THE AUSTRIAN REVOLUTION
The Austrian Revolution. By Dr. Otto Bauer, Foreign Secretary in the First Republican Government of Austria. Translated by H. J. Stenning. (Parsons. 1Cs. 6d. net.) A FULL account of the Austrian revolution written from a first-hand knowledge would be interesting and informative, but its importance would first of all be documentary, and it is probably an account of the smaller and more intimate details that would prove of the most value. Unfortunately, Mr. Stenning, in translating Dr. Otto Bauer's classical work, Die (kterreichische Revolution, started with the preconception that we should have no patience to read details, and with a false desire to gain popular attention for the work has freely abridged and adapted it. The result is the opposite of what Mr. Stenning—or rather, his publishers–Antended : he has excised most of the facts that would really interest us. The list of contents arouses our suspicion, and if we compare the English version with the original, we shall be astonished at the liberties which have been taken. We feel compelled, therefore, to issue a warning to -English readers.
Herr Bauer himself, as a Cabinet Mims' ter in the Austrian Parliament, and later as the leader of the Opposition, played an important and decisive part in the revolution. He
has, moreover, an unusually clear mind and considerable analytical ability. In the German his book gives a fascinating and broadminded account of the tragic dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the struggle for life of the new-born Republic. Of this there is nothing left for the English reader but a bare skeleton. Everything episodical, the strange incidents of the time, the sociological effects of the depreciation of money, the cultural aims that were in- volved during the great breakdown and the first few years following it, are omitted—in a word, almost everything that could genuinely interest the average reader and instruct the student of Continental history. We might compare the English edition to the report of a Parliamentary debate in the popular Press, and the German to the minutes of Hansard. Even the order of thought is not preserved. A whole chapter on the Dissolution which gives orientation to what is said elsewhere is omitted and the reader, if not already well-informed, will be quite unable to understand what follows. We doubt also whether Mr. Stenning is himself wholly familiar with certain technical expressions in German. We doubt, for example, whether his phrase " jointly controlled undertaking " suffices to explain the very definite and precisely determined kind of nationalization to which the German refers. We can thus only commend the book to our readers faute de mieux, and express our disappointment that this opportunity for giving a thorough authoritative history of the revolution has been missed.
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