of its sponsors, it has made it impossible entirely to suppress the views of any section of the population. Thus Count Stürgkh, the late Premier, was faced by the alternative of allowing the strong hostility of the Austrian Slavs to the Government’s war policy to find public expression in Parliament or of dispensing altogether with the latter’s services. Encouraged by the approval of Berlin and Budapest, he chose the latter course. He persisted in it for a while until the indignation of the masses at a 7dgime whose sluggish incompetence threw even its illegality into the shade prompted Friedrich Adler last November to adopt the weapon of political assassination. The new reign has brought new men to the front, and the Emperor Charles and his two chief advisers, Counts Czernin and Clam-Martinic, are fully aware of the vital need for lubricating the clogged machinery of State. Like the late Archduke Francis Ferdinand, they are known to favour reconstruction on Centralist lines, combined with such extension of local racial autonomy as is associated with the phrase of “Trialism.” Unfortunately, any pious aspirations towards a change of system are fatally handicapped by opposition from three quarters : from the German Austrians, who are determined to prevent all concessions to the Slavs, and from Budapest and Berlin, which are equally interested in upholding the existing Dualism, and thereby bolding Vienna in their thrall.
To some extent the Russian Revolution came to the help of the new men. Even the earlier upheaval of 1905 in Petrograd had reverberated throughout Austria and Hungary, and was directly responsible for the movement for universal suffrage. It was thus apparent that, quite apart from its effects upon the Austrian Slavs, the successful revolution of last March was bound to exercise a profound influence throughout the Monarchy. It was also obvious that there was no chance of successful negotiations with the new Russian democracy so long as the autocratic and unparliamentary régime of the past three years survived in Austria. Hence the extreme programme of Germanisation accepted by the late Emperor shortly before his death—the imposition of German as the language of State, drastic reforms of Parliamentary Standing Orders, and the exclusion of Galicia, all three measures to be passed by arbitrary decree previous to the summons of Parliament—was definitely dropped, and
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