The Viennese are full of expectation of great results from
the visit of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand to St. Petersburg. They seem to expect that he will renew some old bonds between Austria and Russia, who have at present strong common interests in the Balkans, and to be certain that Czar and Kaiser can between them prevent Germany from taxing cereals too much. It is noteworthy that the German Govern- ment, in view of foreign remonstrances, has positively refused to raise the tariff on imported food to the point demanded by the Agrarians, and that the latter threaten in consequence to wreck the whole Bill. The Viennese aristocracy and clerios are, however, we fancy, much too sanguine. Hungary does not like Russia, and the Austrian Germans share the dis- like, while the statesmen distrust her good faith in the Balkans. While those feelings continue Austria must lean on Berlin rather than St. Petersburg, even at the cost of economic inconvenience. The rumours only prove the immense importance which the interests of commerce have attained in all diplomacy. The ambition of statesmen is at once fostered and checked by the wish to see the people richer, and the fear that if they grow poorer the stately edifice of power may crumble rapidly away. "We have gained," the Kings may well say, "by the establishment of conscription, which gives us great armies perpetually renewed, but we have lost by the new necessity that the multitude, which per- petually increases its numbers, must always be fully fed."
