GREAT BRITAIN AND AUSTRIA-HUNGARY.
[To TILE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR.") SIR,—I was extremely glad to read in the Spectator of April 6th that you "regard the defeat of Austria as no less vital and neces- sary than the defeat of Germany." But I am afraid it will need many such robust utterances to disabuse our people of the idea that in this war Austria is more sinned against than sinning, and to convince our diplomatists that they can " detach " her from "the dominance of Berlin" without sacrificing some of the essen- tial objects which the Allies, and the United States and Great Britain in particular, have proclaimed as their goal.
It is really excessively curious, this disposition on the part of some of our people to picture Austria-Hungary as an old- fashioned, benevolent Power, "who has never done us any harm," who was pushed into the war by Germany, and who, although for a " ramshackle" Empire she has shown a surprising vitality in prosecuting it, may now be assumed to be looking anxiously for a way out—a way that we should hasten to make smooth for her tottering footsteps. To what are these hallucinations due ? Is it ignorance or sheer forgetfulness ? Do we not know that Austria- Hungary in the whole spirit of her polity is the most reactionary Power in Europe P Have we forgotten the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, that first clear sign that the restraints of public law had lost their efficacy to influence the policy of Vienna P Are not our people aware that the aim of Austria in all her dealings with the Balkan States has been to divide, to weaken, to thwart all racial and national aspirations, and to perpetuate dissensions and impotence " till all be ripe and rotten " ? Do they not also know that the ruling races in her Empire, the Germans in the Austrian half and the Magyars in the Hungarian half, have enforced against their Slavic fellow-subjects a consistent policy of brutal and fraudulent oppression P And can it be that they have forgotten that it was the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia, an act of violence that Vienna needed no proddings from Berlin to commit, which precipitated this war P I would venture to lay down two simple propositions that ought in themselves to make an end of the notion that it is to our interest to coddle the Dual Monarchy : (1) The Allies' work of liberation will be incomplete, and all hopes of building upon the basis of victory a new and juster and more stable dispensation in Europe will have been foiled, unless the oppressed nationalities of Austria-Hungary are secured in the free expansion of their political and spiritual independence. (2) To Italy, to the majority of her own subjects, and to most of the Balkan peoples the enemy with whom they have had to reckon in the past, and will have to reckon in the future, is not Germany but Austria-Hungary; and our temporizing leniency towards the Hapsburgs is not only inex- plicable to our Allies, but has raised uncertainties and misgivings that have seriously reflected on British good faith and good sense. I do not believe that any one who fairly weighs these proposi- tions and their implications can come to any other conclusion but yours that "the defeat of Austria " is " no less vital and neces- sary," and no lees a British interest and an interest of all the
Allies, than the defeat of Germany.—I am, Sir, &c., S. B.
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