The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 2/The Austrian Situation

The Austrian Situation.

Austria of 1918 is a very different country from the self-confident, domineering, ruthless state that dispatched the Serbian ultimatum in 1914. If the Czechs had spoken three years ago as they are speaking today, Bohemia would have had more gallows than trees. Today Premier Seydler is afraid to venture beyond threats. Bohemians continue their open revolt against the Austrian state, and the only step taken against them so far is a suspension for two weeks of the principal Czech newspaper, the “Národní Listy”.

Probably the general strike of January 21 and 22 gave a warning to the government not to push matters to extremes. The proclamation, of the socialist and labor organizations, placarded on the corners of Prague on January 21st, said “Tomorrow, January 22d, all work shall be suspended; by means of a general strike and a manifestation in the streets of Prague we shall demand a general peace, the right of each nation freely to dispose of its future, and civil liberties”. Not a wheel moved in Prague the following day, all stores were closed, and the city assumed a holiday aspect. Before the Town Hall, on the Old Town Square, where three hundred years ago 27 leaders of the last Bohemian revolt against the Hapsburgs had been executed, a tremendous crowd gathered, numbering some 150,000 persons. Speakers for the National Socialists and the Social Democrats protested against a separate peace and demanded a general peace and independence of Bohemia. On the same day demonstrations were held in other Bohemian and Moravian cities. In Pilsen, where the famous Skoda gunworks are located, 50,000 workingmen went on strike.

The Prague declaration of January 6th, the full text of which is published in this issue, has continued to be the storm center of debates in the Vienna Parliament. The Slav majority of the Reichsrat finally compelled the government to withdraw the prohibition against its publication, but the censor cut out the declaration from all copies of Austrian newspapers going beyond Austria. The furor of Austrian Germans continues against the unheard of insolence of the Czechs who dare to demand liberty and the ministers are constantly called upon by angry German deputies to curb the treason of the Czechs. Only the socialists of Austria, alone among the nine million German subjects of the Hapsburgs, talk of the demands of the Czechs with some sympathy. Thus the Reichenberger Tagesbote, organ of German socialists of Bohemia, says: “All the democracies must meet on the road which leads to the independence of the peoples. Each people shall have the right to decide to what sovereignty it shall belong. Social democrats should recognize the right of the Bohemian nation to independence, as well as the right of the Slovenes, Croats and Serbs to unite in one state, and the claim of the Poles and Ruthenians to what state they shall belong. Social democrats of the German empire should concede to the Alsatians and the Poles the right to dispose of themselves.” The fact is that in Austria socialists of the Slav races support the national program of their peoples, while the German socialists follow a tendency which brings them near to the principles of the minority socialists of Germany, rather than of the Scheidemann party.

The parliament began on February 5th to consider the regular budget for 1918. It is an eloquent commentary on the excellence of the parliamentary institutions of Austria that this was the first regular budget submitted to the deputies since 1909. Provisional budgets were the best that the government could obtain from the parliament even before the war. The total expenditures in this budget are nearly 24 billion crowns; receipts are estimated at less than 5 billion, therefore the deficiency amounts to 19 billion. Interest on state debt alone requires two and a half billion crowns. The levity with which even the German deputies view the approaching bankruptcy is illustrated by the reporter of the budget committee, Deputy Steinwender: “We were saved not by the banks, but by the banknote press.”

During the debate on budget, the widest latitude is permitted to the speakers, and the Czechs used the opportunity to reiterate their opposition to Austria. Father Zahradník refuted the continued aspersions of traitor, thrown at the Czechs by their enemies. He said: “Who will dare to call it a crime, if the Czech nation proclaims to the world that it wants to live its own life and decide alone how its money and blood

 

Royal Castle of Hradčany, Prague.

Royal Castle of Hradčany, Prague.

 

shall be employed. . . . Only he is guilty of treason who sins against his own nation. But he who goes as his heart and conscience demand, as his nation’s ideals guide him, he is no traitor. And if you call such people traitors, then I, too, am a traitor. For us there is no Austrian fatherland; we know only our Bohemian country, where we were born and where our nation lives.”

Dr. Seydler attempted in vain to find a majority in the Reichsrat for his budget. All the Slavs, including the Poles, refused to vote for it. On February 7th Seydler therefore resigned with his entire cabinet. That, however, could not solve the crisis. No cabinet could be formed, willing to stick to the German alliance, that could find a majority in the Reichsrat. Seydler had to take up again the burdens of office and the difficult task of finding a majority among the hostile deputies. With the Czechs and the Jugoslavs nothing could be done. But the Poles had been the main reliance of the Austrian cabinets for more than fifty years. By what arguments they were won over is not yet clear, for the Poles were greatly embittered against the Central Empires by their refusal to admit the Polish representatives to the Russian and Ukrainian peace negotiations, and by the cession of the old Polish province of Cholm to Ukrainia.

At any rate, some promises were passed by Seidler to the deputies from Galicia and confirmed by the emperor himself. As a result the Poles abstained from voting, and Seydler got his budget approved by a majority of 203 to 165.