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Magyar yoke, Signor Bissolati added that 'victory' must also free the German people from its tragic intoxication and deprive the barbarous militarism of Prussia of its chief weapon.

'This weapon,' he continued, 'is the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. As long as the Monarchy exists-a State which is the negation of all its nationalities save the German and the Magyar-Imperial Germany will always be able to make a weapon of those nationalities and to renew the struggle. The many-headed monster must be slain in order that from its dead body may arise in freedom the races which its artificial unity has compressed.'

Baron Sonnino was scarcely less emphatic in his great speech of the 18th of December, which, by order of the Chamber, was placarded throughout Italy:

'We all desire peace, and lasting peace; but by "lasting peace' we understand an ordered settlement of which the duration shall not depend upon the weight of the chains forged to subject one people to another, but which shall depend upon a just equilibrium between States, upon respect for the principle of nationality, for the canons of International Law and the rights of humanity and civilisation. While intensifying our every effort to overthrow the enemy-with the most scrupulous observance of the laws of war-we aspire in no way to establish any international settlement based on servitude or mastery, or implying the annihilation of peoples or nations.'

The conviction that only by the dismemberment of AustriaHungary can the power of Prussian militarism be effectually destroyed is shared by all experienced Allied students of Central European affairs. No better vindication of their belief can be found than in the determined efforts now being made by Germany, and by the partisans of Germany in Austria and Hungary, so to reconstruct the Hapsburg Monarchy during the war as to ensure the continued predominance of the German and Magyar elements within its borders. That faithful organ of Germanism, the Neue Freie Presse, recently divulged the main features of the German programme. They include the separation of Galicia (represented by 106 Polish and Ruthene deputies in the Reichsrath) from Austria; the redistribution of the administrative (and probably also of the electoral) districts of Bohemia, so as to place the Czech majority under the control of the German minority; the establishment of German as the language of State throughout Austria in place of the eight Austrian languages hitherto recognised

as official; and the transfer of Dalmatia from Austria to an ' autonomous' Southern Slav State, which it is apparently proposed to create under the same kind of Magyar rule as the Croatians have, with brief intervals, enjoyed' since 1868. The removal of the 106 Galician and of the II Croat and Serb Dalmatian deputies from the Vienna Parliament would automatically ensure the absolute predominance of the Austrian Germans in all legislative matters, while the drastic reform of the parliamentary Standing Orders (also contemplated by the German programme) would enable a German president to silence, or to eject from the Chamber, any recalcitrant Czech or Slovene representative. In other words, the aim pursued is the forcible Germanisation of Austria proper in accordance with the example set by the Magyarisation of Hungary. Thus, with the Germans in unchallenged command of Austria, as the Magyars are in unchallenged command of Hungary, the Dual System would be immeasurably strengthened and the Hapsburg Monarchy reduced to its destined position as a subordinate factor in the Pan-German scheme.

Under such a dispensation, the fate of an 'autonomous 'Southern Slav State' consisting of Croatia-Slavonia-Dalmatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, portions of Serbia and possibly Montenegro, may readily be imagined. Croat would be played off against Serb; the Catholic clergy would be used to harass their Orthodox brethren in Christ'; the Musulman Slavs of Bosnia-Herzegovina would be employed as a further element of disunion; the Serbians of the kingdom would be oppressed with every refinement of administrative tyranny; and over the whole would brood the Hapsburg police, with its retinue of informers, forgers, and perjurers. The country would be developed' by the construction of strategic railways, the cost of which would be borne by an overtaxed and downtrodden peasantry, while Jews from Berlin, Vienna, and especially Budapest, would secure every valuable mining and industrial concession for the greater glory and profit of cosmopolitan finance. Some future German Chancellor would thus be enabled to dilate upon the successful efforts of Greater Germany to foster small nations and to hasten their progress along the high road of Kultur.

What positive programme have the Allies to set against this formidable plan? It is doubtful whether any single Allied government has yet thought out and set down exactly

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what it means by complete victory.' President Wilson, in his untimely Note to the belligerents, asked them to state what they are really fighting for. Germany certainly knows, but is not likely to say. The Allies cannot yet say, because they hardly know. Yet, if they wish to give a clear direction to the will to victory' which burns in all their peoples, they should lose no time in defining the precise objects they have in view and in canalising that will towards the attainment of those objects. As regards Austria-Hungary, the essential objects are clear. Unless the war is to end in a bad draw, or worse, the western half of Galicia must be included in a reunited Poland and the (mainly Ruthene) eastern half, with the northeastern or Ruthene counties of Hungary, must go to Russia. Bohemia, with Moravia and the north-western or Slovak counties of Hungary, must form an independent or at least a selfgoverning State, linked up, possibly, by some form of agreement with Poland. Transylvania and the Rumane districts of Hungary, with the Rumane section of Bukovina, must become Rumanian, due provision being made for the fair treatment of the Saxon and Magyar minorities. The Southern Slav provinces must be united with Serbia. The Magyars would retain the central Hungarian plain, and, once freed from the rule of their own oppressive oligarchy, would find it easy to maintain profitable relations with their neighbours. The Italians naturally belong to Italy. As to the Austrian Germans, little harm would be done should they elect to enter the German Empire with the Hapsburgs at their head. The Allies are not seeking to crush the German people, or even to prevent the union with it of outstanding German tribes.' They are seeking to break the power of Prussian militarismthat is to say, of the Prussia-ridden Germany created by the wars of 1864, 1866, and 1871. How that Germany has turned the Hapsburg Monarchy into a formidable political and military weapon I have tried to show. The work done by Bismarck in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, and its consequences, require to be undone, and the ascendency of Prussia reduced to proportions compatible with the liberties of the other German States and of Europe. To this desirable end the only path leads through the dismemberment of the present Hapsburg realms.

HENRY WICKHAM STEED.

THE END OF GREEK MONARCHY

1. Ainsi parla Venizelos. By LÉON MACCAS. Paris: Librairie Plon. 1916.

2. La Politique de la Grèce. (Speeches of M. VENIZELOS in the Hellenic Chamber, October and November 1916.) Paris: Imprimerie de l'Est. 1916.

3. The European Concert in the Eastern Question. By T. E. HOLLAND, D.C.L. Oxford: University Press. 1885.

4. ПoλITIKY 'Emileúpηois, Nos. 42 and 43. Athens; October 17 and 22 (O.S.), 1916.

5. Speech of M. Venizelos to the People, August 27, 1916. London: The Anglo-Hellenic League. 1916.

I

It can hardly be the present has ever been I1

can hardly be maintained that the attitude of the

neutral nations in the present struggle has ever been properly appreciated in England. The English press as a whole and the writers and public speakers who have undertaken to influence public opinion seem to have forgotten that in a fight it is not sufficient to attempt to convince or even to succeed in convincing a spectator of the justice of your cause you have to appeal not only to his better feelings but also to his political interests. The small nations are apt to receive with the coldest cynicism every moral argument addressed to them by one of the Great Powers; perhaps because they have learned by experience that the principles of abstract justice have not usually had any determining influence in the regulation of international disputes. It is not even enough to remind the Balkan States that the military Empire of Germany is a continual menace to the small Powers that have been helped to their feet in the last hundred years and now stand in the way of her advance to the East, or that the Austrian Empire is already a Bluebeard's chamber of crucified nationalities. It is quite true that in the present tumult England is the policeman of Europe; but it is not enough to blow the whistle of outraged law,

The fact is that all small nations regard the Great Powers with something between contempt and suspicion, which can be compared only to the feeling of potential hostility with which the socialist workman in a great private factory regards his employer. The employer may be just and benevolent, but he is a capitalist, a member of another order, whose struggles with other members of his own class are not the concern of the wage-earner. Or perhaps small nations feel that from great empires, as from joint-stock companies, some human element is wanting, so that sincere friendship with them is impossible. Some such feeling of distrust probably enters into the psychology of the small neutral States, and has worked as a sort of personal equation to distort the logic of British diplomatists. Germany alone has attempted to allow for this factor in her calculated relations with the outside world, and she has seldom been disappointed in her work of propaganda because she has never pretended to be benevolent. Certain it is that German propaganda in Greece has been peculiarly successful. Greece may be said-in so far as it is possible to generalise in such matters-to be a nation of precocious intellect and immature judgment, and every Greek profession of benevolent neutrality is tempered by a cynical suspicion of all Great Powers. There is many a Greek who loves England and English ways, but nevertheless believes that the present clash of maddened empires is no concern of his. He is quick to rationalise the motives which inspire the numerous invitations he receives from either belligerent; his hypertrophied political sense, or perhaps his national vanity, takes a certain pleasure in analysing their conflicting arguments; but he believes all the time that each Great Power is a clumsy Titan of another order-οὔτε δέμας θνητοῖσιν ὁμοῖος οὔτε νόημα whose interests are not commensurate with his own, and that his best chance of protection lies in exploiting the mutual jealousy of his protectors.

It is, of course, possible to overestimate this element of cynical detachment which leads the average citizen of a small country to smile politely when he is invited to exercise his moral judgment in this imperial brawl. But it is certainly a factor to be reckoned with, although it may not be easy to produce documentary evidence of its existence. One curious illustration of it I have found, very unexpectedly, in an amusing

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