Mein Kampf
official “diplomacy,” which was reeling blindly (as almost always) toward the disaster; for the temper of the people was always but the outflow of what was poured into public opinion from above. But from above a cult like that of the golden calf was being fostered for the “ally.” They probably hoped to make up in affability for what they lacked in honesty. And yet words were always taken at face value.
Even in Vienna I had flown into a fury when I saw the occasional difference between the speeches of the official statesmen and the content of the Viennese newspapers. And yet even then, at least in appearance, Vienna was still a German city.
But how different was the situation if one traveled from Vienna, or rather from German Austria, into the Slavic provinces of the Empire! One had only to look at the Prague newspapers to see how the whole exalted thimblerigging of the Triple Alliance was judged there. They had nothing but cutting mockery and scorn for this “masterpiece of statesmanship.” In the midst of peace, while the two Emperors were pressing the kiss of friendship on each other’s brows, people did not trouble to disguise the fact that the Alliance would be done for on the day that there was any attempt to transport it from the mists of the Nibelungen ideal into practical reality.
How indignant people were a few years later when the moment came for the Alliance to prove itself, and Italy broke away from the Triple Affiance, left her two comrades to go their way, and finally herself became an enemy! That people had ever dared believe for a moment in the possibility of such a miracle—the miracle that Italy would fight on the same side with Austria—could not but have been absolutely incomprehensible to anyone not smitten with diplomatic blindness. Yet the situation in Austria was the same to a hair.
The sole support for the alliance idea in Austria came from the Hapsburgs and the Germans. The Hapsburgs gave it from calculation and because they could not help it, the Germans through good faith and political stupidity. Good faith, because in the Triple Affiance they thought they were doing the Ger-
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