRAL EUROPE 39
Empire, but all the peoples in Austria and Hungary would meet him enthusiastically. Notwithstanding his fight at K6niggratz, he would appear to all of us, from the North Sea to the Bosnian frontier, as the creator of Mid-Europe, the man who dispensed mighty power and justice throughout the centre of the European continent. Would that he were here ! * * * * * *
Forgetfulness is not, however, enough in itself to awaken the new sentiment for Mid-Europe, it will merely be a preparation for further spiritual progress. We must learn to discover the germs and tendencies, the prophecies and strivings of the future in the past. New tasks demand new eyes. This is a very important chapter and merits all the care and devotion of young historians, for historians are ultimately the educators of the people. Their responsibility increases with the democratic interest taken by the people in the State. Cabinet policy in the old style could be fashioned in case of need without historical ideas, by bribery, calculation, political technique and intrigue. But since the masses have become influential in determining the fate of the world, they need to have ideas and aims and meanings with regard to future happenings. It is true that not every one can read the writings of a Treitschke or a Friedjung, - but the stream of their knowledge flows through a hundred channels of speech, school and newspaper, to the cottages of the citizen and voter. Hence it may be allowable to insert here some special discussion in outline of the people and of the nature of its history.
In speaking in such a connection of the historian as a political educator, I see on his right hand the philosopher and on his left the poet. I regard him not merely as a seeker into the memorable events of the past, but as an exponent of the discoveries made by himself and his fellow- workers. In the first instance, indeed, the historian is concerned entirely with facts; he determines what has happened. That is the absolutely indispensable basis of his art, as necessary as the daily renewed inspiration of nature
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is to the pamter. He who loses the discipline of reality is worthless as an artist. But when he has stored up material round him like the stones for a mosaic, he has then to show whether he is more than a collector, whether he has the power to reanimate, to command his material to take form and live. He must breathe something of himself into his material. This even applies to a certain extent to descrip- tions of ancient and long-past peoples and periods. When Mommsen wrote his Roman History, it was a German " history of the Romans, a Roman history expressed in German, a breathing upon the stones so that they cried out. This he was able to do because through his experience of the rise of the young German State he could live out the times of the first ancient Empire of the West. But the historian who portrays our own ancestors, so that we can inherit and carry on their traditions, must have even more sympathetic insight than he who describes far distant times. Out of the thousand things which he might relate he selects those which seem to him to promote or obstruct, from the standpoint of his ideal of life. The painter Max Liebermann once said to me, ‘‘ Art is omission.” By this phrase he distinguished mechanical copying which indeed leaves out much, but only such things as chance not to come on to the paper, from artistic inspiration which can recognise the essential matters and their accessories, which deliberately omits non-essentials, and emphasises what it is imperative to take into account. In the pursuit of truth this can never happen from petty and sophistical motives, but must spring of itself from a rare “ world- philosophy.”’
Bismarck himself read much history, and that history or historical poetry of the finest type. Living in what he read he finally proved in his Gedanken und Erinnerungen an unrivalled exponent of statesmanlike ideals. The last and best thing he bequeathed us was his account of himself: very intimate and not without omissions, mistakes and partialities, but teeming with the penetration of wisdom. He sang the swan song of his own epoch of empire-making,
PREVIOUS HISTORY OF CENTRAL EUROPE 41
and uttered notes in so doing which will only be properly heard when the next new epoch dawns. He wrote for us and for our times.
However, I shall not speak at present of his wonderful testament, but of the historians who were his predecessors and escort. There was a school of historians of the foundation of the Empire in the stricter sense of the word : Arndt, Raumer, Dahlmann, Gervinus, Hauser, Baumgarten, Droysen, Sybel, Treitschke.
The men differed among themselves, but they were essentially of the same family. They helped themselves and many others to an understanding of the coming National State. They, with their wave of German national Liberalism, reached further than the Old Master Ranke, who in his survey of the whole of Europe embodied the older inter- nationalism of the pre-Napoleonic Christian and aristocratic . Culture. Many of them have not survived their own period because they belonged to it all too completely. But in the golden days of the Prusso-German State such thinkers and poets were needed, their task was accomplished then. Mid-Europe will need such people now. It will need more than statesmen to think it out aright. The statesman is essential in his own place in the forefront of the political scheme. But in the background there must be a whispering and rushing from the far distant past; visions of ancient knights, of a passionate people, of battles lost and won, of a common emergence from bog and forest. The evolutionary basis of history needs to be discovered, the Will which controls matter, before and above any description by Reason.
The historians of the period of the foundation of the German Empire can be divided into two principal groups, the Medizval-Imperial and the Protestant-Prussian. It is true that I have tried in vain, with the help of an experienced friend, to classify every separate case under these heads. There are noticeable intermediate types: yet at bottom the distinction holds, Medieval-Imperial or Prussian! The con- tribution of the first group has just now, at the beginning
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of the Mid-European epoch, a renewed freshness of effect, for our medizval period is common to all types of Germans, whether in North or South or East. But the second group, the Prussian historians, have imbued us Imperial Germans with something which cannot equally be regarded as a unifying possession for the Germans of the Danube. For this second theme owes its origin to the fight of separation between North and South. Hence, if now during the Great War we turn our steps towards Mid-Europe, we are in perpetual conflict on the way with these teachers of our own youth, especially with von Treitschke, Sybel, and their colleagues. For if they are absolutely and permanently right, then Bismarck was wrong in 1878. But they were only absolutely right for a time. They remained reliable in much for a longer period, but the game grew more exten- sive, the complete vision out-distanced their revelation, and, as we recognise their limitations, a new spiritual country opens out before us. We must here enter into this point rather more at length, because without some definite study of this portion of history, the Mid-European ideal will seem merely like an old guide-book showing a few new railway connections. There is also much food for thought in the fact that the historians of the last decades are all more or less removed from the Empire-making history. They are occupied either, like H. Delbriick, with purely organising and military statesmanship as such, or like Helmolt and Schafer, with overseas international politics, or like Gumplo- wicz and Lamprecht, with the history of social and psycho- logical culture, or above all with the calm critical estimation of past struggles, like Friedjung in Austria. * * * * * +
All earlier history is primarily a history of princes. The most determined republican is powerless to alter this, for in those days political feeling was as yet non-existent amongst the governed. It will prove a vain task to attempt to write a history of the civilisation of the nations without princes or popes. Such a history is constitutionally defec- tive, since every servant’s coat has first been worn by a
PREVIOUS HISTORY OF CENTRAL EUROPE 43
gentleman, and all household furniture has first had its place in the rooms of a princess. And even nowadays the rulers remaining to us out of the multitude of early sovereigns still serve as our models in many things in life, and are supreme over our great armies in war and peace. Theories to the contrary notwithstanding, this is the fact ! Thus we must look upon the German medizval period as a history of the Emperors in the first place, before we can pass from them to the people.
The early German Emperors are Central European figures in the fullest sense of the word, and the type is thus only now becoming recognisable again. The ‘“‘ Lesser Germany ” party are indeed unable to understand the greatest of the early Emperors. Since 1870, it is true, people have sung much in praise of Barbarossa and Wilhelm I., but the real inner connection between the two characters was lack- ing. To-day, during this war that extends from the Alps to Anatolia, to-day Barbarossa rises up out of the River Selef in distant Turkey.
Our people only know particulars about the most import- ant of the early German Emperors: Karl the Great, Hein- rich [., Otto I., Heinrich III., Heinrich IV. (Canossa !), Friedrich Barbarossa, Friedrich II., Rudolf von Hapsburg, Maximilian [., Karl V. But throughout Central Europe, and wherever the German language prevails, a notion is rooted firmly in the hearts of the people that already in those days there was a Mid-European World Power. Even if the coherence of the Empire was often feeble in those days of overgrown forests and poor communications, even if at times the elective imperial dignity seemed hardly more powerful than the old elective monarchy in Poland or Hungary, yet, throughout the Middle Ages there existed in essence a desire for a united Power ruling from Jutland to the Adriatic Sea, and even to Sicily. Even apart from Karl V.’s Burgundian and Spanish inheritance, the western boundary of Central Europe ran about where the Germans and French are now entrenched. It began at Bruges and Ghent, extended southwards almost as far as St. Quentin,
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included Verdun and Toul, and in the most vigorous times took in Besancon, Lyon, Vienne, and even Avignon. The eastern boundary certainly varied very much according to whether Pomerania, Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia were joined to the Empire or not. North and south of the Alps, however, a supreme authority was exercised with but few intervals from the time of Karl the Great to that of Karl V. This authority was indeed in the characteristic medieval way not always obeyed, but it was recognised as existing in principle. It will from henceforth be easier than before to regard as our forerunner this ancient Empire, extensive and, on the whole, powerful as it was. Neither Imperial Austria nor Royal Prussia, when separated from each other, were quite in a position to carry on the Imperial tradition, because each only possessed a part of the original whole. For centuries the Empire of the Carolingians, the Ottos and the Hohenstaufen, has been non-existent and will be so until it is born again out of the union between the Hapsburgs and the Hohenzollerns, between the Frisians and the Illy- rians, between the Prussians and the Tyrolese. In the more distant past vague feehngs of community have already subsisted between them. There was even a time when Warsaw and Cracow were counted as belonging to the Hansa League. People from all parts of Central Europe travelled and rode to the Reichstag. Knights from every department of what is now the German Empire and of the Austro- Hungarian Monarchy journeyed with Friedrich Barbarossa to the Holy Sepulchre. There was, in fact, in medieval Central Europe a peculiar community of life and culture which differed somewhat from anything in the still confusedly intermingled kingdoms of England and France, and had no analogy whatever among the Byzantines, Tartars or Varangians. The Germans occupied the centre of Central Europe, but they drew in the neighbouring peoples on all their borders: the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation. Now, during the Great War, this ancient Empire is striving and pushing under the earth, longing to return after its long sleep. Every aspiration after unity during
PREVIOUS HISTORY OF CENTRAL EUROPE 45
the many confused centuries that have intervened has been an after-glimmer of its light. And when, a hundred years ago, the wars of liberation against Napoleon united all the German races for a short time, the prophets, with poetic reminiscence, sang, as of old, of Emperor and Empire: Germany shall be one! Are you not conscious, in this super- human war, of the spirits of our ancestors? Do our sons go side by side to their death merely because of a written treaty, or is there something behind? Did not the clouds mass themselves in the sky over the Carpathians and over Antwerp as though in an attempted greeting of knights and war-horses of old? All this was once one Empire! Now it is only the dream of an Empire. What will it become ? + + + * * +
Of all the medieval Empires, Central Europe remained longest in its amorphous and unorganised condition. Whilst France and England on the one hand, and Russia on the other, grew comparatively quickly and easily into single coherent political entities, the centre of the Continent from Sweden to the Neapolitan kingdom remained a territory of innumerable small States. One important reason for this appears, as we have already noticed, to lie in the fact that the Emperor was elected. In all States where the monarch is elected, it is a matter of experience that the electing portions develop to excess at the expense of the whole, for each election multiplies their particularist claims. Besides this the physical character of Central Europe has from the outset encouraged numerous subdivisions, and there was no medieval capital. The Eternal City of Rome was always looked upon as the Imperial City of the Western World and the earlier Emperors generally had itinerant Courts. Hence north of the Alps no resident Government was established or encouraged. Central Europe produced nothing north of the Alps that could be compared with Rome, Constantinople, Moscow, Paris or London, for all our medizval towns lacked the crystallising power of a ruler. Neither Cologne, nor Mainz, nor Frankfurt, Augs- burg, Niirnberg, nor Hildesheim, Liibeck, Leipzig, nor
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Prague, Graz, Vienna, was a European metropolis. It was only with the rise of the Northern and Southern Ostmarks in the later Middle Ages that the older Vienna, and in still more recent times the more modern Berlin, grew up: two centres neither of which was in itself the recognised capital of Central Europe. Perhaps the reader has seen in scientific books an illustration on a large scale of the process of cell- division: one cell acquires two nuclei, and loses its form more and more as these two nuclei recede from one another. It was something the same with Central Europe after the time of Karl V. Or to put it otherwise: the controlling authority moved from west to east and split into two halves, which fought each other. But at the same time there remained an undoubted connection, which could be stretched, and at times also broken, between almost all the sections which had once been united under the Ottos or the Hohenstaufen. The result is a withering up of the Imperial idea on the left bank of the Rhine, and as com- pensation a forward pressure of Germanism into Poland, Lithuania, Bohemia, Moravia, and even into the Southern Slav provinces under Turkish rule.
It is indeed not quite verbally accurate, if we express it so briefly as we have just done, to say that both the new centres of authority became the means of spreading the energy of Germanism into the East. Berlin has done little more than concentrate the effects of work done earlier in East Prussia, Pomerania, and Mecklenburg. And Vienna has generally been more occupied with extending its authority towards the East than with spreading German influence. After all, the main point is this: the two leading Powers that were advancing eastwards were hampered by a form- Jess structure: the German Empire, a country full of splendid cities and cathedrals, with golden crops and precious vineyards, but without military strength of its own and without political feeling. Whilst both struggled forward to the East they quarrelled on their van about Polish terri- tory, on their flank about Silesia and Saxony, and on their rear about all the absurd trivialities of spiritual and worldly
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princes, about the continual lawsuits over the inheritances of the nobility, about the regulation of the boundaries of the pigmy domains, and about the war subsidies of the French and English. This was the pitiable condition of German affairs when, finally, Napoleon I. burst upon them with threats and disturbance. Nowhere else could he have founded the Confederation of the Rhine. But the Confedera- tion of the Rhine was the end, the final complete end of the history of the ancient German Empire. The old Crown was laid aside. Finis Germania! When and how shall it come again? In what intermediary form and by what stages ? * * * * * *
With the Napoleonic period the second stage in the history of Central Europe begins, the stage in which we are still living. The old Imperial drama had been played through to the end. Central Europe was full of historical rubbish, and was pressed backwards and forwards between West and East. The effective power at the beginning of the nineteenth century was in the hands of Napoleon and Alexander I. of Russia, behind whom were the English. This is not the place to discuss the personal characteristics of the Tsar Alexander, but for the purposes of this sketch — he may be regarded as the embodiment of the Russian power and as the predecessor of Nicholas I.
There are two principal advances in the Napoleonic War : one from Paris to Moscow, and one from Moscow to Paris. In both cases Central Europe was pushed, first eastwards
“by Napoleon, and then westwards by the Tsar Alexander.
The advance from Paris to Moscow (1805-1812) might have been held up on the Rhine if “‘ the Empire ”’ had had any real significance ; the advancing army would have been pent up before the Bohmerwald if the two leading Powers had fought in partnership instead of letting themselves be defeated separately, but there was no community of feeling. It was in Napoleon’s “‘ great army ” that the Austrians and Prussians first learnt to march side by side. In June 200,000 French, 45,000 Italians, 79,000 Bavarians, Saxons,
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Hessians, Wiirttembergers, etc., 34,000 Austrians and Hun- garians, 32,000 Prussians, 50,000 Poles, advanced on to Moscow. This was the first occasion on which Central Europe acted in concert.
The advance from Moscow to Paris (1812-1815) presents the reverse picture. In August 1813, 160,000 Russians, 130,000 Austrians and Hungarians, 180,000 Prussians, 20,000 Swedes marched from East to West. The further the allied army pressed onwards towards the west after the Battle of Leipzig, the more it attracted Central European troops to itself, so that finally all Germany crossed the Rhine. This was the second occasion on which Central
Europe acted in concert !
_ It is important to picture to ourselves thus briefly the events of the Napoleonic period, in order not to be left buried in the history of individual States. In the schools of the German Empire we foster a presentation of history which lays all the emphasis on the Prussian struggle for national freedom, and we know that in Austria much more weight is put on the clever diplomacy of the Court which under difficult circumstances saved what there was to save. The first important common experience of the two States is not thought of as ‘“‘ common ”’ in history, because people on both sides are afraid to admit unreservedly that a hundred years ago Napoleonic France could not be repulsed without Russia. When the three rulers of Russia, Austria-Hungary and Prussia stood on the King’s Hill at Leipzig, the Russian was the strongest of them because he had already freed his own country. When Alexander advanced on Paris in triumph, and the Central Europeans accompanied him and — did what he wanted, they still went on quarrelling amongst themselves, and begging the great man from the East to be their friend and arbitrator. Baron von Stein accom- plished his work for his passionately loved German Father- land more by the help of the Russian Tsar than by that of the Prussian King. The events of the Vienna Congress require this background to explain them.
The Vienna Congress re-established Central Europe under
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Russian protection. We will not absolutely condemn the German Constitution as then drawn up. In spite of its obvious weaknesses and faults it was yet the first attempt at the task with which we are now occupied afresh. This task demands a much more careful study, before the new Peace Congress which is ahead of us, than it has received for fifty years. With it will begin the struggle about the future form to be adopted by these provinces and peoples, who now defend themselves independently and successfully against East and West, against France and Russia, and faced by the opposition of England. Formerly Central Europe was a mass of rubble, now we see it hardening into stone before our eyes. The difference is immense. A century has wrought wonders. We now hold the centre by our own strength against Russia, France, and England, and a few others besides. If only Baron von Stein could see it ! * * * * * *
The Napoleonic period has a special significance for the soul of Central Europe, because it planted a political and democratic spirit in the people. Napoleon appeared as the personification of the French Revolution, and as a personal dictator made great reforms both directly and indirectly. The completion of the liberation of the serfs, so far as it could be accomplished in face of the opposition of the old landed proprietors, was the result of Napoleon’s subversive influence on all conditions of life. What Maria Theresa, Joseph II., and Friedrich IT. liked to confer as a favour to the people from above, now, amid the gleam of weapons, took the form of a popular demand. The temporary re- establishment of Poland had a nationalising effect on its neighbours. The rise of Prussia displayed a king urged forward to victory by the popular will. Universal con- scription in Prussia made subjects into supporters of the State. The fragile nature of kingdoms, both great and small, was obvious. Everywhere there was fermentation and effervescence. A new epoch was striving to emerge,
a national epoch. But the new still lacked form and was D
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without tradition and without technical skill in Parliamen- tary politics, so that at first, in the lassitude following on the unspeakable labours of the war, it remained weaker than the practised skill of the old Governments. The Governments made many promises to the developing peoples, without carrying them out, partly because they were un- willing, partly because they could not. The best of the soldiers, like Bliicher, hung their swords upon the wall discontentedly, because this peace and this congress did not- repay their efforts. Mid-Europe had desired to come into existence, but had not done so. Nevertheless the new seed remained in the ground. There was now a period of secret growth from 1815 till 1848. The ideal of a free German Empire in its ancient strength and splendour developed, and, too, the nationalist demands of the frontier peoples developed, hopes, difficulties and possibilities developed. All this happened whilst officially the two Central European Powers were allowing themselves to be led and checked by Russia. Indirectly, first Alexander I. and then Nicolas I. was the Regent of Central Europe. The German provinces lay at the Tsar’s feet like superior Balkan States, which had obtained their freedom from Russia. The East had conquered in the struggle between West and East, and made use of her victory.
Things went on in this way until -in 1848 a fresh wave of democratic feeling surged out of France in the West up to the frontiers of the Russian Empire. The Paris Revolu- tion concerned all Europe. It affected Central Europe as far as Warsaw and Budapest, almost like Napoleonism without Napoleon. The soul of the West swelled up against the authority of the East. This authority was more severely shaken in Vienna than in Berlin, because Vienna had offered less scope to the spirit of the wars of liberation than Berlin, and because the national principle in Hungary risked its great and vigorous passage of arms on this occasion. The middle classes and the townsfolk in Germany and Austria now wanted to put in their word, the educated class demanded a share in general politics, the tax-payers claimed to be
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consulted about theirmoney. Every little street and square resounded once again with German problems, citizens’ rights and constitutional demands. But once again the new spirit lacked the energy of definiteness, for it was non-military. Wrangel in Berlin, and Windischgratz in Vienna, proved stronger than all the popular riots. In Hungary alone did the revolution appear on the scene with its own army; Austria was too much undermined to suppress the Hun- garians, and, therefore, summoned the Russians across the Carpathians, the same Russians who are now pent up in these same passes, and resigned to the Tsar Nicolas I. the task of protecting its tottering authority. Nothing is so characteristic of the condition of Central Europe at that ‘time as this proceeding.
But although the revolution had, and could have, on the whole, no triumphant result, yet it led to essential progress as compared with 1815, to wit the beginning of Parliamentary life in the representative assemblies, such as they were, and the renewed attempt to work out the Central European problem of the Vienna Congress with fresh energies in St. Paul’s Church at Frankfurt-on-Main. The constitutional content for the new structure of Central Europe which was thus attained was indeed of small importance in political law, but it was in itself a great matter that, in 1848 and 1849, a Parliament existed in which Central Europe, in so far as it spoke German, was represented. Wise things were said in St. Paul’s Church about all the Central European problems, ranging from Italy to Denmark, from the French frontier to Poland and Hungary. The spirit was stirred, the political atmosphere was favourable to the debate, nothing was lacking but what we now have in the war, the pressure of foreign events and the strength of the army. What was said was by way of prelude, a mere testing of the instruments. But then everything Central European was submerged again, and the Bundestag held once more in the Eschersheimer Gasse in Frankfurt, those meetings which we know so well from Bismarck’s letters and reports.
* * . & * * .
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In the course of the Frankfurt discussions there was a painful and grievous divergence between the “ Greater Germany ’”’ and the ‘‘ Lesser Germany” views. At the voting for the election of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. of Prussia to be German Emperor, 290 members voted for the Prussian hereditary Emperor, and 240 members refrained - from voting. The German-Austrians had in part withdrawn, the Tzechs had not got beyond considering the possibility of attending, the other sections of the Central European peoples were absent, because it was a question of establishing not Mid-Europe but the German Empire. Thus in this combination there existed a strong minority who did not wish to adhere to the views of the Prussian “ Lesser Germany ”’ party, and who still believed in a joint federal State since they hoped for a “‘ rejuvenated Austria.”” The majority tendered the Crown to the King of ‘Prussia, but he refused it. In this way the whole political problem of Germany and Central Europe was disposed of, and no one knows how and with what results it might have been reopened had not Bismarck, acting on other assumptions, adopted the ‘“‘ Lesser Germany ”’ view and carried it through. The Frankfurt majority started with a fixed desire for German unity, and for its sake had come to terms more or less willingly with the idea of the Prussian King as Emperor. Bismarck, on the other hand, took Prussian power as his starting-point and adopted the German view in order to advance this power. He was in no sort of sense a German revolutionary, but, on the contrary, a decided opponent of the popular movement ; nevertheless in order to carry out his royalist policy he was obliged to take up the nationalist demands of the time.
It is essential for our purpose to grasp Bismarck’s attitude as well and as comprehensively as possible, because it is a point of critical importance for the Mid-European scheme whether it be carried through with or in opposition to the spirit of Bismarck. In the latter case it would be con- demned to futility. We must, therefore, inquire more closely what induced Bismarck to enter upon the war of
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1866 and to bring into being a “ Lesser German” State on a monarchical basis.
Even before his days of triumph he lived more in an atmosphere of foreign than of home politics, and as a young man was unusually familiar with the contemporary fluctuations in the balance of power in Europe. Moreover he had an absolute genius for things military. Hence it came about that he had no confidence in any German unity which was indefinite from the military point of view, nor consequently in the Frankfurt Constitution. How could an effective military unity be established if small States, incompetent in the military sense, had an important voice in the Federal Assembly ? We must not forget that the Prussia of 1850 possessed much less territory in Germany than the Prussia of 1867 as enlarged by Bismarck! The corresponding chapters of the Gedanken und Erinnerungen, like the earlier notes made by Bismarck inthe fifties, are interspersed throughout by military considerations. After the humiliation at Olmiitz when, owing to anxiety about the Austrian army in Bohemia, Prussia had to give up her claims to Kurhessen and Schleswig-Holstein at the demand of Schwarzenberg, the Austrian Minister-President, it would have been impossible for her to carry on a “Greater Germany ”’ policy if, simultaneously, she wished in the first instance to attain military importance as a North German, non-Austrian Power. Then, in addition, came the influ- ence of the Crimean War, of which in general we in the German Empire knew very little, but which Bismarck lived through with his full powers of sympathetic interest. The Crimean War freed Austria from Russian guardianship, and secured its inclusion in the existing group of Western Powers. It is possible now, after the event, to think that it might have been better in fact for Central Europe if as a whole it had joined with the West to attack Russia in the Crimean War, had freed Poland and had driven back the Russians. We are much inclined just now to form a retro- spective wish of this kind, but at that time Prussia still retained in its blood too much of the fear of the unmeasured
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force of the French Revolution ; for 1870 had yet to be lived through, and the Prussian king was used to Russian super- vision. He remained a trembling neutral like the present King of Roumania. Under these circumstances Bismarck learnt the helplessness of the German Confederation. Was there, then, any other aim for his unusual, overpowering and abounding energy than to establish his Prussia and to secure for it by military means the control of the German Federation? Only so could there be any foreign policy for him, which really deserved the name of policy. The strong man must first make for himself a theatre or arena, he must build up a position for his sovereign so that there might be place for purposive action. And the course of events up to 1866 showed that he was right. He created what the majority in St. Paul’s Church, with their military unpre- paredness, had merely put forward as a pious wish. He created it differently from anything imagined by these learned men, but still he created it. It was he, together with his sovereign and with Moltke, who completed the work of Friedrich II. of Prussia, and who, at the same time, carried out the popular demands of the ‘‘ Lesser Germany ” party in St. Paul’s Church.
But as soon as the revolution in the condition of the German army was completed, and after the victory of Kénigsgratz, he began at once and without reserve to consider the preservation of Austrian inviolability, and extorted it from the Prussian king and his generals. Thus it appears that he and he alone at bottom thinks in terms of Central Europe, taking that as his environment whole. His own account of the Bohemian deliberations is a most weighty document in connection with our train of thought. He does not want a German Empire with Hungary, Galicia, etc., excluded, nor a purely German national State with no counterpart in historical experience. But he does want to retain permanently the possibility of a union of the two Great Powers lying between East and West. He never.forgot.that France and Russia might conceivably attempt to crush a centre that was not indivisible. All his
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later policy was implied in his dispute with King Wilhelm at Nikolsburg over the ‘shameful peace.” In case of doubt he was always more Austrian than Russian. His considerations read as follows :
“If Austria were seriously injured, she would become a confederate of France and of all opponents; she would sacrifice her anti-Russian interests for the sake of revenge against Prussia. On the other hand, I can imagine no future acceptable to us for the countries which constitute the Austrian kingdom, supposing that the latter were destroyed by Hungarian or Slavonic rebellions or were reduced to a state of permanent dependence. What could take that position in Europe which the Austrian State has hitherto occupied from the Tyrol to the Bukowina? Any fresh States formed in this area could only be of a persistently revolutionary character. We could make no use of German- Austria either in whole or in part, we could not secure a strengthening of the Prussian State by the inheritance of pro- vinces such as Austrian Silesia or parts of Bohemia, no union between German-Austria and Prussia could be successful. Vienna could not be governed as a suburb of Berlin.”’
Thus, in his old age, Bismarck subsequently described in writing his position in 1866, and thus does he wish to be regarded by posterity. On no account does he wish to be registered in the. memories of later generations as the destroyer of ancient German unity and of the Central European alliance. And in fact he succeeded in making his policy understood by Austria and Hungary in the course of a few years and during his own lifetime. In 1866 there was an alteration of the centre of gravity, but no destruction of the germs of that Mid-Europe which is now at last coming into being. | * * * * * *
The Franco-German War of 1870-71 meant the final liberation of Central Europe from France. The present . generation hardly knows what an extensive influence France exercised before the war in Southern and Central Germany, and how much inclined Austria was to wrest from Prussia,
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with the aid of France, what had been gained in 1866. Hence nowadays people pass lightly over those passages in Bismarck’s Erinnerungen where he speaks of the danger of a new Confederation of the Rhine. To us to-day the Rhine Confederation is a distant and barely conceivable tradition, but then it was still in the region of practical politics. Central Europe stood between East and West, and as yet on no independent footing. I remember a trivial experience of my boyhood : the leading townsfolk in our little town in the Saxon Erzgebirge were talking together in July 1870: ““We Saxons are all right; now we keep in with Prussia because we must, but the French if they come will know that we did not want to doit!” This, or something hike it, was what a good many people were thinking. The French magic spell had first of all to be completely severed, and was in fact splendidly destroyed. In this way Bismarck fully reaped the advantage of 1866: Southern Germany joined the North German Confederation, and the German Empire came into existence. Now there was a North German Emperor. Without any fresh injury to Austria the lesser German Empire arose, a triumphant victory for those who as early as 1848 had looked forward to this and this only ; as yet, however, the prophecies of Untersberg and Kyffhauser were not completely fulfilled.
Those were wonderful days when North and South Germany conquered France together. That was a victory without Russia’s aid, though with her acquiescence ; that was the victory over all forms of protectorship in the West, the chance to be free after a hundred years of a complicated dependence! Even Austria, in spite of all despondency, felt that she too would gain her freedom by this war. The Wacht am Rhein was sung even on the neutral Danube. The Battle of Leipzig was repeated in France in 1870 without the help of the Tsar. By the blessing of God, what a change!
In attempting to formulate the results of the Franco- German War from the Austro-Hungarian point of view we must reckon it a loss for Austria that “ the Empire,” and in particular the South German States, came under
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North German leadership for all time as far as could be foreseen, so that the ancient Hapsburg period of Empire was now for the first time completely at an end for the rest of Germany. Austria-Hungary had now no longer an indefinite background in the west, she possessed her own borders and nothing more. But at the same time she gained a strong and victorious friend who could strengthen her strength and compensate for her weakness. Intelligent people in Vienna and Budapest understood this at once, and under the leadership of Graf Andrassy and with the consent of the Emperor Franz Joseph they acted accordingly.
It is most instructive for Germans of the Empire to read the history of the year 1870 in Wertheimer’s book: Graf Julius Andrassy, sein Leben und sein Zeit (Stuttgart, 1910). There we learn to look from an outside point of view at events which as Germans we have experienced from the inside. At the beginning of the war Andrassy was in favour of neutrality, because he cherished a hope that France and Prussia would weaken themselves in a mutual war, and that hence the critical part of arbitrator might fall to Austria-Hungary at the conclusion of peace. SBeust, the Austrian Minister-President, wished to join in against Prussia, but the far-sighted Hungarian insisted on neutrality, and the unexpected Prusso-German victory justified him. He may be called the saviour of Mid-Europe, for if at that time Austria had attempted to settle her accounts with Prussia again, then whatever the immediate outcome, no common future would have been possible. Thus Andrassy, in 1870, showed himself to be the same man with whom later Bismarck was to conclude the treaty of 1879. If we ever succeed in giving a political shape to Mid-Europe the portraits of Bismarck and Andrassy ought together to be wreathed with laurels of gratitude and honour.
* * * * * *
The western limits of Central Europe were thus fixed in 1871, a settlement of boundaries on the Russian side had to follow. In the autumn of 1876 Bismarck received a telegram in code from Livadia, which demanded on behalf
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of the Tsar a statement as to whether or no the Genman Empire would remain neutral if Russia went to war with Austria. Never was there a more fateful question. After attempts at delay had failed, Bismarck answered that we could tolerate it if our friends merely lost and won battles against each other, but not if one of them was so severely injured as to endanger her independent position as one of the influential Great European Powers. In virtue of this answer Russia came to an amicable understanding with Austria about Bosnia and Herzegovina and entered upon a Russo-Turkish instead of a Russo-Austrian War.
The outcome of these events was the Berlin Congress of 31878 and the Dual Alliance of 1879, and with these events the traditional alliance between Russia and Prussia was practically at an end. The impression produced by the King’s Hill at Leipzig had faded. Bismarck did indeed preserve a certain connection with Russia in the shape of the counter-insurance treaty, but the partnership between Russia and Prussia was dissolved. The die was cast. Dual Alliance was formed in opposition to Dual Alliance: Mid- Europe between East and West. It may be said that the present war had its beginnings in 1876. The Russians for their part, it is true, proposed a Russo-German Alliance even after 1876, but the German Empire was bound, it was married to Austria-Hungary for life and for death. And thus both the Empires have passed through the last three decades together, thus to-day they are fighting shoulder to shoulder and thus will they continue.
This alliance agreed to by Graf Andrassy and Bismarck in 1879, and which constituted Andrassy’s last important act, is in no sense to be looked upon as the temporary outcome of a fluctuating political situation. After the Franco-German War Bismarck indeed originally wanted to re-establish a triple alliance, in accordance with old custom, between Russia, Germany and Austria; the triple imperial alliance of the monarchical system in opposition to all western disorganisation. With this object in view he arranged various meetings between the three Emperors from 1872 onwards. But these grand visiting days did not
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prevent the fateful question of 1876. The statesman of Central Europe was obliged to renounce the dream of the King’s Hill, and to say definitely, very definitely, whether or no he wished to uphold Austria-Hungary at all costs and in every danger. Any one who now wants to dissolve the German-Austrian-Hungarian alliance throws us back politi- cally, as we have already said, to before 1876, and obliges us to consider over again all the pros and cons of the Russian question of that date. This reconsideration will do no harm, for it must inevitably lead back to Bismarck’s decision, which was certainly not adopted lightly or without the most exact knowledge of all contingencies.
When dealing with the formation of the Dual Alliance, Bismarck mentions the following reasons for hesitation : changeableness of Hungarian opinion, uncertainty as to the behaviour of the Germans in Austria, danger of Catholic ascendancy over Protestantism, anxiety about Polish desire for dominance on the Austrian basis. A treaty of alliance would be of little avail against all this. All the same he concluded the treaty with Andrassy and stated his reasons in a letter which he wrote in September 1879 to the then King of Bavaria :
‘“‘ Should no agreement (connection by alliance) be arrived at, Austria could not be blamed if, under the pressure of Russian threats and in uncertainty about Germany, she finally sought a closer understanding with France or even with Russia herself. Should the latter occur, Germany, owing to its relations with France, would be left in complete isolation on the Continent. But should Austria draw closer to France and England as in 1854, Germany would be thrown entirely upon Prussia, and, if she did not desire isolation, would be involved in the, as I fear, mistaken and dangerous methods of Russian home and foreign politics.”’
These words are still true in essentials to-day. He who will not think in terms of Mid-Europe, because the doubts . existing in 1876 and 1879 have grown greater instead of less, ought to consider somewhat with which country an
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alliance can be entered upon if we finally abandon Bismarck’s policy. * * * * * * _ Whilst working this out we have spoken frequently, very frequently indeed, of Bismarck himself, but for nearly thirty years politics for us meant Bismarck. As long as he lived people might fight for him or against him, but it was he who had the last word. All Germany’s political negotia- tions up to the Great War are either a perpetuation of his potent influence or weak attempts to break away from it. He was a Hercules. The Austrians have had no such man, but he is theirs and ours too. I think that I have made it clear that he laid the foundation of Mid-Europe. It rests with us to carry on the work. All the cares which perplexed him have been amply justified by the Great War! Shall not his hopes also bear fruit ?
It is true that after Bismarck’s retirement all possible efforts were made to change the policy of the German Empire. The Emperor Wilhelm II. took, on occasion, every conceivable pains to secure better and more per- manent connections with France and England. But never- theless when the universal tempest broke, Austria-Hungary alone stood at our side, though subsequently Turkey too threw in her lot with us both. What Prince Biilow, as Imperial Chancellor, did by the “‘ faith of the Nibelungs ”’ was an important prophecy for Mid-Europe. The century’s history has first driven us apart and then thrown us together again. The probation time of our interconnection is over. It now remains to build up our common future. What else in the world could we do in virtue of our whole history ?
If the German Empire enters into alliance with Russia it means a return to the position of Prussia under Friedrich Wilhelm IV. From the economic point of view, as we shall show later, this may have certain advantages, but politically it will be the death of our independence. And the German people will not endure this permanently, for it would imply joint responsibility for everything Russian, as we have already pointed out in an earlier paragraph.
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If the German Empire allies itself with England, which, after this war, is hardly conceivable, but which before it appeared to be possible, it will become the military partner of the first Sea Power, and must fight Britain’s battles on the Continent. Such a position may have much in its favour commercially, but as a national policy would bring to an end our individual share in the world’s history. We have already mentioned other grounds for hesitation.
In both cases the period from 1870 to 1914 would become a mere interlude in German history, an episode full of splendour and self-respect, a brief golden age such as that of Holland. An individual course is only possible to us in union with Austria-Hungary.
And how do matters stand on the Austro-Hungarian side ?
Any serious attempt to enter into the traditional feeling in the Danubian monarchy will enable us to realise at once that a binding connection with the Prusso-German Empire will be regarded there as a very serious step. For without doubt it involves, in spite of all the consideration which must be shown to Austria’s right to determine its own action, a bond which may, under the circumstances, be hard to tolerate. To speak quite frankly: Austria will be assenting finally to that shifting of the weight of gravity which took place in 1866. She will renounce all future claim to be the chief ruling Power in Central Europe, as she was in her ancient days of splendour. There is no formal dependence involved, no curtailing of sovereignty, no giving up of inherited power, but all the same there will be an actual acknowledgment of the existing position of forces. We shall speak elsewhere of the most complicated legal-constitutional questions, here it need only be stated, as the result of previous history, that a situation has arisen, owing to the founding of the Empire by Bismarck and its justification of itself in the Great War, in which the German Empire has become the first of the two leading States in population, military efficiency and unity. This situation exists now, and is already far from new, but all the same it will require resolution on the part of Austria to acknowledge the fact in a political arrangement.
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It is obvious that Austria-Hungary, too, will examine all other possibilities before the permanent Mid-European union is decided upon. We have already said something about this, but it seems necessary to reassert, in connection with our survey of past history, that Austria cannot stand by herself in the world, because she is no match for a simultaneous attack on her various frontiers, and that she has no other natural partner in alliance except the German Empire. A Russian guarantee that the Austrian State shall retain all its present territories is absolutely impossible so long as the pan-Slavonic revolutionary movement is predominant, and an English guarantee would be ineffective. Even more certain than the statement that the German Empire needs the union, is the converse statement that Austria-Hungary is bound to the German Empire for better and for worse. This is a fact! If this alliance is dissolved the Balkan provinces will turn towards the north! If it is dissolved the German-Austrians will lose their footing in the Dual Monarchy! Austria-Hungary may and indeed ought to stipulate for every necessary condition and safe- guard for herself in the union, but she cannot prevent that union even should she wish to do so. Thus speaks past history, for Mid-Europe arose in the first instance out of the Prussian victories, and especially that of 1870.
History of the past, wonderful chaos, crowd of forms, we pray thee lend us thine aid! If thou willst thou canst destroy everything! If thou willst, thou canst make every- thing easy! Come hither, ye learned counsel of our historical Muse, ye interpreters of the developing fate of nations, open your minds to the search, so frequently obscured, into the genesis of Mid-Europe! Hide nothing, and veil nothing of the past, but make prominent those things that are seen for the first time by those alone who begin to muse on and seek for Mid-Europe! To-day all ears are open to your words ! The nations in the midst of the Continent, all the peoples between East and West, desire to know their future. Speak and we will hearken !
CHAPTER III CREEDS AND NATIONALITIES
CENTRAL Europe is at the present time a geographical expression which has so far acquired no political or con- stitutional character. But Austria, too, was once merely a geographical expression, and Prussia was a provincial term denoting only the most easterly portion of the kingdom. It is not so very long since it was said that Germany was only a geographical concept, and what a content this word has acquired in the interval! The word “ Mid-Europe,” which has not hitherto been used in history, has, at any rate, this great advantage, that it carries with it no associations of creed or nationality, and consequently does not from the outset awaken feelings of opposition. We shall have quite enough and more than enough to do with such feelings of opposition, for if ever any territory on the inhabited earth contained within itself a superfluity of passionate discords and frictions, it is this Central European country of ours ! It may, indeed, be said that the more recently colonised countries, and especially the United States of America, have to deal with intermixtures of opinions and races of an even more marked and violent nature. But the inhabitants of such countries have essentially less traditional obstinacy. The ocean lies between them and their old home, and during the long voyage across they have made up their minds to accommodate themselves to new conditions. This ocean voyage is lacking for us in old Europe! Here it is not our ambition to be or to become the most modern country in the world, but on the contrary we are fervently defending old rights, old customs and old boundaries, whether they
are good or bad. The very radicals with us are in this 63
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respect often the most conservative of all. But it would be an excellent thing if people could be inspired on their entrance to Mid-Europe, with some such joyous and impres- sionable voyager’s humour, the cheerful courage of those who, after superhuman battles, believe more in the future than in the past. Ill-humoured ancestor worship will never bring us to our goal. We stretch the hand of fellowship from the North to the South to all who will march with us forward.
But, of course, all objections and special demands must receive attention. Mid-Europe can only come into being through millions of discussions about the interests of every component group and tendency. It is of no use for any one to think out a theoretical scheme of union between the countries concerned, and in doing so purposely to ignore all religious and national difficulties. Let us agree at the outset, that if any one be so “ enlightened ” as to have lost all his own natural colour, he still cannot deny or mistake the force of innate and inherited traits of character without making himself ridiculous. Churches may mean nothing to him, yet all the same they are realities. He may be a mere railway traveller without country, but nevertheless those who cultivate the soil from north-west to south-east, those who dwell in towns, large and small, those who tend vine- yards, those who work in mines, have all their own insuper- able mass of peculiarities. Our Central European wealth and vigour, as also our daily political and social difficulties, consist in an incredible and disquieting abundance of characteristic forms.
I have visited most parts of the Central European country, and am familiar with people from every district. Shall I picture them all to myself? Then in thought I am in a peasant’s cottage in Lower Germany, in a country house in Upper Germany, in an Alpine inn, in a little town in Bohemia,
3 Silésia, ina shop in Posen,
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of men, women and children, and I hear every German accent, from the broad Frisian Plattdeutsch to the Tyrolean Mountain German, from the softness of the Lower Rhine to the sharpness of East Prussia, from the Mecklenburg calm to the Viennese liveliness, and in addition there is the sound of Danish in the North, French in the West, Italian and Croatian in the South, Tzechish in Bohemia, Magyar, Roumanian and Polish in the South-East and East. The whole is alive like a mighty forest with tall trees and under- growth, with evergreens and fir-copses and a thousand small bushes and flowers. It is like a sea in which all kinds of fish disport themselves. And nowhere are limits or divisions sharply fixed. All is in flux, pushing and pressing in confusion, whispering and shouting, pleading and scold- ing, praying and calculating. Unless all these people are willing, the Archangel Michael himself cannot mould them into his heavenly legion. To reduce this crowd to political efficiency, to produce from it an army and to make it a vigorous, united, organic State—this is something almost superhuman and at the same time splendid, a task for the ablest of statesmen, who possess the soul of the nations, and whose thoughts are guided by the spirit of history. He who takes up this work must have nothing petty about him, and must excel in will, in power, in goodness and in patience. For this work we want to summon our best men and women from all parts of Central Europe, or rather we want to express the summons to them in the words which Providence addresses to all of us in this war: Become a united people! Remain united after such terrible slaughter ! % *# % % % % In government there is a conservative type of forbearance
‘and a liberal type of forbearance, and the two must co-
operate in the genesis of Mid-Europe. The conservative
forbearance has sympathy with what has been. The liberal
forbearance pleads for freedom of movement for what is
striving to be. We must learn better than before to separate
off that coercion and law which are State necessities, from
those things in which free play may be allowed to individual . E
ee: ree
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tendencies. As the maxim puts it: in mecessarsis unitas, in dubiis libertas, in omnibus caritas=in the requirements of State, coercion and equality ; in personal matters, freedom ; in both, comradeship! The powers of the State confedera- tion, of the States, of the subordinate States, of the Circles, of the Communes, of the geographical districts, of the national communities, of the religious associations, of the economic organisations, workmen’s societies, trade unions, learned societies, parties, must be flexibly graduated, so that Mid- Europe, with perfected organisation, may be the spacious home of free movement. All abilities now employed in the leadership of State and commune in North Germany, South Germany, Austria and Hungary must be combined together, so that a tradition may be formed, which will perpetuate itself with ever fresh vitality, and will carry on amongst our children and grandchildren the work that we are beginning with hesitation and effort.
Central Europe can be treated neither as barracks nor cloister, neither as public meeting nor as factory, neither as farmhouse nor as suburb, neither as bank nor as work- shop, but all must have a place therein: discipline and independence, threats and rewards. We need to ponder over this, for it will not come about of itself. We must taise the character of the peoples by our directing reason.
And what is the object of it ?
The history of the evolution of nations shows us a develop- ment of human types which is the result of many centuries. We know what is meant by an Italian, a Frenchman, an Englishman, a Russian, an American. We know also what is meant by a German, a Magyar, a Pole, a Tzech. But our Mid-European type is not yet fully developed, he is still in process of formation. Frenchmen and Englishmen are complete after their kind, but we Germans and the smaller nations surrounding us have not at present acquired that degree of assurance in the conduct of life and in tact, nor that political training and esthetic habit, which would suffice of themselves to guide us in matters great and small.
; the two western nations we are still
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young. When the French had already lived through the most splendid period of their monarchy we were just beginning to imitate Romance culture. Our forefathers learnt French and went to Paris in order to find out there how to behave and how to dress and what constituted good tone. From the English we borrowed sport, habits of travelling, town-planning and many other such things. We are still not quite out of our schooldays. To confess this calmly is no shame, even in war time. We possess, it is true, old and honourable traditions and primitive elements of temper and character, and in addition many an efficient and long-used method, and many a new invention. But old and new, primitive, medizval and modern, are still unbalanced. We are, if I may so express it, historically a half-finished product, and we are still awaiting the day of completion. This gives us a touch of the primitive and of something still capable of improvement. I should not choose to be occupied with any other human situation than this one, because it irivolves such wonderful problems. We have much background and many good qualities, we have also ability to work our way through, but now our high school period ought to begin. Round and about the German spirit will grow up a Mid-European culture; there will develop a human type which will be intermediate between Frenchmen, Italians, Turks, Russians, Scandinavians and Englishmen. Let us search out these Mid-Europeans ! But indeed it is difficult for us just because we are in Mid- Europe : in the land of passage for all the migrations of the peoples, in the battlefield of all the great intellectual struggles, in the region of religious wars, of fights about nationality, of an endless succession of economic periods, in a region which neither affords nor can possess inward ease because it is too full for mere classification. Taking the region as a whole we are too much occupied with futile efforts, and frequently even full of despair about things in particular, but nevertheless we have plenty of optimism about things in general. We are familiar with the despair of those who do not gain their victory, and with the optimism
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of those who take up the old problems afresh. Let us, in this mood, speak in the first place of the old and still influential religious struggles of Central Europe, of the many attempts, doubts, broodings, advances, falls, of suffering and death, and the song of the holy angels.
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From ancient times onwards, Central Europe was an object of dispute between the two portions of the old Roman Empire. To express it otherwise: the greater part of Central Europe, since it was Christianised and civilised, was fundamentally dependent upon ancient Rome, the immortal Italian capital of the material and spiritual world. But in the Carpathian districts and on the Lower Danube there was always an ebb and flow of Byzantine influence. The pre-Turkish orthodox Rome of the East attempted as occasion offered to gain a footing amongst the Magyars and Bohemians as well as amongst the Poles. But Constanti- nople made its furthest thrusts to the north-west when it was Turkish and Mohammedan. The Turks were twice before Vienna, they had possession of Graz and Istria and advanced on the other side as far as Galicia, they conquered Lemberg and Przemysl and galloped over the Carpathian passes which now again have been the scene of our battles. They imposed upon the conquered peoples an often oppres- sive system of political and military suzerainty and of taxation, but did not enjoin their conversion to Moham- medanism. Hence, even under Turkish rule, the earlier spiritual connections with the Eastern and the Western Rome continued within approximately the same geographical limits. In course of time, by material and spiritual means, Western Rome pressed its eastern boundary far forward up to the Vistula. Eastern Rome receded towards the east and south. To-day Mohammedan districts are found only in Bosnia and Herzegowina; there are Eastern Orthodox Christians in Serbia and on the borders of Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, and especially in the Roumanian districts at the junction of the Theiss and the Danube, round Siebenbiirgen and in the Bukowina. A section of the Roumanians and
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almost all the Austrian and Hungarian Ruthenians on both sides of the Carpathians are Greek-Catholics, that is, their religion is Byzantine in origin but Roman and papal in organisation. But all the rest has been a part of the per- manent whole adhering to Western Rome since medieval times, and hence it experiences all the powerful inner convulsions of this great spiritual community. % * % % * %
The separatist movement away from Western Rome, which began with the Cathari, the Waldensians, the Wicklifites and the Hussites, and reached its climax in the German and Swiss Reformation, was lived through in the German-Slav-Hungarian districts of Central Europe with terrible force and counter-force. The violent and injurious struggle raged on from 1517 until the Peace of Westphalia, and disturbed the organisation and well-being of the medieval State almost to the point of destruction. On and around German soil a volcanic spiritual experience was consum- mated, the results of which were felt universally wherever there were children of distant Rome ; but those who were the earliest forerunners of the movement often thereby sacrificed themselves and their country. People’s hearts were in a state of ferment. Nearly all the territories which now belong to Germany, Austria, Hungary and to what was once the Kingdom of Poland, were first gripped by the new teaching, then again reconquered, and often changed their ruler and their faith many times over, until at last, after much bloodshed, the spirit and the ability to resist were exhausted and creeds were regulated according to authority and normal conditions. All these immense struggles in nearly every town, borough, county, diocese and electorate have become of necessity almost incomprehensible to our present generation of men. In the interval we have gained something which four hundred years ago, at the close of an epoch in the world’s history, the most enlightened intellects hardly dared to think out. And this something is the personal freedom of the individual from the enforced bondage of religious opinion. This freedom of the individual
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appears as a result of the Reformation, but at first both the German and the Swiss Reformation were, according to their own intention, only a transition from the old universal community of church life and affairs to a new and special territorial one. Even Luther and Calvin desired coercion, and insisted on the axiom: cutus regio, eius religio: the ruler determines the faith! The age of constraint required fixed forms and discipline of the inmost soul. This had not been so in the later days of the old Roman Empire, but as soon as the Romish faith became in the North a missionary religion and a religion of the masses, and especially after it penetrated to the German Franks, it became a constituent part of public life. Out of that wonderfully free, lawless, spiritual and personal Sermon on the Mount there developed a sort of spiritual militarism, without which no social or civic order seemed possible. Thus Luther and Zwingli did not wish to infringe upon discipline as such, but to mould their spirit again more closely to the Biblical model and to advance personal piety and individual experience in religion. This constituted their sacred task, which seemed like pre sumption, insubordination and a misleading of the people to the representatives of the ancient and long-since syste- matised community of souls.
This account of the Reformation movement in the Church may seem superfluous here, but I am anxious that we in Central Europe should get a grasp of history in which Catholic and Protestant are conceived of as constituent parts of a joint past without surrender of their spiritual value and reputation. For it cannot be denied that the union of North and South may be attended by a passionate outburst of feeling in this very sphere of religion. In its religious evolution North Germany has, as a rule, conducted itself differently from Austria; and Austria, Bohemia and Poland have again behaved differently from Hungary ; consequently everywhere remnants of bitterness have per- sisted which may be reawakened at the slightest provoca- tion. Almost the whole of North and some important parts of South Germany have gone over to the Protestant
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established Church, whilst the counter-Reformation, the forcible suppression of the new form of faith, was most violent in the Hapsburg territories. There, under King Ferdinand I., the Jesuit Canisius, called by some the “‘ Hammer of heretics,’ and by others the ‘‘ second Apostle of Germany,” carried on his work. From thence at various times Protestants migrated from house and home, and numbers of these were taken in by the Prussian rulers. The result of this is that the Protestants of the German Empire often still have a conception of the violence of the Austrian Catholics, whilst the pious Austrian Catholics have a horror of Prussian godlessness and denial of everything sacred. Any one who travels in the Tyrol and goes to church on Sundays will hear something of this. This division in opinion gives a sharper character to the struggles for political power between North and South, and thoughtful people are apt to ask themselves what spiritual and religious consequences a closer union may have for both parties. % % * % % *
This type of question is not new. In the middle of last century, when the “Greater Germany” party separated from the ‘‘ Lesser Germany” party, the factor of creed, whether expressed or unexpressed, had its share in the matter. And von Treitschke, Bismarck’s historian of the new German Empire, traced an almost direct connection between Wittenberg and Berlin, between Luther and Bismarck, when he wrote his account of the previous history of the founding of the Empire. Luther intro- duced German Christianity and this led by way of the great Elector, Friedrich II., Kant and Hegel, to the German Empire. To us, who have grown up with this point of view, it seems so evident that we find it difficult to realise how strange it must appear to the Catholics even in the German Empire. No doubt there is in fact much truth in it, for the devotion to the State which characterised the Prussians was of no Catholic growth ; but this way of putting it is inadequate as a complete explanation of the German Empire. The Empire is by no means merely the outcome
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of the Konigsberg influence of Kant, and moreover it is only in a strictly limited sense that King Friedrich II. can be regarded as a Protestant Christian. But, above all, this purely Protestant presentation of history, whether it be true or not, cannot be persisted in as a primary Imperial tradition since all parties have given up the Kulturkampf and it must not and will not be reawakened. When Bismarck’s Empire made its peace with the Pope and the Party of the Centre, the Protestant character of the Hohen- zollern Emperors became an unofficial private affair of those who, as wearers of the crown, were above creeds. From that time onwards the German Empire, as such, has had no special creed, and it can have none after the union.
Thus whilst at one time the Prussia of Friedrich the Great was honoured as the “ leading Protestant Power,’’ Austria was regarded as the political embodiment of the Papacy and the Jesuit Order. In contrast to the freethinker Friedrich II., his great opponent Maria Theresa, splendid in her austere and harsh devotion to the Church, appears as the founder of a State Church system which has not yet entirely disappeared, and under which the Protestant minority in Austria, whether German or Slav, has much to endure. But this point of view too, however correct as a whole, certainly admits of exaggeration, for this same Maria Theresa sent Protestant colonists, both Lutherans and Calvinists, to Galicia and elsewhere, and was more gracious to them than many later sovereigns.
But the essential thing is that in a partnership between Germany and Austria-Hungary the German, and with them the Hungarian, Protestants would be in the minority. This weighs heavily upon the minds of some Protestants, however well they appreciate the historical and political necessity for the union. They argue somewhat in this way: ‘“ Of course the union will not directly change anything in the existing position of the religious creeds; nor is it likely that pro- vincial administrations which have hitherto been Protestant would be induced thereby to adopt another religious policy, but the closer the Central European union became in course
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of time, the greater would be the danger for us Protestants of becoming, so to speak, historically unrepresented. For a papal party might easily be formed which would engross the whole of Mid-Europe and would secure religious privileges in different States in exchange for international or com- mercial activities, and which would give Germans a Catholic instead of a Protestant character in the eyes of foreigners.” People are even heard to say that in the united Empire the Protestants would be treated somewhat as they now are in Bavaria, that 1s, not injured but pushed aside.
I too acknowledge that my historical mode of thought leaves me in some anxiety in this respect, and all the more because the war has greatly weakened the bond between Protestant England and Germany, and we cannot tell whether or no fellow-feeling between the German, English and American Protestants will be quickly revived. It is true that no organisation has been broken up in this con- nection, since none existed, but any one who knows Protes- tantism is aware how little it depends upon its organisations and how much upon informal fellow-feeling. Protestantism is weak as a Church, but strong as a union of convictions. Protestants recognise each other as such all over the world, but—will they so recognise one another again during the next decades? The war injures us Protestants more than the Catholics, for the papal centre, in spite of its geographical position in Italy, has remained outside the war owing to the behaviour of the present Pope. Amongst us, Protestant neutrals do indeed try to preserve the Protestant com- munity, but they are not sufficiently powerful since they themselves formerly derived most of their spiritual guidance from Germany and England. Hence, when we are concerned about the future of Protestantism as a whole and its mis- sionary work in foreign parts, it 1s no very simple matter to be obliged at the same time to enter upon an intimate and indissoluble union with a Power which is Catholic both in theory and practice. We are forced to it by all the indepen- dent reasons that have been adduced, but we may be allowed to state frankly that it involves for us a definite sacrifice
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from the religious point of view. Others will have different sacrifices to make, as is unavoidable in concluding an alliance.
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The considerations which make it difficult in some degree for us as Protestants to set our faces towards Mid-Europe will in the same degree render the transition easier for the Catholics. But here, too, things are less simple than may appear from a merely statistical point of view. The Central European Catholics are far from forming a completely united body. They are united before the papal chair, but not always with one another. It is much easier to combine the Protestant minorities in Austria and Hungary with us than to mould the Catholics of the German Empire into a unity with the Austro-Hungarian Catholics of every tongue. To mention one important point, the Catholic clergy in Hungary have been an independent body since ancient times and are not political in the same sense as the Viennese Christian Socialists or the Cologne and Berlin leaders of the Centre. In Hungary the almost Calvinistic Protestantism of many leading families is actually of much more importance than appears from statistics alone. Moreover the strong Jewish element among the educated classes helps to safe- guard the Hungarian kingdom from religious parties. Cer- tain attempts have been made at a clerical policy but with little result. In the Polish districts of Austria, however, the Catholic clergy, like those in Prussian Poland, are Polish Nationalists rather than universal Catholics or political Central Europeans, and go their own way. The same thing is notoriously true of Croatian, and especially of Southern Slav Catholicism, and indeed of the Tzechs as well. They are certainly not all adjusted at present to any notion of a Central European Great Power, and it will be a good time before they are. Besides the German Centre has passed through a lengthy schooling, from which it has learnt that excess in one case leads to opposition in others. This is perhaps not always noticeable in the campaign Speeches made by either party, but it is quite evident in
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parliamentary tactics. And we must not forget that there are no small number of Catholics in Austria and Hungary who trouble themselves very little about their Catholicism !
It must, of course, be understood from the outset, and indeed neither side could conceive of anything else, that Church and school questions will never, and must never, become the concern of the Central European union. Any possible influence on religious creeds arising out of the union can only be quite indirect, and will, as we hope, be balanced by the increasing political fellow-feeling amongst the united nations. The more Mid-Europe takes shape, the further we recede from the age of religious wars and the nearer we approach to the toleration which wishes to live, and to let others live, in freedom from political coercion in those very matters which are the highest and the most sacred.
I hear that some people cherish the idea that the political union may be used in order to revive old and futile hopes of religious agreement. This is well intentioned but dangerous. Peace is most lasting in this sphere when it is not too much talked about. And truly we have plenty of other things to do at present !
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At this point, between our discussion of creeds and that of nationalities, we must say something about the Central European Jews. In the German Empire they are regarded as a religious sect and lay stress upon their German nationality. In the Danubian Monarchy the matter is much more compli- cated, for here there are not only German Jews, but also Polish, Tzechish and Hungarian Jews, and they often take their place as a separate people in the mixture of nationalities, and do not first combine with any of the existing race- groups. If a Jew from Galicia emigrates to Vienna, that does not always mean that he becomes German. Moreover, the Jews in the eastern districts in Austria and in parts of Hungary live much more closely together, and in a more tribal manner ; they are like a special caste with their own customs, occupations and language, and do not combine at all with the rest of the mixed population. In the long
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register of Austrian political parties the ‘‘ Jewish Club ” even figures as a small party group, whilst of course Jews appear in addition in almost all the other parties. There are quite a number of fair-sized towns in which the Jews number more than 50 per cent. of the population, and thus have direct control of the administration. We give the following places as examples: Rzeszow, Rawaruska, Brody, Zloczow, Tarnopol, Rohatyn, Stanislau, Kolomea (all in Galicia), and Munkacs in Hungary. The stability and influence of the Jews in the capital towns Vienna, Prague and Cracow are, as in Amsterdam and Frankfurt-on-Main, much greater than in Berlin and Breslau. In Budapest the proportions existing in Warsaw, Odessa and Lodz are almost reached. Hence it would be a serious mistake to leave the Jews out of account in making schemes for Mid- Europe. They are there, and have great influence on newspapers, on economic life and on politics. On the whole we may assume that in the west they can be won over to support the extension of the economic area by the creation of a Central European economic unity. Of the views of the Jews in Galicia I can form no opinion of my own, especially now when, like all the inhabitants of Galicia, they have had to endure the harsh and perplexing influence of this terrible war.
It is conceivable that the high percentage of Jews in the Danubian Monarchy may be advanced by the Anti-Semitic party in the German Empire as an argument against the foundation of Mid-Europe ; conceivable but not certain, for the same party are wont to be very good friends with the Germans in Austria, who are in part inclined to Anti- Semitism, and would willingly work with them. But their anti-semitic efforts would probably have no political result, especially since the Jewish soldiers, both in the German and in the Austrian and Hungarian armies, have done their duty during the war like every one else, and like others have in many cases ratified their citizenship by death. After the war there must be an end to every form of mutual irritation, for the trenches jointly held will lie in the
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background. These will be worth as much politically as baptism. * * * * * *
And thus we have arrived at the problems of nationality themselves. The Jewish question is more of a social than a national question in the stricter sense of the word, for nowhere in Central Europe do the Jews as such wish to appear as forming a State. The Zionist party may under- stand Judaism as a whole as constituting a political power within international politics, and may seek in Palestine for a centre for combined Jewish influence, but all the same this only affects very indirectly the internal situation of the Great Central European States. We can and will take these international phenomena into account in our political calculations when we are considering the Turkish Orient, and perhaps also when we remember the western districts of Russia. But there are no questions of Jewish language, Government and party on a grand scale, either in the German Empire or in Austria-Hungary. It is all local and highly provincial. All that the Jew here demands, and with justice, is recognition as a citizen, nothing more! It is his affair in which national group he seeks this recognition. But sections of nations which have in their neighbourhood greater political State entities of their own race, or which compare in memory a brilliant political past with a dismal present, will not be satisfied with this more passive citizen- ship. They aspire to union as a State, and even assured advantageous material conditions are no adequate com- pensation to them for an historical independence which has either been lost or never attained.
All the great European States, and even some of the small States, have to struggle with national difficulties of this kind. They have been overcome most completely in the Latin countries of Italy, Spain and France, because here the old language of the rulers has so far supplanted the remnants of the popular tongue that the latter only survives in provincial dialects, and is inadequate to any effective organisation. It is different with the Irish in Great Britain
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and with the Flemish in Belgium. But the headquarters of the racial problems is situated where Central Europe passes over into the broad Russian plains, on the Baltic, on the Vistula, in the Carpathians, and on the Danube as far as the Golden Horn of Constantinople. And the centre of all these problems at the present time is the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the “ country of nations.”
We Germans of the Empire have less to do with these troubles, and consequently amongst us there is generally very little genuine understanding of them, and little desire to go into them seriously and systematically. We have, or had hitherto, our boundary difficulties in Alsace-Lorraine and on the Danish borders, but here there was only a small minority in question, so that people thought that matters could be arranged by administrative methods, and regarded the resistance that showed itself as an unjustifiable opposi- tion. In these two places a great deal that was mean and of which we are ashamed has been done in the name of Ger- manism, but the German people as a whole have troubled themselves little about the matter. They have hardly noticed the varying experiments on the live bodies of these small groups, and have considered the authorities concerned well able to decide what would make for national safety. Now, during the war, many are beginning to form their own opinions, but they often start with the most elementary scheme—forcible Germanisation—knowing very little of the many gloomy experiencés which have already resulted from this method all over the world, a method still possible in Russia but already become impracticable in the Vosges and Jutland. Suppose, for example, that people were forbidden to speak French in the square at Colmar, such a decree, even in war time, would be simply impracticable, even ludicrous in its ineffectiveness. To win over a foreign- speaking section of the population to be citizens of a national State with a different language is too complicated a matter to be successfully settled by some prohibitions and the. removal of a few leaders. During the war rapid military measures may often be unavoidable, but if we intend, when
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peace comes, to make any change in the constitution of the Reichsland or to incorporate it in the Empire, we shall have to make a fresh start in the search for a proper method of treating the population. And we must make up our ininds to learn from Austria in this matter. For we may state frankly that, however imperfect are the results of the method of handling nationalities in Austria and Hungary, there is, nevertheless, much more real understanding there of this type of problem than with us, where it is only dealt with incidentally and unwillingly. There are so many depart- ments in which the Austrians can learn from us that we need not be afraid to admit cheerfully their wider experience in the various matters in which it really exists.
The same is true in a greater degree of the Polish policy of the German Empire and especially of Prussia. Prussia took possession of the Poles before it was itself a national German State, and had then no idea of wishing to Ger- manise this piece of country. It was only later on in Napoleon’s time that the national impulse on both sides rose high. Then in 1830 the Prussian Poles were stirred by the surging wave of the great but futile Polish revolution, the spirit of the dead awoke amongst them and tried spasmodically to re-establish a State organism which had been ruined by its own weakness and incapacity. Now Prussia recognised in Poland a national opponent, without being able on this account to release it from the political tie, because our entire Eastern frontier becomes an impossi- bility if a new and politically independent Polish Kingdom intersects our difficult line of defence. Prussia took com- pulsion in one hand and material prosperity in the other and demanded mental adhesion in exchange. She brought about much material good but discovered no way to the heart of the Polish people. Only a few of the high nobility sought to further the transition to a Prussian State, and they had naturally always been international and connected with Germany through marriage. The small group of Protestant Poles, too, was at heart royalist and Prussian, and remained so for a long time because they had need of
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religious support, but the mass of Catholic Poles was and is Polish Nationalist. Even in so far as they no longer believe in the establishment of a Polish State in Prussian territory and enjoy material prosperity in Prussia, a division yet remains: they are a different race. The German schools have made them useful and industrially capable bilinguists, but not Germans. A Pole remains a Pole, very often even when he goes to live in Berlin or Westphalia. Even as a travelling workman he retains his national character and dreams of other things than the German inspectors who allot him his work. It is not only, and certainly not primarily, the opposition between the servant class and gentlefolk. This plays a part too in many cases, but it can be seen how unwillingly the Polish miner lets himself be enrolled in a German Social Democratic union. Even as a Social Democrat he must remain a Pole, and insists upon his own industrial unions.
That in spite of all this the Prussian Poles, almost without exception, have done and are doing their duty in the present war, need surprise no one who has not previously believed the talk of the over-zealous opponents of Poland. The mag- netic and material force of any State which rouses itself up to war is so enormous that no section can evade it. Think of the many Germans who are unfortunately fighting over there in the Russian army! They have not all been com- pelled. Like them the Russian Pole marched with the Russians, the Prussian Pole with the Germans, the Galician Pole with the Austrians. Since he could not fight for the vanished Fatherland of his dreams, he placed himself at the service of the Power to which he belongs. And if he dies, he dies for a Fatherland, from which he asks consideration for his brothers. In this case too there must be a great review of all methods after the war, a liberation from enforced Germanisation, and the adoption of a better interior organisation. But this in itself brings us Germans nearer to the racial problems in Austria and Hungary. We must begin to learn to understand them, we must indeed.
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It makes a great difference whether we approach the racial problems in the Southern Dual Monarchy merely as Germans or as German Mid-Europeans. We neither ask for nor promise any sort of colourless detachment, for this is from its nature unprofitable in such questions of political life, because it supposes it possible to classify the souls of nations in divisions which can be forced upon them from outside. We want to think out this business as Germans, but not as trivial-minded people who think only of them- selves and their immediate interests, rather as members of the greatest and most weighty nation in Central Europe. From the oppressed individual German, who, surrounded by Slavs or Magyars, inconvenienced in his business by Poles or Roumanians, continually outvoted by Tzechs or Slo- venians, can find no German school for his children, can get no attention paid to his needs by the district superintendent, and can have no German recorder in the law courts—from this helpless and repressed German peasant or workman who daily considers whether or no he must not sadly forsake the home of his fathers, we certainly do not expect a philosophical detachment from facts, or much fellow-feeling in an over- burdened heart for the similar troubles of all the other detached fragments of nationalities. He fights for himself and his own affairs, and when he talks to us his speech is full of bitterness and anger. In his abandonment he suffers for - his nationality. He cannot busy himself with politics in company with the Tzechs, Magyars or Roumanians, for he has fallen under the wheels, and for the time only obstinacy and a tough skin will help him. But this man is not typical of the German spirit in general, he merely stands at his post as the representative of an oppressed small nation. As such he may and must talk as he does, but we feel it painful when Germans who are not in the same position adopt the same tone. This happens daily, it is true, with other nationalities, but all the same it is ungenerous. When a German repre- sentative of a big industry spoke to me in a similar way, I left him in no doubt that I was much troubled by his tone.
People have no business to play the sufferer when they are , F
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not suffering! We Germans of the Empire want as far as possible to help all our oppressed brothers in Central Europe, but we avoid pleading merely German claims in every isolated language group and in opposition to every fusion up to the bitter end. Such a course, were it adopted by every one, would be the ruin of the partnership between the two Central European States. The Germans who are living over there in Austria or Hungary in isolation or as injured persons are absolutely certain of our sympathy and protection, but even they should, if possible, ponder the fact that reciprocal justice elevates a people and that the other nations too wish to live with us.
The Germans in Austria have lost much during the last century. From the eighteenth century onwards they were a nation maintaining and controlling the State; to-day, in the Danubian Monarchy, they have become one people amongst many peoples. Their important services in the past are not valued, the pains they took to raise up the small nations are not remembered. Many hundred years ago they were called in by foreign kings and bishops in order to increase industrial ability and improve agriculture. When fresh districts were to be civilised emigrants from the Eifel or Swabia or Thuringia or some other thickly populated part were tempted by all kinds of privileges and promises. They came, and were hospites, guests, and benefited them- selves and the country which coveted their services. In this way they were intentionally scattered everywhere between the Alps and the Carpathians like the salt of the earth, and did their duty as citizens faithfully and honestly. They made roads on which others now travel, they planned schools in which the teaching is now directed against them. And, moreover, they have the feeling that they have not been overcome by any great opponent strong in himself, but that they have often been subjected to the petty makeshifts of the crowd, in defiance of those who are yet not in a position to reinstate them. This often makes their tone gloomy and bitter, which is very natural but is not favourable to future political success. Many groups of people in the
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German Empire have ceased to take interest in the Austrian question because they find it hard to tolerate this woeful, complaining sort of tone. In this matter, however, both sides are wrong, for the Imperial German concerned has for the most part no idea what have been the inmost thoughts of the Austrian German and of his father. He does not at all understand the older generation in the Danubian Monarchy, and in the younger he still sees no evidence of its other and more vigorous desires and of its more complete and . conscious adaptation to the world as it now is.
Richard Charmatz in his pamphlet Osterretch-Ungarns Erwachen (pamphlets edited by Dr. Ernst Jackh, Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart), remarked of the younger genera- tion of Germans: ‘‘ They are learning to think more as Austrians in the modern sense than their predecessors, with- _out on this account being less German.”’ This seems to us to go to the root of the matter. To think as Austrians means for them : to begin to think as Mid-Europeans. No German living in Austria will be spared this revolution in thought, nor indeed will the members of nations speaking other tongues. Other valuable points of view are to be found in the books by Springer and Popovici referred to in the bibliography. The former discusses the question as an Austrian Social Demo- crat, the latter as a Roumanian Austrian Imperialist.
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What lingers in the hearts of many of our German brothers in Austria and Hungary is the old position of affairs when the State was the property of the House of Hapsburg and an administrative district of the German Civil Service. These old days in Austria possessed their own distinctive character, rather formal, but very respectable and under- standable. The German Ostmark was historically the centre of the Monarchy. With it as starting-point Bohemia was linked up, the Adriatic provinces were occupied, Hungary was set free and Galicia was annexed. The entire State was an enlarged outwork of the German nucleus. It was an administrative State which afforded to the nations linked up with it the advantages of German organisation ;
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a police State which attempted to take charge of every one whilst regarding them all as subjects. Nowhere has the absolute State, carrying on the business of government reasonably and possessing neither nationality nor sentiment, ever existed so completely as in the old Austrian Empire. Such was the State of Maria Theresa and also of her son Joseph II., with his very different outlook.
Metternich wanted to maintain this ancient Austrian State artificially in the midst of a world grown national- ist. It possessed style and a distinctive character, but a character that of course, like everything earthly, had its limitations. But before we speak of the cause which destroyed this distinctive State we must get a grasp of its special merits, for it will only be banished finally if it has first been properly valued. This State was less military than Prussia, less purely an administrative machine than the Electorate of Saxony, less patriarchal than old Bavaria ; it was in its way a civilising influence, and considering its circumstances, modern in spirit. From the military point of view it has to its credit the long and by no means easy campaigns against the Turks. It played the Great Power in Italy and Flanders, combined much vigour with compara- tively few irritating qualities, and proved what a united, disciplined and well-graded civil service could accomplish in the hands of an able hereditary monarchy. This old State stood the test of Napoleonic times better than Prussia, which was more designed to achieve rapid success. It showed a surprising tenacity in the defence of its hard-won gains and is in its way a product of history which may fairly be called vigorous, efficient and imposing. The Dual Monarchy lives even to-day on this admirable, homely old Austrian State, just as the French Republic lives on what it has inherited from its monarchy. The old German-Austrian officials live there as though the ancient State still existed. It has indeed narrowed its boundaries at various times, has given up foreign provinces, such as, in particular, Italy. But its tradition is not destroyed, was not even destroyed in 1848 when all foundations were shaken, and
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that not only by the attacks of non-Germans but by the wrath of German farmers and townsfolk. For the old Austrian State was a German official State but in no sense a German national State. The German element in it sat in official rooms. It was as little affected by the German national movement and democracy as by any other national popular movement. It represented the old order of things in its essence. But for this very reason it was the object of revolutionary attacks from all sides alike, even from the German. * * _*% * * *
Metternich is principally known to us as the opponent of the progressive spirit of his time. He was in his way a Central European, but of an old stamp: cavalier, statesman, regent with no trace of democratic or national sentiment. From the Danube to the mouth of the Elbe he obstructed that new spirit to which Friedrich Wilhelm II. of Prussia reluctantly submitted himself in the wars of liberation, for he knew, or believed, that his State, the ancient Austrian State, would be broken if the national ideal triumphed. Hence the revolution in 1848 was directed against him and his system, and it affected him and his Emperor much more seriously than the rulers of, say, Prussia or Bavaria, for the Austria of that time was anti-democratic in essence.
But in what consisted the old German Democracy in 1848 ?
It was and is a government by the governed, logically thought out, at that time upheld by aspiring townsfolk and small farmers, later adopted by the working classes who | were pressing up after them. The authority thus aspired to, of those who had hitherto been the governed, rests theoretically upon the assumption that the masses are capable of governing by elected representatives and parlia- mentary majorities. Against this assumption objections were and are raised, based on the nature of the masses themselves, on the technique of parliamentary business, and above all on the incompatibility of a heterogeneous popula- tion within a democratic parliamentary system. This latter
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was the special Austrian problem. All the other demo- cratic difficulties were experienced in the purely national States too, and were for the most part overcome, but ancient Austria supplies the pattern instance in the world’s history of the doubly complicated case of a polyglot parliamentary democracy split up along national lines ; and the Emperor Franz Joseph I. has lived through this experiment in the position of leader from 1848 until now. Democracy hands over to the population through the franchise a share in the sovereignty, under the assumption that it will understand how to form majorities capable of governing. This is in itself no easy matter for a people who have hitherto been unorganised subjects. In partially undeveloped countries they often get the franchise without knowing what to do with it. They send up to Parliament delegates without cohesion, local celebrities, orators and respected citizens, and are surprised if the Government manages this jumble of persons as it pleases. As long as a democratic representative assembly is undisciplined and without a majority, it strengthens in the main the bureaucracy, because it frees the latter from the con- straint of voting taxes without itself being able to take over the conduct of affairs. This was the unexpected experience of almost all constitutional Governments after 1848, but most of all that of the Austrian Government. In spite of the altered constitution everything remained at bottom as of old, allowing for a little more effort on the part of the Government. And it would have so remained throughout the Danubian Monarchy if in one place, viz. in Hungary, a disciplined, self-contained organisation had not appeared upon the scene. The Hungarian Revolution of 1848-49 was the first occasion on which this episode of a popular rising reached the dignity of an historical event. For this revolution was more than the vague desire for government of polyglot democratic farmers and townsfolk, it was the armed rising of a national entity which was previously almost complete in itself. The Hungarian noble was a different kind of revolutionary from the Viennese
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artisan, for he did not merely wish to parade the streets, to protest and to bargain a little with those in authority. He wanted to rule himself, and he knew what that meant. The really serious nationality problem only arose with the Hungarian Revolution.
* * # * # %
But before we discuss the Hungarians and their in- fluence upon all the other non-German elements, we must make some further remarks about democracy and nationalism.
Democracy, as we have already said, is the admittance of -
the previously governed to a share in the government. This is a lengthy process, for the man who has been nothing but medizval serf, labourer and subject has in general no desire to govern. He must first, in the course of generations, be raised out of his torpor and enlightened before he can even conceive of becoming himself a factor in political government. This enlightenment was the work of the eighteenth century, and even princes and aristocrats shared in it without foreseeing the results of their benevolent efforts to educate the people. Without desiring it people were transforming illiterates into future revolutionists within the despotic State itself. When the old society sent some crumbs of its knowledge into the servants’ hall, it was undermining itself. This had been freely done in the most innocent manner in the benevolent Austria of pre- Napoleonic times.
The people of the eighteenth and indeed also of the nineteenth centuries accepted the education offered to them from above slowly and suspiciously, because they were not accustomed to receive benefits without reservation, and because they themselves had no presentiment about what was given them. They could not know what sort of strength was asleep within them. The period of government by the nobility or by the cloister had lasted so long that the far-distant times of ancient general freedom and of untamed racial migrations were wholly forgotten and lost. For when before have the common people been told their
ee CN
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own history? They saw that there were lords over them and noticed that the ruling classes used two languages, one for their European intercourse, whether knightly or priestly, and one for the people. This second language now became the subject of popular education. The stammer of the wage-earner’s cottage became a written language by the help of popular education and the national school; the dialect of conquered races and the figures of their lost rulers became subjects of instruction. Out of the mouths of _ babes and sucklings was made ready the power, a trembling power at first, of a newly arising nationality. The national lower classes gained ground below the international upper classes, and their instinct carried them so far that the dwellers in the castles often concealed their knowledge of Latin, French or German in order to become the popular leaders of these formerly speechless masses. Old German or Italian aristocratic families began to speak Tzechish or Slovenian, not always indeed, but when they were in the country. The once despised language of the crowd became a subject of pride, a ground for obstinacy. Often the national language lived on and raised itself by means of religious contests. Tzechish was spread abroad in early days by Johann Hus and his followers. The Hungarians in castle and cottage developed a passion for Magyar when they professed Calvinism in that language. Religious movements possess everywhere the greatest democratic and national influence. Even the Catholicism of the Counter-Reformation had such an influence, when the nobility were Protestant and the lower classes Catholic. The Tyrolese and the Steiermarker peoples became German Catholics when, with the help of their priests, they drove out their Protestant lords. Many ruined castles bear witness to these happenings. In this way nations developed from below upwards, their individual souls, their special God, their Mother Mary or their Catechism. The deeper the faith penetrates among the masses the more provincial it becomes. The Polish heaven differs from the Roumanian heaven, and the Queen above the stars looks differently on the Vistula and on the Isonzo. These
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are no distinctions of creed in the theological sense, but national growths. And the spiritual beginnings are often translated with surprising rapidity into the material. National poets arise and old songs are written out. National dress, which is often only a remnant of an old discarded upper-class culture, is held in special honour as inherited. Romanticism beautifies and enlarges the homely legends and sanctifies the old peasant style of architecture, discover- ing wonderful secrets in it and in the ancestral food, animals and flowers. In such a time of awakening, as in spring- time, even shabby peoples are beautiful. It is the awaken- ing of the masses to humanity, the first steps of national democracy.
This process of development took a somewhat different course in each of the hitherto neglected and oppressed nationalities. But any one who ts not familiar with it cannot understand whence comes the wonderful vitality and passion in the nations which are climbing up out of the depths. He judges coldly from a detached point of view and thinks it a political insanity that a people of this sort should regard itself as the centre of the universe. And this indeed is so if we will admit only the successful great nations as worthy of life. But every living entity and every nation desires, when the mass of its people awake, to have its own day, its sacred and sunny maytime, and strives after it so far as is in its power. This may be disturbing and absurd, but it is very human. Those who have to solve racial disputes must never forget this national spirit whose import Herder was the first among important thinkers to attempt to disclose. Herder, understanding the soul of the people, did not believe in the permanency of the Austrian State, a very natural attitude for him and for all who study race psycho- logy without military statesmanship. Psychologically the ancient Austrian State is actually burst asunder by the birth of the national spirit, and what binds it together is the fact that it is impossible for military reasons for small sections of nations to maintain themselves in the world. The military State coerces the nationalities, the old Germano-
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Austrian administrative State binds together the untamed peoples’ States of later growth. # % # # % *
But since the Germans in North and South have each experienced a similar national awakening, they ought, properly speaking, to show understanding of all such popular agitations, even if they appear recalcitrant and antagonistic. The Germans too were overwhelmed by a Latin-French civilisation until they became genuine free Germans. But there is one very remarkable fact about the older stages of the nations, and I do not remark what follows in order to say something conclusive, but to indicate a question which is significant for the community feeling in Mid-Europe. Why did the Germans after a certain stage feel no more genuine sympathy for the agitators among the young nations following in their footsteps, and why did they themselves cease to exercise Germanising influence? The two ques- tions are intimately connected. Only the striver can feel love and attachment for those who are beginning to strive. Whilst the Latin Franks (the French) were young they pressed forward their national boundaries almost up to the Rhine; whilst the non-Latin Teutons (Germans) were young they pressed forward their national boundaries far into the East, and by missions and the pressure of authority made distant lands practically German. But then their force of attraction ceased for no visible outward reason. Farmerly numbers of Slavs or other foreign peoples had emigrated into Germany (Brandenburg, Lausitz, Silesia, PPommerania, Prussia), but then they were all at once faced by a wall. To-day they are still faced by the same wall. How admir- able it would be for us to convert the Tzechs into Germans if it could be done! But it simply cannot be done. The time for it is past, both parties are too old for it. The Germans have long since lost the cheerful natural growth, the rough vigour, the childlikeness of their medieval Ger- manising spirit, and the Tzechs have long since grown less impressionable than were the Sorbs, Wends and Liutitzen, or whatever else they may have been called. To overlook
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these changes brought by time is the tragic error of the present Pan-German party. They wish to accomplish by school and law what they are now powerless to do imagina- tively and without set purpose.
It is by no means unimportant to point out in this con- nection that the modern Germans almost everywhere in the world are unfortunately bad Germanisers. In my opinion this is a result of our best qualities. We are thinkers, men of understanding, engineers, organisers, successful prosaic people, perfect apparatus, invaluable voluntary parts of a machine, but just on this account strange to the children of nature and to average nations. This indeed applies in a much greater degree to the Germans of the Empire than to the German Austrians. The same ability which opens the markets of the world to us and makes our armies victorious, closes to us the hearts of those who are climbing up out of the mist. Hence, in distant parts of the earth too, we only make passably good colonists. We are, if the comparison will not offend, sometimes in the position of a privy councillor trying to manage his horse ; his groom can do this much better. In other words: those Old Austrian officials who were confronted with the new national movements had all the advantages of advanced political civilisation, but lacked the innate feeling for formless creative strength. They were privy councillors with all the attendant excellences and deficiencies. Thus it came about that in 1848 an unheard-of shock burst upon that well-governed Austria, which then included Hungary : the peoples, the nations moved according to their own inspiration and not in the prescribed forms. Mutterings were heard below, at the foundations of the State: the molecules were astir in the ancient stones of the monarchy.
* * * + * +
The Magyars were the chief nation that revolted in ancient Austria. They extorted political separation, not at once, indeed, in the year of revolution, but later in 1866. They became a State, a second ruling nation along- side of the Germans. Here we are not concerned to discuss
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the details of their alienation from the Hapsburg dynasty, an alienation which may be traced back to the pre-Turkish period. We are only anxious that we Imperial Germans should grasp the extraordinarily powerful and undisputed part that they play within the monarchy to which we are allied. I have, indeed, often pondered over this remarkable people, neither Slavonic nor German, which dwells in our midst and is even now helping to decide the fate of Germany. They are unlike other nations, not so high strung as the Western peoples, not such deep thinkers as the Germans, not dreamy and inactive as are often the Slavs, not medizvally chivalrous like the Turks, but a wonderful modern nation, based on an ancient racial migration, self-assertive, efficient, proud, masterful, political, above all tenacious in their nationalism. To whom shall I compare such a nation? In their fate and in their character they have something in common with the Spaniards, however far removed from them they may be in race. The Spaniards and the Magyars, in West and East, are the first nations who freed themselves from Mohammedan control. They were not in subjection so long or so completely as the nations in the Balkans or Morocco, but sufficiently long to have to bear the yoke of foreignrule. They did not only, like we Germans, experience some years of Napoleonism, but incomparably more. Their whole national existence was at stake during the Turkish period, and noble, priest and people grew up cramped in the school of servitude. But the Turkish suzerainty, on the other hand, was so far an outside influence that they remained a nation. The Turks, as we have already noted, had no idea of converting them to Mohammedanism. Subdued but not broken in spirit and well trained to arms, they awaited a change in the situation, and when the Austrians, after an heroic struggle, completely freed them from Turkish control, they were very far from blending with the nation of their liberators out of sheer gratitude. The Hungarians had as little desire to be Austrian as the Roumanians, to-day, have to be Russian. But the Austrians came as conquerors opposed to Turkey, and were scarcely more liberators as
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such than were later the Russians. They sent German officials into the districts that had been freed of Turks, and expected the Magyars to behave like some little Slav people that had been set free. But this expectation could not be realised. The negotiations were protracted from decade to decade, the elective Kingdom of Hungary became an inheritance of the Hapsburg dynasty, out of opposition came compromises. But at last the Magyars lost patience, and made use of the West European democratic revolution of 1848 as an opportunity for their own differently constituted national revolution, which was so fiery that the Austrians could only put it down with the help of Russian troops. In this revolution the national Government of the Magyars was, in the first instance, ruined for the second time, but only in order to reassert itself with renewed vigour so soon as the monarchy was in danger and needed the Magyars. The Battle of Kéniggratz was a victory for both Prussian and Magyar, although the latter did not appear as a com- batant. The Saxon Minister Beust was summoned to Vienna and, with the aid of the Empress Elizabeth and the co-operation of Deak and Andrassy, this clever non-Austrian formulated the Austro-Hungarian Dualism. This put an end to the old centralised Austria, and from Budapest started the Dual Monarchy and the present State with its reorganised distinct nationalities. * * * * * *
But while in 1867, the year of the Ausgleich, the Austrians were not obliged forthwith to regulate anew all their tradi- tions of nationality policy, the Magyars in Hungary had to settle the basis of their future relations to their own small nationalities. Here then, for the first time, the principles of racial policy had to be worked out by a nation which had hitherto been itself under the yoke of a foreign people. What success did they have ? -
The Hungarian Nationality Law of 1868 is essentially a language law. It is published in the collections of statutes, but its main provisions are also printed in that instructive work, Geschichte der Deutschen in Ungarn, by R. F. Kaindel
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(Gotha, 1912). Every inhabitant of Hungary is entitled to draw up memorials to the Central Government in Budapest in his mother tongue, and the Government is obliged in its reply to use both Magyar and the language in which the memorial was written. Laws are to be issued in Magyar, but translated into all the languages used in the country. In the counties the records may also be kept in a non-Magyar language if this is demanded by a fifth of the members. In the county assemblies every one may use his own language unconditionally. Private persons and communes may write to their county authority in their own language. The representative councils in the communes choose for them- selves the language for official use and for their records. In the law courts every one may use his mother tongue pro- vided this is authorised for use in the records. Nationality cannot be counted as an obstacle to appointment to an office or to the conferment of an honour. The Minister of Education has the duty of deciding the language used for instruction in the Government institutions, but he is bound to see that, in respect of primary and intermediate schools, each racial group of people living together in considerable numbers is provided with educational institutions using its own tongue. The language employed in private institutions and by societies is determined by the founder.
This law of 1868 is well planned, a great project for a contentious period, but it was much limited by later additions and became more and more adapted to the insistence upon a Magyar official language. In 1879 instruction in the Magyar language was made compulsory in the primary schools. Any teacher may be dismissed whose scholars are not proficient in speaking and writing the Magyar language at the end of four years! A law of 1883 insisted on the study of the Magyar language in the intermediate schools to such an extent that instruction in other departments was bound to suffer. The candidates for teachers’ posts must do their examinations in Magyar. That hinders even the German head teachers from visiting German universities.
In respect to the law courts, too, the original law suffered from a retrograde movement. The President of the Court
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may decide on the exclusive use of the Magyar language. The jury are obliged to be proficient in Magyar.
The conversion of place and personal names into Magyar is officially insisted upon.
And the provisions introduced by law and regulation in opposition to the spirit of the original law were still further emphasised by everyday practice. Although “for all citizens living together in considerable numbers, of whatever nationality,” intermediate schools must be provided near the district where they live, yet we read in the official report for 1911, that altogether 4102 Government educa- tional institutions (kindergartens, primary schools, inter- mediate schools and gymnasia) use Magyar as the language of instruction. Of the 3299 educational institutions which are maintained by the individual political communes, 3028 use the Magyar language exclusively. Although, under conditions therein stated, the original law allowed it to be decided by resolution that the commune records should be kept in a non-Magyar language, yet such resolutions when passed are most commonly annulled by the Government authorities. German books are forbidden, German news- papers were kept out by various tricks when there was an opportunity up to the very outbreak of war.
Thus it is evident that the matter is by no means settled by what is in itself a clear and good fundamental statute. This should be noted especially by those who believe that racial peace could be magically brought about to-morrow by a wisely thought out model law. Customs and administra- tive usages are at least as important as laws. But all over the world these are of slow growth and involve innumerable discussions.
* * * * * *
We shall try to put ourselves into the mental attitude of the ruling Magyars, which is indeed not so very difficult for us, since Germans, wherever they are in power, are in- clined to think in quite the same way. To the Magyars, naturally, the racial complexity of their State is always present. They know that they themselves, counted by heads, number less than half, and that with equal, free
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suffrage, and a fair partition into electoral districts, they could always be driven from power by a combination of the remaining elements. Hence the task to which they, whose national will to govern created the State, devote themselves, is on the one hand to guard against an equalising democracy, whether openly or secretly, and on the other to increase the number of Magyars.
The avoidance of democracy, which presumes a somewhat tortuous thought process in a nation which has obtained independence by revolution, is brought about by franchise devices, the partition into electoral districts and administra- tive mechanism, the morality of which we shall not here discuss, but only the facts. In Prussia, too, similar things did and do occur. But all such methods have only a limited duration, for all over the world the nations are approaching universal suffrage by way of the primary school and universal conscription. This is the more true in Hungary since there people know from experience that the ruling dynasty may any day place equal franchise rights upon its programme if it believes that the Magyar aristocracy are becoming too unmanageable. It may do this, and that is enough! Hence the Magyar control of the State is only secured if in the future there are more than 50 per cent. of Magyars. Therein lies the explanation of the violent zeal to Magyarise. And in fact Hungarian statistics report some tangible successes. Between 1900 and 1910 the percentage of those who gave Magyar as their mother tongue, or who could not prevent its being assigned to them, increased from 45.4 per cent. to 48.1 per cent., and the number of those who were generally proficient in the Magyar language increased from 52.9 per cent. to 57.4 per cent. If this is continued for a few more decades a safe majority will be created statistically, and later on also in reality. When this exists universal suffrage will be less terrifying. Accordingly—gain time and Magyarise !
This train of thought has much in its favour politically, and we should not really have done justice to our business of understanding if we were prepared to trace it all back
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to the egoism and to the material interests of the rulers. It is obviously indisputable that these play their part, but it is disputable that they are decisive. Even with us in Prussia there are not a few Conservatives who honestly believe that the State can only be maintained by them and with the aid of the three-class voting system, and it must be acknowledged that similar views are even more natural to the Magyar politician. He is generally well instructed in political law and foresees the doubtful con- sequences of a polyglo¢and unstable parliainentary system. As we have remarked above, a polyglot parliamentary system, incapable of stable majorities, strengthens the bureaucracy, which with some skill and a few recurrent favours always plays off the