THE AUSTRIAN MOVEMENT.
IT is very difficult, and not very useful, to state positively that the Government of Austria intends at any particu- lar moment to do any particular thing. It is quite certain that the Emperor, on all foreign questions and in all military affairs, guides that Government ; and quite certain also that his first object is to recoup the House of Hapsburg in the Balkan Peninsula, for the territories it has lost in Italy. He does not intend to live in history as the Prince who lowered the grandeur and reduced the possessions of his family. The general object of the Emperor's policy is, therefore, always discernible ; but he is so hampered by his Magyar subjects, who dread expansion in provinces inhabited by Southern Slays, is so fettered by the chronic difficulties of the Austrian Treasury, which never founders, but never has a florin to spare, and is himself, as we believe, so troubled with a feel- ing, quite justified by his history, that he is luckless in actual war, that he moves slowly, suspends plans completely formed, and sometimes recedes before dangers quite invisible outside. His Empire glides slowly south-eastward, but no more rushes than a glacier does, and sometimes pauses, as a glacier does not. His Government, moreover, still adheres to the old policy of secrecy, and whenever there is a pause thinks itself justified in issuing the blankest denials of any designs of any sort, —denials eagerly accepted by the Hungarians, and then tele- graphed over Europe. If we believe the newspapers of Vienna and Pesth, they do not know where Salonica is. It would be foolish, therefore, to assert that Austria means moving now ; but it is not foolish to point out that if her rulers meant moving, and moving in a very decided way, they would act precisely as they are acting now. They have found a good excuse for accumulating large forces on their south-
eastern border, and they are doing it. The pretexts are twofold. One is, that a portion of Dalmatia is in insurrection against the conscription ; and the other is, that Bosnia will be, unless decided measures are taken to overawe resistance. Both pretexts are quite true. The people of Crivoschie, in Dalmatia, who have always been exempt from conscription, have risen in arms to defend their privileges ; and the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina are alleging angrily that they are not yet subjects of Vienna, nor bound to
fight in Austrian armies. So irritated, indeed, are they, that actual insurrection has occurred in Herzegovina, and gendarmerie have been massacred. The Austrian Govern- ment naturally holds that, if beaten on a question like the conscription, it is beaten altogether, and as the insurrection may grow formidable, it prepares forces ; but then, why did it raise the question ? There was no necessity for suddenly terminating Dalmatian privileges which are generations old, and are no more anomalous than Hungary's right to a militia of her own ; while the Bosnian conscrip- tion might at least have waited till the formal annexation of the province had been proclaimed. The Emperor does not want men, and has had at least one terrible lesson—the surrender of his Italians at Ktiniggratz--as to the value of conscripts who are not morally bound to the Imperial standard. Why hurry matters so much, more espe- cially when, as in Bosnia, an international formality has to be overridden. It is alleged that " the Military Party " was in- dignant at the exemptions, but the " Military Party " through- out Austrian history has only been the Court over again. It looks very much as if the Imperial Court were rejoiced to have an excuse which Hungarians could not reject for being ready with an army which might, if the chance arose, be actively employed either to overawe Servia, or to annex Bosnia finally, with Novi Bazar, the position commanding the southern road, or even to advance still farther on the way to Salonica, the ultimate object of Austrian diplomacy. The Bosnian garrison is already strong, the Dalmatians can be controlled by sea, the Herzegovinians are but a small people, yet day by day the best regiments in the service pass southwards from Vienna, and the few persons admitted to a sight of the pre- parations describe them as prodigious. If the Military Admin- istration in Austria hates anything, it is to be bothered by civilian criticism ; yet so large are its requirements, that the Delegations have been suddenly called together to provide money. It is only a million, say the Imperial scribes, and we are only sending 8,000 men ; but there is not a Government on the Continent which does not minimise the cost of military move- ments, or which will admit their precise extent. Even in England, supplies have been asked for expeditions which were to cost twopence-halfpenny, and did cost tens of millions. The symptoms show that the Austrian Government in- tends by April to have 80,000 men in motion, for some purpose of their own, and all the external evidence points to their looking forward to some considerable advance this year. Nothing else will fully explain the secret negotiations with Russia conducted by Count Kalnoky, and partly betrayed in Hungary ; the artificial fidgettings of Austria about Egypt, about which it cares usually no more than about Malacca ; and the favour shown at Constantinople to the Sultan's Panislamic ideas, which throw him out of Europe and towards Asiatic and African extension. The symptoms may mislead observers, for a grain of sand stops the Austrian roller ; but if Austria had arrived at some modes vivendi with St. Petersburg, and had determined to push herself further in the Balkans this year, we should expect precisely the things to happen which are happening now, and look for exactly the excitement, uneasi- ness, and credulity now visible in Vienna. The Austrian Government, too, though it has such a wonderful patience—a patience so unique in Europe as to be a separate source of strength—is running its time short. It would be most im- prudent for the Hapsburgs, if they intend to go South, to await a new reign in Berlin, or some action by M. Gambetta which might modify all alliances, and throw everything into hotchpot again. The House has never had such a chance as the partial anarchy in the Balkan peninsula, the internal paralysis of Russia, and the friendship of Prince Bismarck to the project, now place in its hands. With M. Gambetta in power, the Austrian Emperor is free, for even Prince Bis- marck's courage would quail at a rupture of the Austro- German alliance.
We do not know that England can interfere, though she is obviously believed in Austria to be hostile, or there would not be all that ill-tempered fuss about Egypt, which in most years might sink in the sea without any Austrian caring ; and we believe English opinion is constantly mistaken at Vienna. It is not genuinely hostile to Austria, if she will leave the Balkan States alone. If the object is only to annex Bosnia and the Herzegovina, England has long since reluctantly assented. The " occupation " of those provinces was perfectly well understood to be permanent, and nobody has the smallest interest in the maintenance of a very bad ad interim arrange- ment,under which the Bosnians suffer all the disadvantages and
enjoy none of the advantages of the Austrian federal system. If Bosnians are to be conscripts, they had better be subjects, and have a Diet of their own. Englishmen had much rather they governed themselves ; but if that is impossible, they will be much happier as " Austrians "—Mr. Freeman is always right, but there must be some word for an empire, and " Hapsburgia" is not yet invented—than as nondescripts, occupied and governed by Austrian soldiery. Nor do Englishmen seriously care about Crivoschie or Novi Bazar, or one-half the " ques- tions" about which the Vienna correspondent of the Times spends his employers' money. What they do care about is that the States of the peninsula, which have with such labour and sacrifice and suffering—suffering often continued, as in the Montenegrin case, for centuries—achieved a free national life, should not be unwillingly absorbed in an empire which under those circumstances governs harshly, as if governing enemies. They do not desire to injure Austria, or to see Russia defeat her, or to see her States fly to pieces, and all chance of peace disappear in Eastern Europe, but they do not desire either to see the Balkan peninsula reduced to the position of Italy in 1849. There is no peace in that, or prospect of peace, nothing gained for humanity and exceedingly little for Austria as an empire, which paid with the happiness of a generation for a mean- ingless ascendancy in Italy, never worth a week's purchase, and then lost it. The national life in Roumania, Servia, Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and East Roumelia is neither perfect, nor very strong, nor very noble in any way; but it is life, and has in it all the potentialities of life. The Roumanians, the Servians, the Bulgarians, the Roumelians, th3 Greeks are all fairly content, all advancing rapidly in wealth and more slowly in civilisation ; and they will, if left to themselves, become in no long time valuable members of the European family. The English desire is to see them let alone, living their own lives, and doing the best they can, and not to see them treated as counters in a huge game played between Romanoffs and Haps- burgs, with Prince Bismarck acting as "judicious bottle- holder," or, as he prefers to describe himself, "disinterested broker." With only twenty years of peace and security, they will be strong States, perfectly able to take care of themselves under a federal system, and strongly interested in the per- manent maintenance of peace. If Austria would help to maintain them in that position, treating them as allies, and not as dependants, England would feel neither suspicion nor jealousy of Austria's progress in strength and prosperity. There is no cause whatever of unfriendliness between the two countries, except Austria's ambition, not for more provinces, but for dominion over States which have attained to national life, and cannot be either benefited by her rule or contented with it. The worst solution of the Eastern Question possible would be the free States of the Balkan all under Austrian rule, and all looking to Russia for help, as the Italians looked to France.
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