The Vienna correspondent of the Morning Post contributes an interesting
study of Count Aehrenthal to Monday's issue, a propos of the reticence of the Press over his recent advance in rank. This absence of comment the writer attributes to Count Aehrenthal's own wish, for his diplomatic success has undoubtedly rendered him popular. Descended from a Jewish merchant settled in Bohemia, he is allied on the maternal side with the Bohemian feudal nobility, and through his wife with the Hungarian aristocracy. Succeeding Count Goluchowski at the age of fifty-two, he has undoubtedly extricated Austria-Hungary from the position of a negligible Power ; but the achievement has not been unaccompanied by serious drawbacks, and his countrymen have not yet made up their minds whether he is a second-rate man with temporary luck or a first-rate man with genius. His critics credit him with acting on impulse, while his admirers assert that his schemes are deeply laid and carefully thought out. In personal converse he is said to have a remarkable talent for saying no more than he wants to, and to share Bismarck's gift of opportune truth-telling. All agree that he is an interesting personality, but the best judges admit that the Constitutional and dynastic problems with which the Dual Kingdom is faced in the near future will prove a far severer test of his statesmanship than the Balkan imbroglio which won him his present prestige.
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