October 31, 1918 
LAND 6? WATER 
11 
Austria in Extremis : By R. W. Seton-Watson 
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY is visibly crumbling before 
our eyes, and although the scanty news which 
is allowed to trickle through to us must be 
received with very great caution, there can be 
little doubt that we are on the eve of events 
which may rapidly transform the whole Central European 
situation. Where all is so uncertain, it is at least safe, to 
maintain that the prostration to which their principal ally 
has been reduced is one of the decisive factors which explain 
Germany's more chastened attitude. Absorbed in a life- 
and-death struggle on the West, our public opinion has been 
apt to forget how essential a part Austria-Hungary has 
always played in the plans of the Central Alliance. It is 
quite true that in a purely military sense she has been a sad 
disappointment to Germany, whose armies have extricated 
her from impending disaster on no less than five occasions 
during the present war — the Russian advance in Galicia in 
autumn, 1914, the recovery of Gahcia in 1915, the holding up 
of the Brusilov offensive, the expulsion of the Rumanians 
from Hungary, and the final ejection of the Russians from 
Galicia. But all this does not alter the fact that alike for 
geographical, political, and economic reasons, Germany 
would have been lost long ago but for Austria-Hungary ; 
indeed, it was this knowledge, quite as much as loyalty to 
an incompetent ally, that prompted the energetic measures 
to stop the 'dry-rot." Not merely is the Dual Monarchy 
the medium through which alone Germany can hope to 
achieve the domination of the Near and Middle East, not 
merely does it provide her with the necessary access to rich 
fields of colonisation and commercial experiment ; but it 
has also placed at her disposal a vast reservoir of human 
•material to be used as " canon-fodder" by the King of Prussia. 
It is true that the 33,000,000 Slavs and Latins to whom 
Hapsburg rule has brought this fate, are profoundly imbued 
with the hostility to the prevailing regime and with the 
■desire for national unity and independence. Why, then, 
the sceptic is entitled to ask, has the process of dissolution 
been so long delayed ? Why have four years passed without 
revolution ? The answer lies, above all, in the unique 
methods of repression devised by the military and naval 
authorities. The Hapsburgs have for centuries past governed 
their polyglot dominions by a skilful application of the 
Latin motto "Divide et impera" ; but nowhere has one 
race been played off against the other with such cruel ingenuity 
as in the Joint Army. The officer class does not form a 
strict social caste as in Germany, and, indeed, is recruited 
from widely divergent sections of the population. But 
above a certain rank, every post tends to be in the hands 
of the Germans and to a lesser degree the Magyars — almost 
the only exceptions of this rule being drawn from those 
Serbo-Croat officer families who had acquired the Hapsburg 
'tradition of service along the old Turkish frontier. 
Mobilisation and, still more, the fearful Casualties of war 
brought the reservist officer more and more to the front, 
and with him national feeling in its acutest form permeated 
the whole machine. The only way to counter its insidious 
effect was to break up the old national and territorial regi- 
ments and to produce racial hybrids in their place. The 
result has been to transplant the methods of the Metternichian 
police state into the Joint Army. Not merely are the Slav, 
Italian, or Rumanian troops under the close and permanent 
observation of German or Magyar troops, but inside each 
regiment itself one race is set to watch and control the move- 
ments and feelings of another. The foremost duty of- the 
non-commissioned officer is political espiqnage against his 
.men, and Slav officers are under the perpetual surveillance 
of their comrades. Meanwhile, as an example of the lengths 
to which the authorities went in concealing and misrepresent- 
.ing the facts of a given situation, it may be mentioned that 
during August, 1914, the Rumanian troops from Transylvania 
and Bukovina were encouraged to fight the Russians in the 
belief that their kinsmen from Rumania had joined them, 
and were already invading Bessarabia. 
Despite infinite severity and precaution, the movement 
of national pnjtCst against what they regarded As a civil 
war spread rapidly among the Slav troops, and hundreds of 
thousands surrendered in Russia and Serbia. More than 
one Czech regiment passed over to the Russians, chanting 
its national songs and raked from the rear by the machine- 
guns of the Germans. It was from among these men that 
Professor Masaryk recruited the Czecho-Slovak Army, now- 
well over 8o,oo(j strong, whose exploits in Russia have been 
'One of the sensations of the war. It is still not yet quite 
sufficiently realised that at a time when the Czechs in Russia 
did not yet amount to a brigade, two complete divisions of 
Jugo-Slav volunteers were fighting side by side with the 
Russians and Rumanians in the Dobrudj a campaign, and 
that a new Rumanian army, composed of Transylvanian 
prisoners, was in process of formation at Kiev in the summer 
of 1917, and was only prevented from completing its organisa- 
tion by the outbreak of the Bolshevik revolution. At this 
moment there are a number of Rumanian regiments at and 
near Vladivostok, co-operating loyally with the Czecho- 
slovak and Entente forces. There is also a Czech army 
of about 20,000 men in Italy, and another 30,000 Jugo-Slavs 
and Rumanians in Italian concentration camps have for 
months past been clamouring for permission to fight side by 
side with the Entente against their Hapsbnrg oppressors. 
Causes of Military Decline 
Needless to say, all this ferment has seriously affected the 
morale of the Austro-Hungarian ' Army. Desertion is . 
rampant, and the authorities no longer seem capable of 
rounding up the defaulters. One such attempt last July, 
in a town of 100,000 inhabitants, produced a "bag" of 1,600. 
The mountainous districts are full of armed bands, many of 
whom have escaped after open mutiny ; and the evil seems 
to have got beyond the control of the gendarmerie or even 
of the home garrisons. Among such troops as have returned 
from Russia, Bolshevist doctrines have spread to an alarming 
degree, the Magyars being specially affected ; and it was 
thought necessary to form a species of political quarantine 
camps to wean them from their evil ways. Needless to say, 
this truly Austrian device has often had the very 
opposite effect. Meanwhile bad food and insufficient 
clothing, with their natural concomitant of disease and 
epidemics, have greatly increased the discontent of the 
troops. A whole year ago a high medical officer on the 
General Staff was appealing to the charitable public for 
second-hand underclothing for the troops on the ground that 
the stocks available were running short. At present.it is 
only possible for an officer to obtain enough thread to sew 
a button on his uniform if he applies for it in person, with 
the corpus delicti in his hand. 
The difficulties of the internal situation are almost equally 
economic, social, political, and racial. Food conditions in 
Austria have reached a pitch which has more than once 
seemed intolerable, but which seems to grow worse from 
month to month. The shortage of such necessaries of life 
as bread, fats, milk, butter, and soap has led to acute suffer- 
ing and unrest in the great towns and positive famine in 
more than one province. Lack of fuel is affecting many 
vital industries. , Military requirements and under-feeding 
have reduced the output of the mines. The railways are 
more and more disorganised, owing to the wearing-out of 
rolling-stock and the lack of grease. The Government has 
proved incompetent to cope with the problem of distribution, 
and the revictualling of such strongholds of German feeling 
as Tirol and the Egerland has had to be assigned to Bavaria 
and Saxony. 
The appeals of the Viennese municipal authorities 
have more than once been met by what is virtually an 
admission that the Government is at its wits' end. There 
are no margins of food, the harvest has been almost uniformly 
bad, and it will now no longer be possible to drain Serbia, 
Rumania, and the Ukraine of such scanty surplus as they 
may possess. The latest developments, by which Prague 
and Budapest are assuming unrestricted control orf their 
own affairs deprive Vienna and the industrial centres of 
Austria of their chief sources of supply, and threaten the 
capital with immediate famine and chaos. Indeed, the food 
problem seems to be the lever by which Bohemia is extracts 
ing her political freedom from recalcitrant Vienna. 
Economic difficulties are in themselves sufficient to threaten 
the State with dissolution, but even they pale before the 
problem afforded by so many warring nationalities. The 
Hapsburg Monarchy has always been susceptible to currents 
of thought from across the Russian frontier, and the over- 
throw of Tsarism, followed by the entry of America, has 
worked like leaven in every Hapsburg race. The imme- 
diate effect of these two events was to frighten the 
new Emperor into convoking the Austrian Parliament, 
which had not been allowed to meet since early in 1914. 
The opening day of the session was marked lay solemn 
declarations in the name of the Czechs. Jugo-Slavs, 
