THE AUSTRIAN EMPEROR'S CASE.
IN a State composed of different and essentially con- flicting elements, like the Dual Monarchy which is held together by the patience and diplomatic skill of the venerable Emperor whom we expect shortly to welcome to our shores, political trouble is frequently out of all propor- tion to its ostensible causes. The main question which is at present being hotly argued between Francis Joseph and his Magyar subjects does not strike an outsider as being worthy of the storm which it has raised, and to which we are instructed to attribute the chief difficulty in finding a successor to the unlucky or injudicious Count Khuen Heder- vary in the Hungarian Premiership. The conflict between the King of Hungary and the nation—or at least the pre- dominating Magyar section of it—turns on the question of the language which is to be used by the officers of Hun- garian regiments in issuing orders. Hitherto only one official language—German—has been in use throughout the Austro-Hungarian Army. That Army, it is true, draws the two millions of men whom it would place in its ranks on the outbreak of a great war from near a dozen various nationalities, each of which owns a language of its own with a pride that Lsually varies in inverse proportion to its importance. The mountaineer of the Tyrol and the fisherman of Dalmatia, the Pole and the Czech and the Magyar, the Roumanian of the Bukovina, the Croat and Serb and Ruthenian, are mutually as unintelligible to one another as the Frenchman and the German and the Russian. Yet all of them, when they come up for military service, find little difficulty in learning the German words of command that form the common lingua franca of the "Austrian Army awfully arrayed." To us, of all nations, there is nothing wonderful in this acquiescence. Our Indian Army affords the most remarkable example of the facility with which men speaking a hundred dialects can be welded into one great military machine, and the " Hookumdar ! " of the sentry is understood and un- questioned from Afghanistan to Burmah. The most thorough-going advocate of concessions to the "national sentiment" of India has not yet demanded that each regiment of the native Army should be flattered by hearing the words of command given in its own tongue, although it may be said to the credit of our officers that most of them learn to hearten their men in the only language which they fully under- stand. From the professional point of view, it is clear that any attempt to make such a change would be the height of folly. Students of military history are well aware that diversity of language has often proved to be a grave im- pediment to armies composed -of diverse nationalities. Napoleon in his later career more than once suffered from such an impediment ; and to take a single instance from a war that most of us have been studying during the last few years, it is practically certain that Washington's army would have been utterly destroyed at Long Island had not the messenger of its escape fallen upon a German officer who could not understand his story. It is incredible that a Commander-in-Chief—such as the head of the Dual Monarchy must always remember that he is in the first place—should deliberately introduce into his Army such a source of weakness as this. The Emperor Francis Joseph has received the Magyar proposal much as Wel- lington would have received a proposal that the Black Watch should be ordered to charge in Gaelic, or the Con- naught Rangers directed in Erse. His language, as re- ported by the correspondent of the Standard, is this :—" I cannot give way on the military language question, and that in the interest of Hungary itself. Think of the con- sequences! The Croatian regiments of the Line would have to be granted the use of the Croatian cr the Southern Slays their language, and what would e the end ? The 'dual system would be changed for a triple One, and, what is worse, the parts of the Army under Slav command would- not only be unanimously Slav, but unanimously anti-Magyar. That is why I say that it is in Hungary's interests that I cannot grant the Hungarian language for military service and command." No sensible man—certainly no Commander-in-Chief who was fit for his business—could dream of speaking otherwise.
Unfortunately politicians, and even nations—still more dominant castes who assume the right of speaking for a nation—are not always content to be guided by mere I common-sense. As we know from our own experience in Ireland, the most absurd contentions have been good enough to be raised as weapons against the "predominant partner": : any stick would do to beat an Irish Secretary with. The Magyars, proud as they justly are of the thousand years of history which have entitled them to be reckoned as the equals of most Aryan razes, and jealous as they not un- justly are of anything which looks like an attempt to restore the tyranny under which they suffered so heavily until they flung it off in 1867, have striven hard to make Hungary the predominant member in that mixed congeries of races which peoples the dominions of the Hapsburgs. No one—certainly no Englishman—will blame this ambi- tion in "an old and haughty nation, proud in arms." But it is much to be feared that they are now going too far for themselves or for Europe. They have extorted from Austria concessions enough more than to redress the grievances under which they suffered during the first two- thirds of the nineteenth century. The fact that all parties in Hungary—where, it must be remembered, the Magyars form barely half the population—are ready to combine against Austria, whereas in the latter country united political action seems to be impossible, has enabled the Hungarian leaders to place their country in a most favour- able position. It has been said, with much appearance of truth, that in the Dual Monarchy Hungary possesses 70 per cent. of the power, whilst it only pays 30 per cent. of the expenses of Empire. Austrians of all classes and parties have long been gravely discontented with this condition of things, though hitherto they have felt that it was wise to bear with even the most extreme Magyar demands for fear of precipitating a disruption that would open the way to the fulfilment of external ambitions, which they regard with even greater dislike than the payment of unduly high taxes or the impoverish- ment of their industries by bounty-fed Hungarian com- petition. The Pan-German menace, with its ideal of a Greater Germany stretching from Hamburg to Trieste, is familiar to Austrian statesmen, just as the Pan-Slavic propaganda should steady the minds of their Hungarian colleagues, who are all convinced, since the betrayal of 1848, that no great3r evil could befall their country than to come under the yoke of Russia. In the face of these veiled enmities of East and West, which have long seemed to impartial observers the strongest guarantee of the continuance of the Dual Monarchy in default of a truly national spirit which might act as cement from within, it is not easy to understand how the Magyars can be so short-sighted as to press their demand for the abolition of a common language in the Army. Anything else they might choose more safely for attack ; but it is by its Army that the Dual Monarchy must stand or fall. More than any other European State, the Hapsburg dominion owes its independent existence to the hard fact that it can, on the pressure of imminent need, put two millions of soldiers into the field. On both sides it is exposed to the greedy eyes of powerful neighbours, neither of which has done much to check those irresponsible publicists who point out what opportunities it would offer for spoliation, were it not for that ultima ratio of two million bayonets. A famous Austrian statesman once said that you could do anything with bayonets—except sit upon them ; but the Dual Monarchy—though happily no longer the Hapsburg dynasty—has been literally sitting on them for some years. Hungary, at any rate, has as yet formulated no theory of continued national prosperity—or even national independence—in the event of that separation from Austria for which the Magyar Nationalists, headed by the son of the great Kossuth, are reported to be playing their game. Cut off from Austria, she would be deprived, of her markets ; and the establishment of that Balkan Empire to which some of her states- men are believed to look would never be permitted by Russia. Deprived of the common bond afforded by the Hapsburg Monarchy, and fortified by the Austro- Hungarian Army, the Magyars would find themselves in a, truly perilous position. Fortunately the tried diplomacy of the Emperor-King may be expected to get the better of what is, after all, only one more among many dangers through which he has passed in a long and remarkable life. It is even possible that the present deadlock may have given way by the time that these words appear in print. We cannot believe that the Magyars will show .themselves so unconscious of their real position as to persist in a policy fraught with so vast a danger, alike to their own prosperity and to the peace of Europe.
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