4 FEBRUARY 1944, Page 12

THE REAL AUSTRIA

SIR,—Miss Lucie Street's answer to my article on the Real. Austria is not quite accurate. I never asked anyone to believe "that. no one of Austrian birth save Hitler himself wished for an Anschluss with Germany." A substantial minority of the Austrian people wished for an Anschluss with pre-Hitler Germany ; but later when a Customs Union was proposed by Schober in 1929 he was forced to resign because the measure had become so unpopular. In 1938 a very small minority—possibly to per cent.—reliable statistical authorities put it even lower—would have agreed to an Anschluss with Hider's Germany. Eleven per cent. of our own people were pacifists in the first year of the war but that did not make us a pacifist people or else Hitler would be well .on his way to ruling the world now.

Miss Street quotes as her Austrian authority for their wish to become German, "guides, hoteliers and famous skiers" presumably therefore her experience of Austria is mainly drawn from hotels. Austria was my home for nine years. Hotels and those dependent on them generally .side with their most frequent and important guests. I am not therefore surprised that from these tourists' haunts came a certain support for the Nazis. I am only surprised that a very largenumber of such people known to myself hated,—and had the courage to say openly that they hated—the Nazis as late as 1938 on the very eve of the German occupation. I doubt if for the last hundred years any Austrians willingly fought the British. In 1914 Austria wanted to fight Serbia and found herself obliged to take on Italy and Russia and nominally more than actually, Great Britain and France became her enemies. In this war Austrians had to fight against us or be shot. Some of us in the same circumstances would fight against the Austrians. •

It is true that Dollfuss murdered his work-people under the violently persuasive influence of Mussolini and was himself murdered under the violently persuasive influence of Hitler. The Austrian working people were Austria, for almost all the country was Social Democratic. These people unarmed or only recently armed, dismembered and helpless, had no option but to yield to the Dictator influence. Nor is Austria the only country in Europe whose government backed the wrong horse. It may be " sentimental " to accept the cultural value of Vienna as highly important to the future of Europe ; if so I accept the fact that I am a sentimentalist ; but had Miss. Street read my letter with any factual care she would have seen that what I claim most for Austria is her civilised integrity, and its permanent effect upon less progressive nations.

We should be wholly untrue to reality if we looked upon the Austrians as being " German " in character, taste or influence.—Yours, &c.,

23 Montpelier Walk. PHYLLIS BOTTOME.