SAVE AUSTRIA!
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.") SH4—I have read with interest the letter signed "a. C. L. H." in your issue of September lath dealing with Austria, and may I send one myself in the hope that something may yet be done for that country, which, after all, stands for so much that must even to-day be admired by the English people? What country in the world except ourselves, the English (not the British), would have acted as the Austrians have acted since, through no fault of their own, they were made the scapegoat for all the mistaken diplomacy of the statesmen who govern Europe and America? Robbed of that portion of the Trentino ;which is purely Teutonic and Austrian, viz., from Boben up to Brenner, deprived at one swoop of the whole of Hungary, including that portion of Hungary which was, in its turn, con- verted into Yugo-Slavia, not to mention that territory which is now Czecho-Slovakia and what was Austrian Poland, chopped up and mutilated as though she, Austria, contained the canker of Europe, when in reality she is one of the purest and most law-abiding parts of it, has Austria broken into a blaze of rebellion, have the Tirolese fallen on the Viennese, or the Viennese on those " auslanders " who happen to have dwelled amongst them? No, with the exception of one occasion, more than a year since, when a few stones were thrown at those hotels in Vienna which provided foreign patrons with necessi- ties denied to the Viennese themselves, and with an occasional railway or postal strike which pales before our own here in England—with the exception of those few surely pardonable exhibitions of discontent—the Austrian has acted in a manner that must appeal to anyone who respects good breeding and /restraint. I have only spent fourteen weeks in Austria—during which period, by the way, the krone fell from 32 to 320 to the English sovereign—yet I have come away with more affection and with more respect for the Austrian than I have ever felt towards any foreigner, and it is pathetic to think of the chance that Great Britain is throwing away if she allows more harm to come to Austria. "The greatest happiness for the greatest number" is a doctrine that is all very well in its way, but there must always be kept, kept and preserved as we keep and preserve jewels, rare wines, old china, anything that can call into being some suggestion of romance as opposed to mere mate- rialism. There must, I think, always be kept in the heart of things some force that stands for breeding, honour, sport, loyalty to God, and yet also for that joie de vivre which is .never very far from the childlike faith that Christ has preached to us : " Take no thought for the morrow," as long as our consciences are clear. In the old days I believe that Vienna took very little thought for the morrow, and so now there are to be found people who think the Viennese have only themselves to blame. Yet Great Britain has lent millions to Russia, a nation of whom we know far less than we know of Austria.
To look into the blue eyes of an Austrian, and then to tell him we can do nothing for him, is like kicking away a great, big, trusting St. Bernard dog and then throwing a bone to a jackal. Some of those who govern us prefer jackals to big St. Bernard dogs, and that is why we, who feel for Austria and all she stands for, cut down and ruined as she, in common with the 'aristocracy of the world, has been cut down and ruined, that $.9 why we, all sentiment apart, fear to think of Austria blotted out, and would rather see her enrolled with Bavaria under a Wittenbach monarchy than thrown to the wolves— one limb to each—et saxa et pectora nostra.—I am, Sir, &c.,
J. S.
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