the proposal made to him then by the King of England.* By steadfastly resisting the inducements of King Edward, he did indeed give striking proof of his absolute loyalty to Germany and of his steadfastness; but while all honour for this is due to him as a man, the same cannot be said for him as a statesman. It is probable that he would have better served the future welfare of his Empire if he had acted less honourably and more prudently. Outside Germany, Count Reventlow would find no support for his view that, in accepting the English proposal, Franz Josef would have committed political suicide. Be that as it may, there is no question that, at Ischl, the Emperor Franz Josef gave a far greater proof of his good faith than did the Emperor Wilhelm at the time of the annexation crisis; for while it was much in the interests of the former to break faith, the Emperor Wilhelm would have done so to his own detriment.

Count Aehrenthal was not in the least affected by the adherence of Germany to the terms of her treaty in the annexation affair; but he quietly pursued his own course. Thus, at the time of the Agadir incident, he showed no inclination to embroil himself with the Western Powers. His premature death finally closed the question as to how Austria-Hungary's relations with Germany would have developed had he remained at the helm. Even if he had lived, that question could hardly have been answered, for it was practically certain that he would not have remained in office for long, as his weak, obsequious policy in regard to Italy had drawn down upon him the just wrath of the Archducal heir to the throne, who had made up his mind to bring about his removal.

Aehrenthal's successor, Count Berchtold, was far less striking as a personality; but, in spite of that, there was no reason to fear that the Monarchy would revert to

* Baron Margutti, who was in command of the Emperor's Household Guard, referring to this last interview between the two sovereigns, which appeared to have been of a satisfactory nature, relates that Sir Charles Hardinge, who was in King Edward's suite, remarked to an officer at the station, as the King was about to leave: That old Emperor is a fine and uncommon man! But I think he has just let slip one of the most favourable opportunities ever offered him in the course of his long life!'

the old, undignified dependence on Germany; for in Germany, also, the rudder, in the hands of BethmannHollweg, was under the control of a weak man. Moreover, the Archduke was not one to permit his policy to be dictated by Germany. After he had succeeded, against the old Emperor's will, in making his influence felt in the political affairs of the Monarchy, a policy servile to Germany, such as had been the rule for so many years at the Ballplatz in Vienna, was unthinkable, as he kept a jealous watch over the prestige and independence of the Empire of the Habsburgs.

When in the summer of 1914, the Great War broke out, Germany immediately resumed the reins which had slipped from her grasp in the preceding years. Never before had Austria-Hungary's dependence on Germany been so clearly shown as in the course of this war; never before had the Germans of Austria been so completely hypnotised or over-awed by Germany. They were possessed with a frenzy of enthusiasm, especially after the first brilliant successes achieved by the German forces in Belgium and East Prussia. But the patriotic Austrians discovered all too soon that their enthusiasm had an unpleasant after-taste. For much of the praise showered extravagantly on the German troops and their leaders had been earned at the expense of the AustroHungarian army. Confronted, with inadequate strength, by an over-difficult task, they had been unable, in spite of heroic sacrifices, to withstand the monstrous human avalanche which the Russians had hurled against them, and had been forced to evacuate the greater part of Galicia. In Serbia, also, advances had been made with insufficient forces and had ended in misfortune.

The dazzling glory of the German victories only deepened the shadows which lay upon these failures of the Austro-Hungarian army. The people, incapable of appreciating the enormous difficulties under which the Austrian forces were labouring and of forming a judgment accordingly, did not hesitate to vilify their generals, accusing them of treachery and inefficiency, and denouncing whatever they did as bad or inadequate; whilst whatever the German generals did was held to be wise and splendid. The partiality so typical of the

German-Austrians and their not less typical delight in vilifying the country of their adoption, was exultant at that time; and these people were fortified in their attitude by acts of treachery committed by the Slav troops at the front; acts which, in spite of all the official attempts to disguise them, were becoming more and more widely known.

This disloyalty evoked expressions of the most violent resentment from the Germans, and served to make the gulf yawning between the Germans and Slavs wider and deeper. Such resentment was, indeed, amply justified, for nothing is more shameful than treachery in the face of the enemy; but it should not be forgotten that the Slavs of the Monarchy were not only compelled to fight in a war which was more or less repugnant to their national feelings, but also to fight against Slavs. They were Slavs with a difference, it is true, but still they were Slavs; added to which, the Germans did all in their power, by means of their newspapers and pamphlets, to make them realise that the war was being fought for Germans-for the world-supremacy of the German people. 'The German war'; 'the German idea throughout the world'; 'the German soul'; 'Greater Germany'. . . such were the grandiose titles of the books, pamphlets, and newspaper articles with which the market was flooded, and in which not the slightest consideration was shown to the fact that almost one half of the Austro-Hungarian army was composed of those very Slavs who were frequently referred to as 'hordes,' but whose assistance in the German cause was, none the less, demanded as a matter of course.

Further, in order to give official confirmation to this view, Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg considered it politic to declare in the Reichstag that the war was a conflict between the German peoples and the Slavs! Yet in the face of such a state of affairs, and of such words as these, the Germans required that the Austrian Slavs should fight for German thought' against the cause of the Slavs outside the Empire, that they should sacrifice life and blood for the ideals of an enemy! Travailler pour le roi de Prusse!' This familiar saying was being verified in its most literal sense.

Regarded from this standpoint, the treachery of the

Slavs appears in an entirely different light, and although desertion to the enemy during a battle must always be a shameful thing, the attitude of the Slavs of AustriaHungary in the war, taken as a whole, was not so unpardonable as the Germans made out. Had the Germans been in the same situation, would they have acted otherwise? Would the same heroic courage as that with which they faced the Russians and Italians have inspired them, if they had been required to fight against a German people? The Germans of the Alpine districts might perhaps have done so; but it is very doubtful whether the Germans of the Sudetic Lands would have been equally complaisant, for they were fastbound under the spell of the Pan-German idea, and with this in their minds they would certainly never have fought against German troops.

During the war, such considerations as these did not occur to the Germans. They were intoxicated by the Pan-German idea; it fogged their brains and clouded their vision. They raved of a German Empire, which was to extend, not merely, according to the Greater Germany already planned, from the Belt to the Adriatic Sea,' but from 'the English Channel to the Persian Gulf.' The annexation of Belgium and the Baltic Provinces seemed to them a foregone conclusion. Even such a moderate publicist as Friedrich Naumann could not remain altogether untainted by the Pan-German megalomania which seemed to attack his fellow-countrymen like a pestilence. This was proved by his book 'Mitteleuropa,'

* During the war I had a conversation with an Austrian officer of Reserves of German-Nationalist views, on the subject of the treachery of the Czechs. When I asked what the Germans would have done if it had been expected of them that they should fight against Germans, he replied that such a thing was simply unthinkable, and, in any case, the Germans would never have submitted to it! So what, in the Slavs, was considered as high treason and a serious crime against the State, seemed to him, so soon as it became a question of German feeling, natural and inevitable. It can, of course, be objected that the Czechs, Ruthenians, and Southern Slavs of Austria-Hungary were not required to fight compatriots in the literal sense, but Russians and Serbs-Slavs indeed, but yet different, while, in the hypothetical case, Germans would have been required to fight their own kindred. This argument, however, will not hold good; for there is at least as much difference between the German of Tyrol, of Styria, or of Vienna, and the German from Prussia, Pommerania, or East Prussia, as between a Czech or Croatian on the one hand and a Russian or Serb on the other.

which was not only widely read and discussed, but also went through more editions than almost any other political book had ever attained in Germany. On a closer examination the innocent-sounding title Mitteleuropa,' proved an euphemistic pseudonym for 'Greater Germany.' Although the author, in his scheme, had the prudence and foresight to leave their independence to Austria-Hungary, Roumania, Bulgaria, and Turkey, these States were, nevertheless, actually reduced to the status of vassals of Germany, to be governed from Berlin.

This fact, however, did not hinder the German Austrians from giving Naumann's scheme their ardent support and from desiring its accomplishment. Again and again, on either side of the black and yellow boundary post, the closer union of Austro-Hungary with Germany was advocated, as a means of giving formal expression to the feelings of friendship between the two nations. In the summer of 1918, under the pressure of Pan-German influence, and perhaps because he was himself in its grip, or possibly with the idea that by such a course he might more easily steer the Austrian ship— already showing ominous signs of foundering-Dr von Seidler, the Prime Minister, entered this roadstead under full sail and, amidst the rejoicings of the Germans in Austria, proclaimed the 'course to be German! And this, it should be noted, at a time when the Austrian Slavs were on the point of seceding, because they were no longer willing to shed their blood for the German cause!

In their boundless self-esteem and tragic infatuation, the Germans took no account whatever of the fact that, of the 53 millions of people composing the population of the Monarchy, some 30 millions repudiated this friendship and that the 10 millions of Magyars also had no desire for such intimate connexion with Germany, which, indeed, could only constitute a grave menace to their national pride.

The non-German peoples of the Monarchy liked still less the prospect of such association, since the Germans had succeeded in making themselves disliked, and even hated, by them. In Austria-Hungary during the war there had been ample opportunity of becoming acquainted with them by personal contact, with extremely unpleasant results. Wherever the German troops had been,