Hardly any fact in foreign politics is more certain or
less explicable than the agitation caused, not only in Austria but in Germany, by any report that the Emperor Francis Joseph is seriously ill. It is not only fear for the loss of an experienced and cautious Sovereign that so moves his subjects, but dread of an explosion of all the conflicting forces bound up together in the Dual Empire. There seems, at first sight, to be no reason for such fears, as none of the causes which unite the eighteen States of the Monarchy will end with the life of the Emperor, but the Austrians know the heir, the Archduke Charles Joseph, as outsiders do not, and for some reason fear his accession. They imagine, we fancy, that he is too Conserva- tive, too Clerical, and too fond of prerogative, and suspect that he dislikes the role which Austria plays under the Triple Alliance. The Funds therefore go down, as they have done this week, whenever the Emperor has a cold, and, in the Army, to suggest that his Majesty grows old—he will be seventy in a few weeks—is almost mutiny. To those who can remember the horror and contempt in which the Emperor was once held the change seems very wonderful, but he has earned a good deal, if not quite all, of the veneration with which he is now regarded. He is one of those not uncommon men in whom there is some working substitute for intellectual force.
Previous page
