LAMMASCH'S EFFORTS FOR PEACE 1 



FOR many months Dr. Lammasch had urged the Emperor Karl 

 to lead in the "transmutation of the empire into a Confedera- 

 tion" after the fashion of Switzerland, with a constitutional 

 monarchy, the states themselves becoming self-governing de- 

 mocracies. The future of Austria in his judgment lay in co- 

 operation, not with Prussia 2 but with Italy, and afterward 

 with England and the United States. This view Karl was 

 brought to accept in 1917 through the influence of Lammasch 

 and Forster; and the details of a plan to end the war by the 

 withdrawal of Austria were then discussed at Chateau Hofgut in 

 Switzerland, the home at the time of Dr. Miihlon. This meeting 

 was arranged by Dr. de Jong van Beek en Donk, the efficient 

 secretary of the "Organisation Centrale." To Herron, Lam- 

 masch declared that "the fate of the world depended upon the 

 building of a golden bridge between Vienna and Washington. 

 ... If Prussia should win certainly the world would be 

 spiritually lost; the materialization of Europe if not of America 

 would inevitably follow. On the other hand, if the war went on 

 to a mere military victory of the Allies great disasters would 

 follow. . . . Faith in the triumph of the Wilson idea would 

 but turn upon and rend its supporters. . . . The actual 

 and inevitable choice lay between his proposed golden bridge 

 and an ultimate European society become a hybrid of Bolshe- 

 vism and supercapitalism." 



In February, 1918, Lammasch accurately predicted the 

 present condition of Europe and the present policy of France 

 as the inevitable logic of an unqualified Allied military triumph. 

 His "whole faith in a better future for the nations was staked 

 upon the insistency of Wilson's program and personal action. 

 In thus supporting the policy of Wilson he was acting as no 

 mere Austrian patriot or statesman, but as the lover of humanity 

 which his long and devoted career had already proved him to 



1 Condensed from an article by Dr. George D. Herron in a memorial volume, 

 "Heinrich Lammasch, seine Aufzeichnungen, seine Wirken und seine Politik," 

 by his daughter, Marga Lammasch, and Hans Sperl. 



2 Lammasch always spoke of Prussia in this connection, never of Germany, 

 whose interests were being wrecked by her Prussian overlords. 



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