KING EDWARD IN VIENNA.
WE do not suppose that King Edward visited Vienna V V with any specific mission ; but it is quite possible that while there his Majesty may have done some good. The descendant of Cerdic may speak frankly even to the descendant of Charlemagne, and a little frank speech from an equal who had just displayed his cordial friendship and respect by creating his host a Field-Marshal of the British Army may have inspired the Emperor of Austria with some fresh ideas. The _King is desirous of peace in Europe, he is also a kindly man, and he may have con- vinced his host that peace and the callous policy of leaving Macedonia to perish must ultimately be incompatible. At some stage in the extirpation of the Macedonians there will be war, if it be only between Greece and Bulgaria, or Servia and Bulgaria, and war in the Near East is an explosion in a magazine,—the magnitude of the explosion makes no difference, for everything will catch fire. The Emperor knows quite well that Turkish " reforms " are merely pretences, and that the advice given to the Sultan to crush the revolt at once cannot be taken ; and he may, when he hears the opinion of such a critic, see that if he wants peace he must adopt a more vigorous policy. He must advise the Russian Court that intervention has become inevitable unless the Sultan will consent to the partial autonomy of Macedonia under a Christian and irremovable Governor-General —or two Governors-General, if inter- national jealousies demand the division of the province—a consent which Russia and Austria acting together can extort without moving armies. Turkey will not fight them both with Great Britain and France holding aloof ; and Germany will not quarrel with her one necessary ally even in the sacred cause of Anatolian railway concessions.
We may be sure that if the Emperor of Austria moved, his representations would be heard both in St. Petersburg and Berlin. Our countrymen rather underrate the power of the Austrian Empire, and its consequent place in inter- national politics. The statesmen of Vienna have not yet thought it expedient to expel the correspondents of the English papers, and those correspondents, being naturally attracted by the conflict of races which has always gone on within the Austrian Empire, create the impression that it is paralysed by its internal dissensions. That, however, though true enough in a way, is not the whole truth. The dissensions always stop short when separation is seen to be in prospect, and are pleas for greater autonomy, not revolts directed against the house of Hapsburg. The head of that house is still, and, as we believe, will remain, the executive chief of a vast mass of power, which, heavy and sluggish as it may be, is when once in motion so great that it can never be disregarded by its neighbours. Germany is far more completely organised ; and Russia possesses a larger area, and potentially an even greater supply of men ; but if Austria abandoned the Triple Alliance Germany would stand alone in the world, with the vast armies of France and Russia sullenly menacing her from either side ; while Russian generals acknowledge that the risk involved in a march to Constantinople can never, without Austrian consent, be safely run. Their com- munications would be cloven by a flank attack. Austria, for all her apparent quiescence and. habit of lumbering, always retains the veto on her more active neighbours' action, and her representations therefore must always receive benevolent consideration. The veto is not the less effective because Austria is now the only Great Power in Europe unhampered by a transmarine policy. Her states- men wish, it is true, to extend her dominion to Salonica, and so obtain a share of Asiatic trade ; but they have an infinite capacity of waiting, and they have nothing outside their own borders to defend. Their attention is riveted upon one small continent, and within that continent they want nothing except, and that only in certain contingencies, the Western strip of the Balkans. They are out of Germany, they have surrendered the Netherlands, they seek nothing in Italy ; and except a certain hope of trade, and a resolve not to be surrounded by Russia, they have even to the eastward no necessity for expansion. They are not oppressed, like Russia, by the desire for access to the water, for the Adriatic communicates with all oceans ; and they are not alarmed, like Germany, by the ever- increasing disparity between the number of their population and its apparent means of subsistence. There is land still within the Hapsburg dominion for every subject, and though there is poverty, in places terrible poverty, there is none that is irremovable. The passivity of Austria, in fact, blinds us to her weight, and the effect of that weight upon European politics. Ill-cemented and too roughly organised, full of diverse races and tongues and creeds, with no " people " in the true sense, and a dynasty whose first merit is that it always survives defeat, the Hapsburg dominion is still a mighty and effective power.
Some faint surprise is expressed, we see, that the reception of King Edward in Vienna was so warm ; but there is no reason for the feeling. Traditionally the two States have always been allied. They fought side by side in the wars against Napoleon, they wished the same things in the great war of 1855, and though in the war for the liberation of Italy they were opposed in sentiment, they were not opposed in act. During the South African War, no doubt, the Germans of Austria poured out much bitter criticism; but the dynasty was entirely friendly, and even the critics proved themselves not irreconcilable. They had never expected, as the Germans of the Empire did, to gain provinces in South Africa, and when the British won their sense of defeat was not intensified by any sense of disappointment. For the rest, the interests of the two Empires, though not so closely allied as they were in 1855, are similar enough to allow of cordiality. Both desire, and desire acutely, the freedom of the Mediterranean. Both desire, and desire acutely, that there should be no dominant Power in Europe, but that it should remain an imperfect Federation of fairly equal Powers. Both desire peace, and both are eager that if Turkey in Europe must fall, its heritage should be fairly divided instead of being concentrated in one ambitious hand. There are, in fact, no jarring interests to divide the two Empires ; and the jar of sentiment which undoubtedly existed in the "fifties "ceased to be felt when Francis Joseph, mellowed by time, defeat, and suffering, developed from a tyrant into a statesman who could be trusted with new provinces. All England wished him defeat in Italy ; but when in 1878 Bosnia and Herzegovina passed into his hands not a voice was raised in this country to deprecate that settlement. The one ambition of Austria, to extend to Salonica, affronts no one here, for every one feels that Austria is Federal, and that Macedonia under the shelter of Vienna might be as orderly and as cpntented as Bosnia was made by the great' statesman who, had he but lived, might have added the restoration of Macedonia to his administrative triumphs.
Previous page
