Austria

“ This fame I now seek, not from ambition, but from love to my subjects. You all know Albert, Duke of Austria, to whom in preference to all other princes I gave my daughter in marriage, and whom I adopted as my son. You know that he possesses experience and every virtue becoming a prince. He found Austria in a state of disorder, and he has restored it to tranquillity. He is now of an age in which judgment and experience attain their perfection, and he is sovereign of Austria, which, lying between Hungary and Bohemia, forms a connecting link between the two kingdoms. ”

“ I hope we shall come to our senses finally before setting all Europe on fire, for the sake of obliging some little princes, and, at our own cost, helping Austria in glory out of her embarrassment. We cannot allow Austria either to be annihilated or, through brilliant victory, to be strengthened in her feeling of self-confidence and to make us the footstool of her greatness. ”

“ In the two divisions Austria received forty-five thousand square miles and five million of inhabitants. Maria Theresa was now upon the highest pinnacle of her glory and her power. She had a highly disciplined army of two hundred thousand men; her treasury was replenished, and her wide-spread realms were in the enjoyment of peace. Life had been to her, thus far, but a stormy sea, and weary of toil and care, she now hoped to close her days in tranquillity. ”

“ But there still remains one great difference between Austria and Prussia which developed more and more as the energy of the young Napoleon was driven like a wedge between them. The difference can be most shortly stated by saying that Austria did, in some blundering and barbaric way, care for Europe; but Prussia cared for nothing but Prussia. Austria is not a nation; you cannot really find Austria on the map. But Austria is a kind of Empire; a Holy Roman Empire that never came, an expanding and contracting-dream. ”

“ Even if you returned to Austria unencumbered, you could accomplish less alone than with a man of equal endowments and greater power beside you. Two strong brains and characters with similar purpose can always accomplish more together than alone. I intend to rule and to save Austria, and I need you, your help, your advice, your subtlety, your compelling fascination, and your great personality. ”

“ Do you not realize that you would no longer be Gräfin Zattiany, you would be Mrs. Lee Clavering? Do you imagine for a moment that you could play the great rôle in Austrian affairs you have set yourself, handicapped by an American name—and an American husband? Not with all your gifts, your wealth, your genius for playing on that complex instrument called human nature. Austria may be a Republic of sorts, but it is still Austria. You would be an American and an outsider—a presumptuous interloper. ”

“ I cannot yield, therefore, as a German prince, that Austria increase her power in an illegitimate manner, but I will cast my good sword in the scales, that the balance is heavier on the side upon which depends the existence of Germany, that she may not be tossed in the air by Austria’s weight. ”

“ If your majesty consents to contribute your share to this restoration, Austria in return offers to France her lasting alliance and, in case the other powers should pursue a hostile course, her armed assistance. Austria wishes to make no conquests, to acquire no provinces, no titles—she is animated with the spirit of moderation. ”

“ For Austria, we can well conceive that the prudent and cautious policy of that ably conducted monarchy must dictate excessive jealousy and suspicion of these popular movements. Austria, more than any other power in Europe, has the truest cause to pride itself on the good results of its peculiar system of government, as demonstrated by the solid and practical wellbeing of the States under its paternal sway. ”

“ Austria is cut off from Italy, the great object of her ambition for more than three centuries; long the rival of France, long balancing with the Bourbons the fate of Europe, she must now submit, and tacitly acknowledge to the world the superiority of her foe, and her own humiliation. ”

“ But above all this regrettable favoring of Austria is a form of disease deep-seated with certain people, a disease that we call habit. As many persons look upon it, the disappearance of Austria would create a gap in Europe which would endanger its equilibrium. Since Austria has always existed, what will happen, if she ceases to be? Such reasoning, unconscious for the most part, reminds me of people who have a bad tooth; they suffer a great deal, but they imagine that if it were pulled out, they would miss something. ”

“ You shall serve the fatherland—you shall serve Germany, for Germany is in Austria just as well as in Prussia. Oh, believe me, my friend, only in Austria will you find men strong and bold enough to brave the intolerable despotism of the French. And the leading men there will welcome you most cordially; an appropriate sphere will be allotted to your genius, and the position to which you will be appointed will amply satisfy the aspirations of your ambition. ”

“ But in those days—I speak it calmly, and with something, at least I hope, of the judgment which should belong to old age—Austria was a power to be loathed and warred against by all good men, a stronghold of tyranny and cruelty, a dark land within whose darkness dark deeds were done, a country where the oppressed found no helper. I am heaping up words in vain, which is a thing outside my habits. Every student of history knows what Austria was at that time, and there are thousands still living who are old enough to remember. ”

“ The work, however, is going on, and if the war which has come and passed has not swallowed everything appertaining to Austria into its maw, the ugly remnants of destruction will be soon carted away, and the old glacis{4} will be made bright with broad pavements, and gilded railings, and well-built lofty mansions, and gardens beautiful with shrubs, and beautiful with turf also, if Austrian patience can make turf to grow beneath an Austrian sky. ”

“ Amateur statesmen who have never lived in Austria imagine that federalization of this empire and its rapprochement to the Catholic states of South Germany would be the best counterpoise to the evil Prussian influence over the German empire. What a misconception of the realities. Austria is the vanguard of Germany toward the southeast. The Hapsburgs and their German subjects have ever looked upon themselves as the instrument for the Germanization of the inferior races bordering on the territory of the German people. ”

“ The Government’s Programme is, Austria—the Austria which has grown during a glorious historic .development, and which has, during this war, become convinced of its indestructible forces, the Austria which is preparing to be a powerful factor in the future economic and social development of the world—Austria, the venerable, proud and eternal fortress of her peoples. The Government could never, never tolerate rash hands being laid upon her proved foundations. ”

“ And Austria can now afford to relinquish them— Austria is rich, powerful, prosperous enough to be allowed to proffer her friendship where it will be honorably returned. Austria, then, must be freed from her oppressive alliance with the maritime powers. She has youth and vitality enough to shake off this bondage, and strike for the new path which shall lead her to greatness and glory. There is a moral and intangible greatness, of whose existence these trading Englishmen have no conception, but which the refined and elevated people of France are fully competent to appreciate. ”

“ The empire of Austria combines in itself several large kingdoms, the undisturbed and undisputed dominions of a common sovereign, to whose sway they have been long accustomed, and towards whom they nourish the same sentiments of loyalty which their fathers entertained to the ancient princes of the same house.{159} Austria's natural authority therefore rested, and now rests, on this broad and solid base, the general and rooted attachment of the people to their prince, and their identification of his interests with their own. ”

“ By an odd turning about of meanings, Austria, once really the Oesterreich, the Eastern land, of Germany, has become in truth the Western land, the Neustria, of the new arrangement. With the Hungarian kingdom are grouped the principality of Transsilvania and the kingdoms of Slavonia and Croatia. The Austrian state is made up of Austria itself—the archduchy with the addition of Salzburg—the duchy of Styria, the county of Tyrol, the kingdoms of Bohemia, Galicia and Lodomeria, Illyria, and Dalmatia with Ragusa and Cattaro. ”

“ The history of Austria, so far as it has importance, is unique in being the history of a Family and not the history of a State,-- the history of a Dynastic and not of a National Power. Territorially, the name was attached, until 1806, to an inconsiderable arch-duchy, on the Danube, in that corner of Teutonic Europe where the Germans of the Middle Ages fought back the Turanian races and the Slaves. ”

“ If we should succeed in elevating Austria from the position of an unwilling continental colony of the German race to a federal State, whose natural mission would be to further economic and cultural intercourse between East and West, then we shall all, ruler and peoples, attain a future beautiful beyond the powers of eloquence to describe. ”

“ Born and bred in Austria, allied to the Imperial family by the closest ties of blood—his mother was an archduchess—trained in Austrian etiquette, an officer in the Austrian army, beholden to Austria for many past favours—and keenly alive to the fact that for any favours which might yet be to come he must look exclusively to the Court of Vienna—in his leanings and prepossessions he was entirely Austrian. ”

“ The bonds which unite them to Austria will be drawn the tighter. On the other hand, will not the Catholics of the Rhine, of Westphalia, of Poland, of Suabia, of Franconia, of Würtemberg, of Bavaria, of Alsace, and of Lorraine, driven from the bosom of the German Empire, in which they are no longer citizens, but pariahs, be tempted to look again in the direction of Austria, the centre of their older sympathies? All Austria has to do is not to interfere ”

“ At the time of writing these lines, in June, 1919, Austria has long ceased to exist. There is only left now a small, impoverished, wretched land called German-Austria, a country without army or money; helpless, starving, and wellnigh in despair. ”

“ His father was one of the most fascinating men in Austria. He is still living, and is by no means, it seems, at the end of his fascinations, but, being a widower, hovers about from one amusing capital to another, breaking hearts for pastime. ”

“ Austria—Oesterreich—is the ancient Eastmark or frontier province, the outpost of Carlovingian power against the tribes of the east, then of the mediaeval German Empire against Slav and Magyar. Under the House of Habsburg, which first rose to greatness on the ruins of a Greater Bohemia, Austria grew steadily stronger as a distinct unit. Two famous mottoes sum up the policy of that dynasty in the earlier centuries of its existence. ”

“ When time raised up one strong and purely German kingdom, to rally and encourage a German sentiment of nationality, then Austria--expelled by it from the Teutonic circle--first found her true place in the politics of Europe. ”

“ All are devoted to Austria, because to Austria the town owes its peculiar position, the source of its wealth and independence, and all these classes, though divided by race, language, and religion, are united by their common affection for the House of Hapsburg—a love which perhaps hardly attains to devotion, but which, in words at least, amounts to fanaticism. ”

“ Austria is not one of the “inevitable” countries, like England and Spain, bound to have a separate existence under some form of government or other because of their geographical situation and the national characteristics of their inhabitants. There is no Austrian nation: only a medley of races which detest each other, bound (but by no means welded) together for the supposed convenience of the rest of Europe, and unified only by the fact that its component parts all appertain to the dominions of the House of Habsburg. ”

“ Austria has increased her possessions by a third of Poland, some parings of Bavaria and a part of Dalmatia and Italy. She no longer, it is true, has the Low Countries; but that province has not devolved upon France, and it has become a formidable auxiliary of England and Prussia as against ourselves. ”

“ Austria is always in a ferment of one kind or another, composite as she is of half a dozen distinct and antagonistic strains of blood that have yet to be really amalgamated; but her Grand Old Man does his best to keep peace between his Slavs and Hungarians, Bohemians and Poles—and generally succeeds. ”

“ From Austria she has taken the first place in Germany; from France, the first place in Europe, which is the same thing as the first place in Christendom, or the world,—meaning by the world that portion of mankind which has power and influence and leadership, because of its knowledge, culture, and wealth. The moral blow falls with greater severity on France than on Austria. Austria had no right whatever to the first place in Germany. ”

“ It was in 1590—winter. Austria was far away from the world, and asleep; it was still the Middle Ages in Austria, and promised to remain so forever. Some even set it away back centuries upon centuries and said that by the mental and spiritual clock it was still the Age of Belief in Austria. But they meant it as a compliment, not a slur, and it was so taken, and we were all proud of it. I remember it well, although I was only a boy; and I remember, too, the pleasure it gave me.
Yes, Austria was far from the world, and asleep, and our village was in the middle of that sleep, being in the middle of Austria. ”