23 JUNE 1933, Page 1

. In Austria itself there is now open war with

the Nazis. The situation is clarified to that extent, and also in that the National Socialist Party in Germany has dissociated itself from attempts to influence the internal policy of other countries. The declaration is belated, and in part neutralized by the insistence laid on the essential unity of all Germans inside and outside a Nazi Germany. But it does at any rate leave the Austrian authorities freer to deal firmly with any Germans they may find joining in the subversive activities of the Nazis in Austria. As for the latter Dr. Dollfuss is treating them very much as their ,German • confreres have treated their, political opponents, with the substantial difference that in Austria the Nazis have abundantly justified official action against them by the outrages of which they have been guilty, and that they seem to have been the objects only of such official action, not of mob violence. The result of Nazi aggressiveness and the en- couragement received by it fry Germany has been to kindle a new and necessary spirit of patriotism in Austria; but even if the Nazis are mastered the situation will long be difficult both politically and economically.. The Socialists and the Fascists, the latter with their armed Heimwehr under Prince Starhemberg, may be united temporarily against the Nazis, but fundamentally they are radically opposed to each other. Economically Austria's best hope is to find her place in a Danubian federation along lines sketched out this wee'c by Dr. Benes. For the idea of a restored Austro-Hungarian monarchy there is far less to be said.

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