Austrians

“ Do not think I dislike the Austrians. I have great respect and affection for them, and I have seen more of them in familiar intercourse than most Englishmen. One of my best friends in Venice in the winter of 1849-50 was the Artillery officer who had directed the fire on the side of Mestre in 1848. I have never known a nobler person. Brave, kind, and gay—as gentle as a lamb, as playful as a kitten—knightly in courtesy and in all tones of thought—ready at any instant to lay down his life for his country or his Emperor. ”

“ An enormously large proportion of them are officers, and I've noticed that great crowds are gathered at every station we pass. The Austrians seem to get a lot of excitement out of a war with a little country like Servia, in which the odds in their favor are at least twenty to one."
"The Austrians are a polite, agreeable, but volatile race," said Mr. Anson. "They are brave, but in war they are usually beaten. Napoleon made his early reputation out of the Austrians. They are—wait a minute, John, and I will read you more about them from this excellent book on Austria that I bought in Dresden." ”

“ But the Austrians are proverbially a polite people. They are more like the French. They are gay and fond of pleasure, but they have that instinctive courtesy, which gives such a charm to social intercourse. ”

“ While Francis Joseph lived, his German subjects were content to live in Austria as Austrians. Now that Bohemia and Hungary are separating themselves from Austria, they no longer are content. Austria is no more. The fragments which composed her are for ever disunited; and——"
"Poland?"
"Holiness, in my empire there is no Poland."
"No? Your Majesty believes that the German Austrians would be happier under your rule. Are you likely to meet with opposition if you annex them?"
"With tremendous opposition. France and Russia instantly will declare war." ”

“ The Austrians are naturally proud and haughty, and expect all Mankind should stoop to them. As their Sovereign is in the first Rank among the Christian Princes, so they think theirs to be the chief Nation in the World. ”

“ Cultivating a fertile soil, and not having, like the Styrians and the Tyrolese, to struggle incessantly against an inclement climate, they are happy in their geographical position; and they are in general deserving of it by the excellence of their disposition. Harbouring none but the milder sentiments, they have more gentleness than energy, and more good nature than elevation. The Austrians are a simple and a hospitable nation; and the same observation applies to their nobles, who never assume the German or rather the Austrian pride, unless when they would enforce the prerogatives of birth. ”

“ Being devoted Austrians, we have many anxieties concerning the political health of this admirable country. Austria, once so famed for the astute management, the 'Politiké,' which kept in order the most heterogeneous of households between Bohemia and Dalmatia, and from Hungary to the Milanese, is suffering from a complication of complaints. The first is the economic: her deficit for 1877 is already laid at twenty-six millions of florins; she lives on paper, and she habitually outruns the constable. ”

“ I have had an Austrian fire made for you, and have actually nearly succeeded in warming the entire salon. We Austrians require a higher degree of heat than these crazy Frenchmen; they always maintain they are never cold; they are quite satisfied if they can see a little picturesque blaze in the chimney, and they sit down close to it and thrust their hands and feet and heads into it, thereby giving themselves chilblains, neuralgia, rheumatism, and heaven knows what else ”

“ In one primer the sentence, “The lion is the king of the animal world” was changed into “Austria is my fatherland” [the lion is the national emblem of Bohemia] . The sentence “The Czechs are Slavs” was changed into “The Czechs are Austrians.” These are but two instances taken at random from the Austrian press to show that the old methods of the Police State still prevail in what some would have us believe is a “new Austria.” ”

“ By 1526 Moravia, Bohemia, Silesia and Hungary had been added to the Empire. Transylvania was conquered in the seventeenth century, Galicia and Bukovina in the eighteenth. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Austria was the leader among German-speaking states. Prussian shot and shell ousted her from this position at the battle of Sadowa in 1866. But the task undertaken over a thousand years ago is still being performed. Austrians today are engaged in another effort to check the westward Slavic flow.
The country is ill-prepared to meet its hereditary foe. ”

“ Austria is a rich land in a comparatively peaceful state of dissolution, where there are many kinds of men, but no Austrians. It is true we must except the imperial family and one or two antiquities of the old Constitutionalists. Besides these there are only Germans in Vienna, as outside Vienna there are only Hungarians, Czechs, &c.
The train rushes on. A little Polish servant, accompanying a traveller, calls my attention to a young Russian, who now and then spoke French to him. "He knows very well that I understand Russian, but still he speaks French to me; that is the way with them all ”

“ But he soon descried a considerable body of cavalry climbing a mountain at the other side of the village. No sooner did the general see this body than he pointed them out to his dragoons, and, leaving the prisoners to the care of the infantry, he set off with his fifty men to pursue the Austrians.
"The general and I were so splendidly mounted that we gained rapidly on our soldiers. The Austrians believing that they were being pursued by the whole of our army, fled at top speed. ”

“ They had always regretted their260 nationality and had never been happy under the rule of their rightful King. The Austrians read these ebullitions with surprise. They said that they were sorry that these men had chosen to join their nation instead of another ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For though foreign affairs have at all times been more important for Austria than perhaps any State in Europe, they have never been more important than at present; and still they are intrusted to the Magyars,—a race forming little more than one sixth of the people of the Empire. ”

“ 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. It does feel itself, in a vague patriarchal way, the leader, not of a nation, but of nations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Though driven out of a part of Italy, Austria was still the great power in Germany. She was the most important member of the Germanic Confederation, as she had a vote in the Diet at Frankfort proportioned to her population, although two-thirds of her people were not Germans. The Hungarians and the Bohemians are of other races, and speak other languages. ”

“ Austria, or German Austria, a republic formed out of the fragments of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. The republic was proclaimed on 12th Nov., 1918, and the government was taken in hand by the National Constitutional Assembly. The new republic, the frontiers of which were provisionally defined by the treaty of St. Germain (q.v.) , includes Upper Austria, Lower Austria, Salzburg, and parts of Styria, Carinthia, Tyrol, and Vorarlberg, some districts having been assigned to Yugo-Slavia and Italy. German Austria now has an area of 30,716 sq. ”

“ Let us then examine the resources of both parties, and see what was the preponderance on the side of Austria, 706 which would justify her in undertaking so hazardous an enterprise, on the supposition that she relied solely on her own resources.
The Austrian empire contains a population of 36,000,000; of these about 7,000,000 are Germans—about 15,500,000 are Sclaves,—nearly 8,000,000 are of Italian and Dacian races, and about 5,600,000 of Asiatic races, including 5,000,000 of Majjars. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Germans are in a relative majority over the other peoples in the empire, their language is the vehicle of communication between all the other peoples both in official life and in the press; they are in a relatively more advanced state of culture, and they are spread over every part of the empire. Historically they have contributed most to the foundation and to the development of the Austrian monarchy, and think that for all the above-mentioned reasons they are entitled to the principal position amongst the various nationalities of Austria. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ It may not, therefore, be unnecessary to recall attention to the fact that the Austrian dominions of the last three hundred years—the Austrian empire of our times—consists of three kingdoms and many minor principalities, inhabited by five distinct races, whose native tongues are unintelligible to each other, and who have no common language in which they can communicate; who are divided by religious differences; who preserve their distinctive characteristics, customs, and feelings; whose sentiments are mutually unfriendly, and who are, to this day, unmixed in blood. ”