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BY THEVSAME AULAHOR
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FACT AND CHARACTER
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Mm «Nice, fanuary 26, 1884
CHAP,
XII.
XIII,
GO Nel EEN
INTRODUCTORY . .
PAST AND PRESENT.
THE
5 Aleinh
THE
THE
. THE
UNLESS
THE
THE
. THE
THE
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THE
GERMANS .
CZECH
HUNGARIANS .
JEW .
VIENNESE . °
EMPEROR . °
NOBILITY .
NOBILITY (continued)
ARMY : .
ARMY (continued)
PRIEST
AUSTRIAN MIDDLE CLASSES
PAGE
vill CONTENTS
CHAP.
XIV. THE AUSTRIAN MIDDLE CLASSES (continued)
XV. THE AUSTRIAN MIDDLE CLASSES (continued)
XVI. THE PEASANT
XVII. WOMANKIND IN AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
XVIII. CONCLUSION
ELE
REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
INTRODUCTORY
. ov yap ot mareis,
OVS eipiyora Portes acparécraror'
"ANN Ot Ppovodvres €d Kparovar Tavtaxod *
SOPHOCLES (Ajaz)
4
I
To many Englishmen the very term ‘‘ Austria,” or—
as this at one time most powerful country in Europe
is called since the Covenant of 1867f—< Austria-
Hungary,” conveys a somewhat hazy geographical
as well as political idea. And this is the case
* ‘Wor not the stout or the broadbacked men are the most
sure ; those rather who keep their wits come everywhere to the
‘ front.”
+ The Covenant of 1867 (Law of December 21), re-constituted
the Empire as two inseparable and constitutional monarchies,
hereditary in the House of Habsburg-Lorraine ; it gave Hungary
. important separate State Rights, and perpetuated the Habsburg
dominion under the denomination of Austria-Hungary.
A
2 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
notwithstanding that England and Austria have -
been allies on many momentous occasions and fought
side by side on many a hard-fought field. Who
will say, too, that to-morrow some political comph-
cation may not again suddenly concentrate the
attention. of Europe on the banks of the Danube ?
The country itself is comparatively seldom visited
by tourists * from the west of Hurope, and is even
less read about. Thus it is that this most fertile,
as well as most picturesque, part of the Continent—
lavishly endowed as it is by Nature—is as little
known to us as are the character of its inhabitants,
their many racial distinctions, and their varied social
and political life.
Yet there never was a time in which it was more
imperative than it is at present to investigate the
psychological aspect of things in the wide domain
of the national life of neighbouring peoples. The °
electric telegraph, the network of railways, the
extraordinary impulse given to production of every
kind all the world over, are all by degrees bringing
about a state of affairs in which the struggle for
existence among communities as among individuals,
seems destined to become acute. We are being
brought so near to one another that we can no longer
afford to ignore each other’s existence; but the
struggle thus looming in the future has not hitherto
* The so-called Salzkammergut and the Tyrol are exceptions
to the above statement. According to the statistics for 1890,
German-speaking Tyro! alone boasted 190,575 visitors during the
year, who spent over seven million florins in the country. The
statistics of Italian-speaking Tyrol are not given.
INTRODUCTORY 3
. led to much mutual knowledge of character or of
institutions.
The following pages are mainly intended to be a
small contribution to the study of the psychology of
nations, and to show, among other things, how even
classic virtue may be insufficient in the battle of
life, the palm of which is now more than ever
allotted to the “ fittest.”
II
Austria is a country which stands geographically,
economically, as well as politically, midway between
the past and the present. Geographically Austria
borders on the west on highly developed Germany,
while on the east it touches stagnation. In parts
of Austria the past in all its phases is still blended
with the present in proportions hardly to be met
with elsewhere in HKurope. For whilst the tcurist
can traverse Hungary by rail, by virtue of the new
Zone tariff, for less money than he can travel first-
class from Dover to Calais, in this same Hungary
over half a million of hand ploughs made of wood
still furrow the fertile soil.*
In England, the Royalty of the Plantagenets,
Tudors, and Stuarts has given place to a mild form
of social regal presidency—an amiable but arduous
leadership, through the mazes of Society’s cotillon.
Seated on the throne of the Austria of to-day is the
* “Nie Landwirthschaft Ungarns.” Prof. Dr. EH. v. Rodiczky.
4 THE REALM OF THE HABSEURGS
same family which held sway there in the days of
our Plantagenets. And, although the despotic rule
of those days has given place to the prevailing
milder form of representative government, yet the
fervid loyalty of past ages, elsewhere dead, still
survives in the hearts of the soil-nurtured Austrian
peasant, of the town-bred citizen, and of the noble
in his princely ancestral home.
With us the distinctive garb of the people has
long disappeared, together with the class life of the
rural population. A visitor coming to England,
fresh from Austria, must be surprised to see the
lower orders—particularly the women—dressed in
the soiled and bedraggled left-off finery of the
middle classes. Among Austria’s many nationalities,
each still retains its characteristic picturesque garb
and its traditional customs.
In Germany, as in England, an enormous increase
in the population of great towns is everywhere
apparent, in its results gradually undermining the
old landmarks of the people, which connected them
with the soil from which they sprang. In Austria,
on the other hand, all these elements of modern
change have had less play and their influence is far
less evident. |
In republican France, the Revolution has swept
away the once powerful landed aristocracy, and
reduced the Catholic prelate to a small fixed salary.
In Austria there are still territorial magnates, whose
wealth and the extent of whose possessions vie with
those of our greatest landowners. There are
INTRODUCTORY 5
Princes of the Church in Austria as well as in
Hungary, whose incomes make even our Arch-
bishops’ princely salaries appear small by com-
parison.
That, however, which must chiefly attract the
interest of the politician towards Austria is the fact
of her rupture with her autocratic past, and her
embarking upon the broad waves of modern
liberalism. This is the most stupendous experiment
of political patent-medicine methods—as opposed to
gradual and natural evolution—that is to be met
with in the wider fields of political history.
IIT
Some of us can remember the easy-going pre-
1866 days—the closing epoch of the older régime
—when the pick of Austria’s crack regiments could
be seen doing garrison duty as far west as Frank-
fort-on-the-Main. The Austrians, Prussians, and
Bayvarians mounted guard on alternate days. But
people had no eye for the cold mechanical Prussian
goose-step, and for those raw, beardless Prussian
recruits, who looked so fagged, and were said to
have such a distressing time of it under the iron
discipline of the brutal drill-sergeant. The uniforms
- of the latter, too, were dull to look upon; they
fitted badly, and emphasised the angularity of the
big bones of the wearers. We did not then know
that the Austrians, besides being picked troops, were
long-service men, who naturally contrasted favour-
6 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
ably with Pomeranian recruits. And who could help
admiring the well-knit Austrian—-many of them
swarthy fellows from the Italian provinces of Lom-
bardy—who seemed to combine the natural grace of
the Southern with the chivalric bearing of the
flower of the Teutonic race ?
Those were days when the great thinker, Arthur
Schopenhauer, used to eat enough for three at the
table @héte of the Hotel d’Angleterre. There he
might be seen sitting at the bend of the triangular
dinner-table surrounded by dishes, which the waiters
slyly piled up before and around him, and which he
testily pushed aside. His was a queer old gorilla
face, with the bristling hair and the keen flashing
eyes ; but philosophy in his case evidently did not
lead to disdain of the creature comforts of life.
Down at the further end of the table, towards the
door, the Austrian cavalry officers congregated.
We only heard, many years afterwards, from Chal-
lemel-Lacour, the French writer and diplomatist,
that the wily old philosopher used day by day to
make a silent bet with himself that those gay
cavalry men would never talk at table of any other
subject than women, horses, and their chances of
regimental preferment. Neither did it particularly
attract our attention when we saw now and again a
Prussian officer sitting among them, for few of the
Prussians could afford the luxury of the table
@hote at the Hotel d’Angleterre. But now it all
floods back on one’s memory; a spare, wiry figure,
with cold, steel-grey eyes, politely but decisively
INTRODUCTORY 7
laying down the law on some subject or other to the
ill-concealed discomfiture of his Austrian listeners
—quietly nonplussed by the outcome of wider
knowledge and cool perception of fact. There in a
nutshell lay the key to much that was hidden still
from the majority, but was soon to be revealed to
all alike. ,
IV
Only a few brief years later, and all Hurope is
breathless, for the Angel of Death is at work, reap-
ing his grim harvest’amid the golden cornfields of
Bohemia. His servants were first the bullet and
then the cholera. It is a sultry summer eve, and
the Prussians are busy installing themselves for the
night in the little town of Podol, around and in
which a tough encounter with the enemy had taken
place during the day. Suddenly the alarm is given,
the drums beat—the Austrians are coming on in
full. force, a part of the renowned Iron Brigade
among them, to turn the Prussians out of Podol.
There they come, along the high-road, and here
- stand the Prussians, holding the bridge that com-
mands the road leading back into the town. ‘The
needle-guns are ready, and at the dry word of com-
mand whole lines of the brave Austrians bite the
dust! But on come others over the dead and dying,
and again the needle-gun rattles its death-knell
into the quivering lines of stout human hearts.
The road is blocked up with the dead as by a
8 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
parapet. At last silence and the night supervene.
The Austrians have left their killed and wounded
behind, and disappeared in the darkness. The
Prussian cavalry ride up and see the ghastly heaps
of dead and dying intermingled.
“ Du lieber Gott,” says a Prussian officer—possibly
the very grey-eyed debater of Frankfort table dhéte
days—“ if that is the senseless way they are going
to lead these poor fellows to the slaughter, we shall
not have much to fear in this business.”
«Ah, Kam’rad,” calls out a wounded Austrian
officer, “‘ you manage to keep your asses in the rear
—we have got ours, alas! in front.”
And the birth-throes of a new era long prepared
are being laboured through in agony on these very
plains of Bohemia in the course of a few short weeks.
Amid the ripe cornfields the wounded Austrian is
seen limping along, supported by his stick, his
uniform still dyed with the blood and dirt of the
battle-field, a prisoner in his own country! *
Who can wonder at the disgust of the old ex-
Emperor, Ferdinand, living quietly in retirement at
Prague? When they told him that the victorious
Prussians were coming, and that he had better take
to flight, he is reported to have said: “If that is
all the good you have: done, you need not have
taken the trouble to make me abdicate in ’48.”
* The campaign of 1866 was the last one fought in Europe
under the old barbarous system of helplessness with regard to
the care for the wounded. Austria-Hungary joined the Geneva
Red Cross Association immediately after it.
INTRODUCTORY 9
_ Where is now your heroism, your chivalry? Not
even a word of recognition for the willing sacrifice
of your good honest bones. “If that is all you
have got to show, we have not much to fear!”
Surely the portent of this did not confine itself to
the plains of Bohemia, nor even to the time of its
occurrence. ‘The lesson isto be read to-day! Thus
shall the blind devotion of the past prove unavailing
—go down before highly organised discipline in time
to come, whilst the many lull themselves into false
security, fondly believing in a millennium of peace
and inanition.
CHAPTER
PAST AND PRESENT
Austria erit in orbe ultima
I
THE Realm of the Habsburgs is an old country in
many other senses than that of antiquity of origin.*
Austria is old by the tenacity of her tradition, and
by the still unchanged character of her inhabitants
amid the latest political innovations. While
England and France are to-day so coloured by
modern civilisation that scarcely more than dead
stones remain to recall even the comparatively recent
period of medizeval chivalry, almost everything in
Austria has still a flavour of ages long since passed
away.
There must be something soothing in the peaceful
* The name of Oesterreich, originally applied to the territory
situated above and below the river Enns, is not mentioned in
history much before the year one thousand of our era. It first
occurs in a deed of gift in the reign of Count Henry the Strong,
who ruled over the province in question about the year 994 A.D.
It is about a thousand years since first mention is made of the
name of Hungary.
PAST AND PRESENT it
retirement of the picturesque old Austrian towns,
which has so often acted as an attraction to legiti-
mate monarchs ‘ out of work,’ and bade them seek
refuge on Austrian soil in preference to any other.
The Duchess of Berry, Charles X., the late Duke of
Chambord, and, lastly, the late King of Hanover, all
ended their days on Austrian territory. Decadence
and decay lose much of their terrors amid scenery,
the effect of which is to remove our thoughts from
earthly vanities. It is only in accordance with the
fitness of things that a long line of kings of another
powerful monarchy of the past—that of Poland—
should also have found their last resting-place m
Austria.*
As in the case of Poland, the history of Austria
is inseparably connected with that of its monarchs.
In truth, we have here the history of one and the
same family registering the ups and downs, the
sunshine and storm, which have affected the fortunes
of millions of human beings for six centuries tT and
marked the destiny of a realm, the sway of which
was at one time more extensive than the rest of
Kurope combined.
At the time of the Reformation, her rule was so
extensive that the Emperor Charles the Fifth could
boast—as Queen Victoria may to-day—that the sun
never set in his dominions. Even in our time, the
Emperor of Austria-Hungary rules over 41,000,000
* The kings of Poland are buried in Cracow.
+ Since 1278, the date of the battle of Marchfeld, in which
Rudolph of Habsburg defeated Ottokar, king of Bohemia.
12 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
human beings, distributed over an area of about
240,000 square miles; the greatest number of souls
and the largest extent of territory, if we except
Russia, under the direct sway of any one monarch
in Hurope.
it
The Hohenstaufen, the Habsburgs,” and the
Hohenzollerns are the three great royal Houses round
which has revolved the political history of the middle
of Europe during the last eight hundred years.
All three are of Germanic blood, all three are
descended from families whose ancestral castles,
strange to say, were situated in close propinquity to
one another in the south-west of Germany. Though
identical in origin, however, their part in history has,
on the contrary, been widely divergent.
The Hohenstaufen Emperors, nearly 800 years ago,
endeavoured to play the great national part which
has fallen to the lot of the House of Hohenzollern
in our time. ‘ Frederick the Second, the ablest and
most accomplished of the long line of German Ceesars,
had in vain exhausted all the resources of military
and political skill in the attempt to defend the rights
of the civil power against the encroachments of the
Church. The vengeance of the priesthood had
pursued his House to the third generation, Manfred
* Habsburg (originally Habichtsburg, that is, Hawkscastle), an
old German family, which takes its name from the old Swiss
castle of Habsburg, now in ruins, situated on the river Aar in the
Canton of Aargau.
PAST AND PRESENT 13
had perished on the field of battle, Conradin on the
scaffold.”* They were in truth before their time,
and to the Habsburg dynasty fell the succession to
the dignity of Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
But whereas the Hohenstaufen had perished fighting
for essentially German ideals against the temporal
power of Rome, the Habsburgs became great by
direct co-operation with Catholicism.
There was a time, during the Reformation, when
the power and with it the supremacy of the
Habsburg rule was seriously imperilled; but the
regeneration of Catholicism during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries strengthened the founda-
tions of Habsburg power and ensured their successive
possession of the elective dignity of Holy Roman
Emperors of German nationality, down to the final
collapse of the Holy Roman Empire itself.
It is beyond our province to dwell even in
outline on the record of what is, broadly speaking,
the history of the human race fora long period. All
through succeeding centuries we find the power of the
Church as the basis of the Catholic State, which in
its turn is supported in its autocratic character by
the priesthood of Rome—notably the Jesuits.
Throughout this period Catholicism is seen work-
ing side by side with the House interests, the so-
called House policy of the Habsburgs. And this
continues down to the time when the latter
are confronted by an antagonistic force of a
* Lord Macaulay : Essay on Ranke’s History of the Popes.
14 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
similar kind—namely, the expansive ambition of the
Royal House of France.
From the time of Charles the Fifth down to our
own, the policy of France was almost solely
directed towards the humbling of the power, which
uniting the Netherlands, Burgundy (in part) and
Spain under its sway, had taken a French king
prisoner in battle. |
We all know how the growth of French power,
only rendered possible by the internal dissensions of
the Teutonic race which lasted for several centuries,
eradually forced the House of Habsburg from their
possessions in the Netherlands, Spain, and even the
Rhine, until the work of Richelieu was crowned,
and the Habsburgs were compelled to give up most
of the immense territories which they had gained
by a succession of prudent marriages.
This, however, is beside our purpose, as also is
the trite assertion that if the Habsburg dynasty
had not invariably been guided by dynastic rather
than by broader national considerations, a Habs-
burg Kaiser might still be crowned in Frankfort-on-
the-Main, and Metz and Strasburg need never have
formed part of France. The history of the world is
as full of “ might ‘have been” as the life of any
humble inhabitant of our planet.
II]
The result is all that concerns us. The Catholic
Habsburgs were unable to dim the glorious German
PAST AND PRESENT Is
national traditions attaching to the memory of the
Hohenstaufen. These embodied an idea, which the
Habsburgs ever failed to realise, and this idea
became engrafted on and found: nourishment in the
spirit of Protestantism. The Catholic and politi-
cally egotistic character of the House of Habsburg
failed to awaken that sympathy in their fortunes
which would have been necessary in order to bring
the genius of Germany to identify its interests with
those of Austria. That Germany should do so was,
_ perhaps unconsciously, the ambition of the Emperor
Joseph II. He endeavoured to break with priest
power and inaugurate a newera. But although he
was never tired of asserting that he was above all
a German Sovereign, the sufferings of centuries
made Germany deaf to his words. Nor was he
one of those historic personages capable of changing
the current of history. He perhaps foresaw that
Catholicism meant in the end severance from the
best intellect of Germany. Nature had not, however,
fitted him for great political work. He would
actually rush out at night to assist in extinguishing
a fire in Schonbrunn, whilst the kingdom of Bohemia
’ -was aflame with war brought about by his state-
manship.
In this way, then, originated a split in the great
central Teutonic Empire of Europe, and it has been
left to our time to witness the final result—namely,
the severance of Protestant and national Germany
from the Catholic House dominion of the Habs-
burgs. |
16 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
In this instance the fortunes of one autocratic
and Catholic family have swayed a mighty perioc
of the past. By a strange coincidence its eclipse
__ was almost coeval with the great economical, intel-
lectual, and political evolution in the midst of which
we are all living to-day.
The political factors of the past are no longer
the leading ones in the life of nations at the
present time. The attachment of the Germans
to the head of the Holy Roman Empire died out
with the Thirty Years’ War. The loyalty of the
Austrians for their monarch is still strong, but it is
no longer as of yore their only guiding star—not
even when backed by Catholicism. Human _pas-
sions are ever the same, though they run in different
grooves: but human institutions, human ideals, these
change with the times.
Now, if in the past the history of a great por-
tion of Europe may be fairly identified with the
history of one ruling family, such is unlikely to be
the case in the near future.
Autocracy in Europe has had its day; modern
revolution has rendered this an anachronism. And
as if to make its reappearance, even in Catholic
countries, doubly impossible, the Catholic Church is
no longer to be relied upon as the ally of autocratic
monarchy as opposed to the social and_ political
aspirations of communities or nationalities. The
expansion of the individual, even when united with
a strong feeling of attachment to the Sovereign, has
evoked aspirations among the masses which must
PAST AND PRESENT a,
ead to acuter perceptions and desires. The grow-
‘ng acuteness of the economical struggle for life has
aecessitated universal education as a weapon to
meet its conditions.
The outcome of this and of many other factors of
our day has been a renewal of the feeling of race
and nationality, which, though always existent, was
formerly forced more into the background by the
supreme importance of community of faith or loyalty
to a Sovereign. Nowadays the elements of political
economy have supplanted the figment of loyalty—
even of creed—from the first rank of popular
interests. And this remains a fact even where’
Catholicism—the strongest of all religious creéds—
is supreme. Thus we note Protestant leaders con-
trolling a Catholic race agitation in Ireland; Pro-
testant clergymen inciting their flocks in Alsace to~
remain faithful to the lost connection with Catholic
French nationality. So, too, in Austria, we see a
rivalry of races, supplanting almost every traditional
influence of the past: whilst the Catholic Church
marches on amid the débris of discarded autocratic
-shibboleths. The individual is no longer satisfied
with the knowledge of being the unit of a great
Empire, as is more or less the case for the moment
-in Germany. ‘The particularism which statesmen
- have striven to stamp out in Germany, and which
has given place to the class war of socialism, is to-
day the rising tide in Austria, though its source
and character are different. It is not an attachment
to a petty Sovereign, as in old-fashioned Germany :
B
18 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
it is democratic, even verging towards republicanism ;
it has a social tinge as well as a political character.
The unit of each community has been taught
to ask for something, to strive and to agitate in
order to obtain it. He is no longer satisfied with
the gratification of his own individual wants. In
olden days these were small, and easily supplied.
To-day, his energy and ambition are awakened, and
with an increasing perception of his scope of mental
effort, comes the desire that the political and the
economical benefits to be obtained, should become
the common property of his class, of his brothers, of
his particular nationality. Hence, in the case of
Austria-Hungary, composed as it is of a variety of
distinct nationalities, a rivalry of race is at work,
the course of which will be followed with no ordinary
interest by politicians of all countries.
IV
In some recent numbers of the Revue des Deux
Mondes,* M. Anatole de Leroy Beaulieu sfig-
gests the possible obliteration of the connection
between race, language and nationality, and he
instances the Turks, with whom identity of creed is
everything, and race and language a secondary
consideration. And by way of showing what may
be possible under conditions of Asiatic decaying
— ee a Se
* “Tes Juifs et ]’Antisémitisme,” Revue des Deux Mondes,
February 15, May 1, July 15, 1801. ~
PRok AND PRESENTS 19
autocracy in the past, the example may stand. But
surely M. Leroy Beatlieu would not ask us to believe
that what is feasible in Asia could ever be a possi-
bility in Europe. He cannot intend us to kelieve
that it is a matter of detail for the future of a
country whether this or that race be on the decline
or in the ascendant, and therefore destined to impress
its character on the entire community. For when
we read the lessons of the past, the interpretation of
historical fact points all the other way.
What, we may ask, were the ancient Britons
until reinforced by the hardy Norseman, by the
Dane and the Saxon? To the blood of those
Northmen, who furrowed the German Ocean with
their many-oared galleys, a thousand years ago, can
in a measure be traced the world colonising power
of the England of modern times.
Some of the vicissitudes of modern French history
can as clearly be traced to the idiosyncrasies of the
Celtic Gaul as observed by Ceesar, as the fixity of
- purpose of a Richelieu, the ruling qualities of the
French nobility through the centuries of the build-
ing up of the French monarchic State can be traced
to the infusion of the Burgundian, the Frank, and
the West Goth blood during and after the Volker-
wanderung in the fifth century of our era.
And yet the train of thought of M. Anatole de
Leroy Beaulieu might lead us to believe, that it were
_a matter of no moment to the course of the future
history of Austria, whether the Turanian Hungarian,
the Slavonic Czech, the ‘Teuton, or the Hebrew
20 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
should form the future dominant element on the
banks of the Danube. Let us for a moment sup-
pose that the majority of Austria’s population were
thrifty Belgians or hardy Scotchmen. Would any-
body aver that this would mean no difference in
Austria’s political, social, and economical problems
to-day ? In any case, there can be no doubt that
it is a matter of life or death to Austria what race
becomes the dominant one in her midst; the result
must infallibly decide the lines of her foreign policy
in the future, and that in ifs turn must influence the
political future of the Realm of the Habsburgs.
The Habsburgs may broadly be said to have
sacrificed the hegemony of Protestant Germany for
the sake of Catholicism, and for the sake of those
Catholic provinces over which they have ruled so
many centuries. Will those elements stand by the
Habsburg family in the future ?
tA ene
HAO reas LL
THE GERMANS
Auch tiber die Hange der Alpen kreist
Keine Schranke kennend der deutsche Geist
Ros. HAMERLING*
I
THe Germans—at all events those of distinct Ger-
man race and language—form in Austria-Hungary
between nine and ten millions out of the total of
forty-one million inhabitants. Thus, numerically,
they only take a secondary place among the races of
the Empire.
On the other hand, the Austrian Empire is itself
a German product. The Habsburg history of the
last six hundred years is essentially the history of
a German Roman Catholic family and of German
‘Roman Catholic civilisation. Vienna, the capital,
was always a German city, from which German
university life, laws, institutions, sciences, arts, and
customs were promulgated, spread and took effect
throughout the Habsburg dominions. The aristo-
cracy, the army, the official world—in one word,
* The spirit of Germany hovers even over the slopes of the
Alps, despising all restraint.
22 THE REALM OF THE “HABSBURG.
the governing influences of the country—were almost
entirely German in character, if not also in race.
If Bohemia was once a Slavonic kingdom, so
too were large tracts of what now is Prussia .
once Slavonic in character, even as they are still
racially. Bohemia became German by the right of
conquest, and remained so unchallenged for cen-
turies. Ifthe Magyars first constituted Hungary as
a State, if Latin was the language of culture and
officialdom, the Germans founded the towns of
Hungary, the social life of her citizens, their com-
merce and industry. The German origin of many
towns in Hungary is shown by their German
names : Oedenbure, Stullweissenburg, Ftinfkirchen,
etc. Hven the old name. of the capital, Pesth, is
not a Magyar name, but one of Slavonic root.
Indeed, we are told,” that as early as 1240, Pesth
was known as a very wealthy “German” town.
To-day there is not a town in Hungary which was
not at one time entirely or partially inhabited by
Germans.
Transylvania at an early period became a German
colony, and is an essentially German province still.
Thus it has come about that Austrian civilisation
is almost entirely a product of the Teuton race. It
was the T'eutonic element which not only founded
the Austrian Empire, but provided the grit (bindende
__.* “Hthnographie von Ungarn.” Paul Hunfalvy. P. 28t.
Budapesth, 1877.
+ Ibid. p. 282.
THE GERMANS 23
Kraft) which enlarged, elevated it to its world-
dominating position, and held it together amid the
vicissitudes of centuries.
And as long as the Habsburgs in person united
the titular leadership of the German Empire,
nothing seemed to call the legitimate supremacy of
the German ruling element into question. It was
only in the present century that the racial struggles
began, the results of which are still in progress.
Their first powerful manifestation was, of course,
the Hungarian rebellion of 1848; that, however,
Austria overcame with the assistance of Russia.
The Slavonic propaganda of the Czechs were still
only working silently underground. Thus as long
as Austria retained her position as titular head of
the Germanic confederation, we find the German race,
at all events outwardly, master of the situation.
ia!
It is only since the final ostracism of the House
of Habsburg from Germany and the introduction of
Liberalism and the new order of things, that the
German element in Austria hag been gradually
losing the immense political prestige which it for-
merly enjoyed, and has been thrown back more and
more upon its own resources, to stand or fall on its
merits ; as merits go in such struggles nowadays,
Since that time the German race shows signs of
a steady declension. No wonder, then, that there
are coteries among the German ruling class of
24 THE REALM. OF THE ‘GABSBURKGS
Austria which still resent the blow dealt them by
Protestant Prussia twenty-six years ago.
No sooner had Hungary gained autonomy, than
she proceeded to use the very same weapons which
the House of Habsburg had used in the past
against her. The Magyar tongue became uni-
versally obligatory in official life, and everything
was done to ostracise the German language by
strenuous agitation and other means.“ Tor the
Hungarians, in common with the Czechs, are in
constant fear that, unless they succeed in extirpating
the German language, they will never be safe
against the more powerful German volume of culture
which finds its way into Austria by means of the
universities of Germany proper. And they have
both been largely successful in their efforts in this
direction. Thus, while in the year 1869 there were
still one thousand two hundred and _ thirty-two
German schools in Hungary, now there are only
half that number. ‘Ten years ago the German
language was still predominant in Budapesth, now
only two-thirds of the inhabitants speak it.
The Hungarians have also extended their efforts
in the same direction among the German population
of Transylvania, and have been indirectly assisted
here by the stagnation in the German population of
Transylvania. It is said that the Transylvanian
* Germans have repeatedly been fined by the police in
Hungary, for drinking to the health of the Emperor of Austria
as such.
THE. GERMANS 25
—
Saxons have of late years adopted the custom of
limiting the family to two children ; the only
population of Teutonic race which hitherto has
done so.
In the meantime the Czechs of Bohemia and
Moravia have not been slow to follow the example
set by Hungary, as yet only by tacit agreement
among themselves. Hven as far back as the year
1872, when Czech hatred of everything German
had not reached the pitch it has now attained, many
Czechs refused an answer if addressed in German.
At present they are eager to possess a law making
the Czech language officially obligatory, and if they
succeed in this endeavour the use of the German
tongue will be still further restricted in Austria.
Vienna, once the capital of the Holy Roman
Empire, a thoroughly German city, is gradually
but surely assuming the character of a Slavonic city.
And not only is this the case, but a still surer sign,
if possible, is to be found in the decay of German
- influence; Vienna is gradually losing much of its
former life and bustle, and trade is on the decline.
~ Prague, which since the Thirty Years’ War had
become as much a German town as Vienna, is to-
day Slavonic. And not only in the large towns,
but in the rural districts the same influences are
at work, narrowing down and _ superseding the
Germanic elements. Even in the south-west, in
the Tyrol, the German language is receding before
the Italian. Count Wolkenstein, a Tyrolese noble-
man, lately asked for a railway ticket at Roveredo
26 THE-REAIM OF THE HABSEURGS
for “ Botzen.” ‘ We don’t know the place,” replied
the official. ‘‘ I presume you mean ‘ Bolzano’ ?”
Thus while in the east the Hungarians, in the west
and south-west of Austria the Slavonic races are
respectively making great headway against the only
opposing barrier there—what is German. In fact,
the elimination and suppression of the German race
and language is going on throughout the length —
and breadth of Austria-Hungary, and the loss of the
language goes hand in hand with the loss of old
German feeling. Those of German parentage be-
come, with the adoption of another tongue, totally
dead to their lost nationality, and often even fana-
tical adherents of the adopted one.
TE
Since the advent of the present Ministry of Count
Taaffe, the neglect of German race interests and the |
suppression of the German language are viewed
with favour if not officially encouraged. This is,
perhaps, the most ominous sign of all. For if the
official world (the Emperor and the Imperial Arch-
dukes at its head), itself largely German, turns
against them, it is difficult to see how German
interests are to be safeguarded. Still, no official
leaning would by itself have been able to bring
about the alarming symptoms of the last decennium.
In truth, other factors have to be added to account
for the results obtained. In the first place, there
is the aggressive antagonistic national aspirations
DHES-GEKMANS 27
of the other races; in the second, the activity of the
Roman Catholic priesthood; in the third, the want
of political resistive force of the German race
itself.
The enmity of the Catholic Church is, both
directly and indirectly, at the bottom of almost all
the attacks to which the Germans are exposed. The
Catholic Church, like Russian diplomacy, never
changes its course, and her course in this case
means undying enmity to the German element.
We may lose sight of questions of race ; not so Rome
the Hternal, though to her they may be but means
to an end. Monarchy may receive her protection
to-day, a Republic to-morrow, a Democracy the day
after; these may pass away, but a race survives.
Catholicism knows that of the two, the Slave and
the German, the former will be more malleable stuff
in his hands than the latter. For the German will
sooner or later fall back upon his splendid literature
and rebel against the slavery of the mind, irrevocably
-involved in Roman priest-rule. Hence it is the
Catholic priesthood which is trying to stamp out
~the German schools in the German Tyrol, of which
a part belongs to the diocese of the Archbishop of
Milan. It is the Catholic priesthood which is doing
the same work among the Czech peasantry of Mo-
- ravia and Bohemia—in fact, everywhere throughout
Austria-Hungary.
Lastly, it is the Catholic priesthood which is
responsible for the desertion by the great German-
Austrian nobility of the German cause. The
28 THE REAIM OF SRA ESHA SB Una.
Catholic priest influences them through the con-
fessional. By means of his strong hold over the
women of the aristocracy, he nurtures a hatred of
the German element, particularly of its liberal and
Jewish sections. Another strong argument in the
hands of the priest in dealing with the aristocracy
is, that the Slave is likely to prove more submis-
sive to the territorial supremacy of the aristocratic
landowner than the more individualistic German.
The aristocracy believe this, but it is possible that
a rude awakening may await them. The signs of
it are to be gathered from among the voung Czechs,
who are likely to be socially more iconoclastic in
the future than the Germans. It is more than
possible that the German aristocracy may find that
they have made the same mistake which the German
barons of the Baltic provinces made through many
centuries, in endeavouring to exterminate the Ger-
man peasantry. To-day the Russians are about to
Russify them !
IV
When we bear in mind that the German language
has always been that of the army and of the whole
official world, that the culture of the whole monarchy
with its German universities, had long been essen-
tially German, it was only to be expected that the
great development of local activity in large towns
since 1867 would at least strengthen the dominant
German element in those towns, whatever might
happen in the rural districts; particularly as the
THE. GERMANS 29
German language is still obligatory in the whole
army. Instead of this, the exact opposite has taken
place. A signal proof, too, is here afforded of the
weak power of resistance possessed by the German
race in Austria. No wonder that the political fail-
ings which have characterised Austria in the past,
are most strongly typified in the German element
to-day ; for they are the direct inheritors of the
flabby official past. For the mere mechanical
nature of language alone cannot account for such
phenomena. Nations have gradually changed their
tongue, but retained their characteristics. Where
these are strongest the method of expression adapts
itself, as is evidenced by the merging of alien
colonies in the ruling community without compulsory
cause ; thus, instead of endeavouring in the past to
coerce other tongues, the Austrians should have
gained the mastery of the mind, and the language
would have adapted itself.
However much the German may be superior to
the Slave or the Hungarian in culture, there seems to
be little doubt that, aw fond, he is inferior to either
of them as a Zwov vodXrrtkov ; in other words, the
German-Austrian, notwithstanding his many ex-
cellent qualities, lacks the “ grit” of the Prussian.
_ He is lacking in the sense of duty, and the capacity
for conscientious hard work and frugality (Geniig-
samkeit) which the organisation of Prussia has
instilled into the very bones of its inhabitants.*
* In Germany, a young clerk who has 150 marks a month,
30 THE, REALM (OF THE GABSBORGs
With this exception, he is a peu pres what many
Germans would be to-day but for the iron system
that has done them so much good. With all his
devotion to his Sovereign, he does not possess the
silent energy of self-denial (verzichterede Kraft).
Even his devotion goes off in transient combustion
(Strohfewer) when the moment for action arrives.
In the past he was only taught to love and obey;
not to think and to work. ‘Thus he possesses, in
some ways, a wondrous affinity to the Philistine of
the German Fatherland. As a politician, he is
given to argue about facts which he has _ not
thoroughly grasped; he unites self-confidence and
pessimism in a singular degree.
In fact, the so-called idiosyncrasies of the
Austrians, notably those of the Bureaucrat, are
largely typical of the German-Austrian element.
Foremost among these is a strange inaptitude for
hard, crisp thinking, and unreliability in grasping
concrete facts; as well as an utter incapacity to act
promptly upon them. ‘The shade of Metternich,
their last and greatest emasculator, still hovers over
them! It is herein that may be found some ex-
planation of the seeming disproportion between their
intelligence and their waning political influence. It
is want of moral hardness—character, not mere
brain sensibility, that weighs down the scale in
saves fifty. If his salary is raised to 200 marks, he will spend
an extra ten, and save the rest. In Austria, the same man
will at once increase his method of living, on the strength of his
larger salary.
THE GERMANS 31
some phases of race competition for political
supremacy.
a)
In this matter of character, the German-Aus-
trian is inferior not only to the Bohemian Czech,
but also to the Hungarian. He may speak contemp-
tuously of the stuff (das Zeug) of which the other
nationalities of Austria-Hungary are composed. He
does not, however, himself possess either the cohe-
sion, the strong national and race feeling, or the
subordination of his whims and hobbies—in a word,
the community of feeling (Gemeinsinn)—that charac-
terises the Czech and the Hungarian. The Ger-
mans are divided into half a dozen groups,* and are
drifting to pieces ever more and more.
The German newspapers in Austria complain
bitterly of this state of affairs. All weak elements
complain of their weakness. So, too, do the Iins
complain that the Russians are effacing their
nationality, and so did the Irish ever complain,
until they found the means of self-assertion—the
secret of baiting the Saxon.
- These newspapers reiterate the necessity of
furthering the “solidarity of German Austria.” As
if any amount of printer’s ink could accomplish
* Their diminishing numbers in the large towns are divided
among Liberals, Clericals, Christian Socialists (Anti-Semites), and
Conservatives. In the rural districts the great majority of their
number (about nine millions) are almost all strongly Clerical, and
thus politically reactionary.
a2 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
that! No, like the German Philistine womanhood
which made love to the French prisoners in 1870,
the Austrian-Germans lose their heads over the
Czech musicians who come to the Vienna Exhibi-
tion. And the only return they earn is, that the
Czechs tell them plainly: ‘‘ We have beaten you
with whips; wait a bit, we will yet lash you with
scorpions.”
They are in dire need of discipline, the capacity
for sacrifice of time and money, which they see daily
brought to bear against them; of that union and
the aggressive instinct of battle which animate
their opponents as well as the living world at large.
Ah, if they possessed all this, joined with true
political genius, they would know that, at least as
far as the Czechs are concerned, nothing is to be
gained by concession. There has ever been a
chivalrous instinct among the Hungarians; but the
Czechs, like the French and a few others, belong to
a race which accepts every concession as a sign of
weakness, calling forth, not gratitude or content,
but increased demands! Instead of noting all this,
they look to Peace Congresses and cheer the ami-
able platitudes of a Baroness Suttner,* calling
upon them to lay down their arms and welcome the
millennium, whilst the culture of centuries is being
wiped out in some of the fairest lands of Europe.
They have not even enough energy left to grumble
when they hear that Germans have been punished
in Hungary for presuming to drink the health of
* Die Waffen Nieder. Baronin v. Suttner. Dresden: Pierson.
THE. GERMANS 33
the “Emperor of Austria” (the German monarch,
and not the Magyar Kiraly, the king of Hun-
gary).
| VI
No wonder a deep-felt pessimism, a feeling as of
autumnal desolation, has fallen upon the Germans
in Austria. In politics as elsewhere, the biblical
warning anent the “sins of the fathers” is apt to
prove true. And where there is no faith, not even
the grim faith in yourself, there ‘‘cometh night in
which no man can work,” or fight. The Germans
in Austria have no faith in themselves or in their
leaders, of whom the less said the better. The
latter have hitherto been only disintegrating forces.
But even if it were otherwise, and they had bold
and capable leaders, like those of the Hungarians
and the Czechs, it would make little difference.
Where the Hungarians and the Slaves would not
stop at violence and bloodshed if led up to it, the
Germans would in all probability only criticige and
slander those who led them.
It is only here and there that a faint gleam is to
be met with of that poetic ideality common to all
sections of the Teutonic race. It is not among the
_priest-ridden nobility, but rather among the choice
spirits of the hills of Carinthia, Styria and the
Tyrol, or from among the best Austrian townsmen,
among whom German talent and genius” has so often
* Mozart, Haydn, Grillparzer, Rosegger, and many others may
be recalled here.
C
34 THE REALM OF THE FASBSBURGS
winged its way, that this sentiment is to be found.
Among these are men who grieve at the evil days
that have fallen on their race. Something uncon-
sciously tells them that it is not only brawn and
muscle, or the profit and loss account at the banker's,
that marks the history of mankind; that it is after
all the ‘‘idea” that lifts the world off its hinges
(aus den Angeln). Thus it is not that their dividends
only bring them 2? per cent, instead of 5 per cent. ;
it is not that their incomes may be diminished or
their trade narrowed, that fills them with anxiety ; it
is that they have somehow imbibed the traditions
of a great country of which they and their ancestors
formed an integral part for a thousand years: the
community of race, of blood!
Some of these men—and women, too—look wist-
fully over the Austrian borders. They forget the
jealous hatred of olden days—the bloody field of
Sadowa; their thoughts turn towards the silent,
endless fir-trees of Pomerania. There they fancy
they see the national hero of their own race roaming
in solitude, And the poor Austrian-German—poor
in this, though he may have a million at his banker's
—feels sick at heart. Perchance some faint friendly
echo from those very woods may disturb his reveries.
Then his eye moistens, as he exclaims: “ A thou-
sand thanks for thinking of me in the sacred woods
of Varzin.”*
* “Tausend Dank dass Sie in den geheiligten Waldern vou
Varzin an mich gedacht.”
Cie Aa bY ER Sik
THE CZECH
Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself
And falls on the other side
SHAKESPEARE
it
AmonG the various races that go to make up the
Austrian-Hungarian Empire, the Slave holds the first
place in point of number. ‘Thus, if we take the
different groups of the Slavonic race, the Slovaks in
Hungary, the Slovenes of Carniola and Dalmatia,
‘the Croats of Croatia, the Czechs of Bohemia and
Moravia, etc., we find that they form close upon
20,000,000 out of the 41,000,000 of Austria-
Hungary. They form also the most significant ele-
ment among the races of Austria, inasmuch as they
_are credited with aims, the realisation of which would
ultimately mean the complete disruption of Austria-
Hungary as a great Power.
In 1862, the Russian author Turgenieff, writing
to a friend, indulged in a pessimistic review of the
possibilities of the “poor” Slave. And truly, from
36 THE REALM OF PHL HABSCURGS
the point of view of culture, many a long day may
yet pass before the Slavonic race can offer to its
idealistic sons food for optimism. JBefore culture,
however, in the life of all races, comes self-assertion.
This must come first, for it is only on the basis of a
broad expansive instinct that culture has ever been
known to fertilise its healthiest mental produce.
Now the Slavonic race in those parts of Hurope ©
that belong to, or are situated in, the vicinity of
Austria-Hungary, has already had a great past.
The Czechs, also, the most important, and said to
be the most gifted of Slavonic tribes, came to
Bohemia, which was previously inhabited by Celts,
about the year 495 A.D. ‘The king of Bohemia,
Ottokar, whom Rudolf of Habsburg slew in battle,
was a Slavonic monarch. Again, it was among
the Czechs of Moravia and Bohemia that the
Reformation first took root in the person of John
Huss and in the Moravian Brotherhood. In those
days the University of Prague counted 10,000
students. And lastly, it was a learned Czech, John
Amos Comenius, who was the founder of the
modern school system still in vogué in Austria and
part of Germany.
The Thirty Years’ War crushed out Protestantism
in Bohemia, and almost led to the extermination of
the Slavonic race and language. The Protestant
nobility were banished, and their estates handed
over to the Catholic Church. During a century and
a half the language had gradually regained ground,
when, in 1774, an Imperial Decree of the Empress
THE CZECH 37
Maria Theresa, making the use of German obligatory
in the schools, again retarded its progress.
Still through all this time the Slavonic idea lived
on in the heroic traditions of John Huss, Ziska,
the two Procops (Generals of the Hussites) and
others, who, from having been the leaders of a
religious movement, gradually came to be regarded
by the populace as the heroes of the race, and are still __
cherished as such. Here as elsewhere religion has
given way to the feeling of race and nationality as
the motive force. It was about the year 1848 that
the national idea again quickened into more active
life, and, since that date, it has made prodigious
strides. Thus, while in 1866 there were appa-
rently only 4,680,000 Slaves or Czechs, to-day there
are between six and seven millions in Bohemia and
Moravia alone, and a similar increase may be noted
in other parts of the Empire.
II
Whoever knows what Bohemia was thirty years
ago, and compares the racial conditions then with
those of to-day, must wonder at the changes that
have taken place. ‘The Czech has progressed
materially and intellectually in a manner which
cannot fail to strike the impartial observer with
wonder. Up to the end of the fifties, most of
the towns in Bohemia had a decided German
character. The better classes almost exclusiveiy
spoke German; the schools, the academies, the
fe
38 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
theatres, commerce and industry—all: these were
entirely German. The Czech language was only
spoken by the peasant or the villager, or, in the case
of the towns, by the working class and domestics.
How all this has altered!
In the course of thirty years the Czechs have
created a powerful political party, a literature and
a musical school of their own. We have it on the
authority of the: Encyclopedia Britannica, that at
the present day their more prominent names in
philosophy, theology, and politics are too numerous
to be mentioned in detail. In all Slavonic districts
a network of savings banks, public credit institu-
tions to advance money to small traders (Vorschuss
Kassen), co-operative societies and manufactories,
has been spread out far and wide. Slavonic schools
are everywhere largely attended, commerce and ~
industry are flourishing. In short, the Czechs have_
eyerywhere risen to the level of their German
competitors.
eons Erie Exhibition (1891), which by the
short-sighted action of the Austrian-Germans took
an essentially Czech character, was visited by
hundreds of thousands from all parts of Europe,
and was an extraordinary success. At the Musical
Exhibition lately held in Vienna, the Czechs were
represented by a national theatre of their own,
embracing dramatic plays and operas written ex-
clusively by Czech talent, and the success of these
was one of the most striking features of the Exhibi-
tion. The critic of a Berlin newspaper pays them
THE CZECH 39
o
the following tribute (referring to the Comédie
Francaise) : “‘ The French are old-fashioned (veraltet)
and were disappointing. _The Bohemians are full
most sensation. The former were not up to their
great reputation ; the latter, from whom little was
expected, did great things.”
IIT
Such successes, however, are of far lesser interest
to the foreigner than the political circumstances and
the qualities of character that make them possible.
Among the former, the breaking-up of the German-
Austrian ruling element consummated by the ex-
pulsion of Austria from Germany in 1866, occupies
a foremost place. ‘To this breaking-up was due
the grant of autonomy to Hungary, the full intro-
duction of parhamentary government, and the spread
of a national press. That these conditions have
also largely increased the scope of the professional
agitator goes without saying. Added to the above
must be reckoned the strong partisanship of the
Roman Catholic Church, referred to elsewhere.
But the qualities of character that enabled the
Czechs to take advantage of all this are even more
significant. They are active, industrious, and in-~
telligent. As working men, we are assured that
they are generally superior to their German co-
nationalists; they are more diligent, more thrifty,
and take a greater pride and interest in their work,
40 THE REALM OF THE HABSSURGs
whatever it may be. And the same testimony is
given of the Czech peasants. ‘These are imbued
with a strong national and race feeling. They read
the papers, and follow every political development
with avidity. They utilise every occasion to make pro-
paganda for their nationality, and are so success-
ful in this at home that many of the present gene-
ration of Bohemians whose parents were German,
some of them even unacquainted with the Slavonic
tongue, notably working men and mechanics, are
now thorough-going Czechs.
It is in their political talents, foremost among
which are discipline and self-subordination, that the
Czechs stand out in most marked contrast and show
to advantage as compared with the Germans. ‘The
latter hesitate at every step, and are united in
nothing. ‘The former attempt everything, and
combine to gain politically whatever tends to the
furtherance of their interests.* They combine,
besides, in social unity of a kind, for while the various
classes of their competitors are split up, the Czech,
whether he be a noble, a lawyer, a merchant or a
mechanic, seems to stand on one supreme level as a
nationalist before all things. Itis a characteristic as
well as a strong feature of the Slavonic race in
general, this subordination of class distinction to
political aims. In the words of a Russian lady :
* This still remains true in the sense indicated, notwith-
standing the recent split between young and old Czechs. The
latter—among them the aristocracy—hesitate to go on towards
the end ; but the Catholic priest will overcome their scruples,
THE CZECH 41
‘With us, if we find you are poor and stand alone,
that is reason why we should assist and befriend
you, and why we should not cast you off.” This
sort of instinct largely permeates the Czechs (even
as it does the Jews), and enables them to bring all
their might to bear, and to concentrate it between
the ribs of their antagonists with the impetus of a
steel-pointed spear. Herein lies the power of a
young community, which has not had time to dis-
solve into ridiculous social coteries. And in truth
they possess the unscrupulous roughness of a young
community, which, as long as the aim in view is
the supreme one, is not particular about the nicety
of the means. ‘They have not had time to assimilate
the deadly virus of calculated hypocrisy, and to
employ it; but they would not hesitate to commit
deeds of violence, if their leaders were to advise
such and saw a prospect of their being crowned by
success. At the same time, they are naturally gifted
with a goodly portion of cunning,* which they are
not above employing in the furtherance of national
interests. or instance, Dr. Gregr, the leader of
the young Czechs, in a recent speech (November
1891), without stopping to examine what percentage
of the taxes referred to were paid by the Germans
of Bohemia, told his parliamentary opponents: “ it
is we who are entitled to speak, not you, for we
Bohemians contribute more taxes to the revenue
* Vide German proverb:
“Sachs und Bohm
Trau, schau, Wem ?”’
42 LHE REALM OF 7 AE MPaIABSBURC.
than any other part of the monarchy.” — So, again,
in view of the material progress of Bohemia, and
particularly the numerical increase of the Czechs, it
seems strange to read in the words of the same
speaker (December 1891), that Bohemia had been
sucked dry by that vampire Austria. Such, how-
ever, are the political weapons of aggressive nation-
alities generally, and not in Austria-Hungary
alone.
And yet in all probability nobody, who knows
anything about Austria, will take what is said above
in all seriousness. At the same time, it is highly
significant of the aims and self-consciousness (Selbst-
bewusstseix) of the Czechs. Every dispassionate
observer must admit that the Czechs have some
reason to trust to their own strong arm, if we
gainsay their ideas of justice. They possess strong
cohesive power, and their action only shows whither
the instinct of race expansion is really tending. It
is a manifestation of battle in which the strong only
can prevail.
IV
If now we make an attempt to glean what are
the true aims of the Czechs, we meet with an ever-
enlarging circle of demands. ‘The foremost of these
are undoubtedly called forth by the example of
Hungary. The Czech leaders are fully aware of the
material benefits which a national government is
supposed to have brought to the Hungarians, and
THE CZECH 43
their followers are determined to have as much.
The first step, then, must be the crowning of the
Emperor Francis Joseph in Prague, as King of
Bohemia. To justify this demand, the Czechs
point to the fact that Maria Theresa was crowned
Queen of Bohemia in 1743. They feel that their
growing consciousness of nationality warrants their
attainment of this, and this therefore they are
determined to bring forward and push at all risks
and hazards. That is why they now insist that
nohody shall hold an official position, even in the
German districts of Bohemia, unless able to read and
write the Czech language. ‘They are well aware
that with this once granted, they will thrust the
German element still further to the wall. In fact,
they hope to succeed in ultimately destroying the
binding force of German bureaucracy in Vienna
itself. And here they have the Catholic priesthood
on their side, and the greater number of the wealthy
Bohemian and Moravian nobility. Indeed, it is
peculiar to note, that whereas a few of the Bohemian
nobility of Czech descent, such as Count Czernin
near Traiitenaii, prove the exception by siding with
the Germans, the rule is all the other way, even
those of German race being distinctly on the national
side. ‘a
Besides this, the Czechs are aware that their aims
are more or less sympathised in by all the Slaves of
Austria, forming a far greater percentage of the
total population of the monarchy than the Hun-
garians, and this naturally emboldens them,
4A THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
No wonder the Czech leaders adopt an aggressive
tone, and that Herr Gregr now and then comes
within measurable distance of high treason in his
passionate orations.
“The majority of the Czech population of
Bohemia,” he recently said (December 1891), “is
utterly wretched in the midst of this alien Empire,
and the longing to emerge from their Babylonian
captivity has already penetrated into the lowest
strata of the Bohemian people. Could the Bohemians
of long ago have foreseen what was in store for their
descendants, their choice of a king in 1526 would
have been very different. Their nationality is op-
pressed and persecuted in this Austrian State, where
violence und tyranny towards all Slavonic races are
dominant. The bond between the Crown and
Bohemia will be severed if the traditional rights of
Bohemia are much longer neglected, and the future
relations of the two countries will be those of the
conquered towards the conquerors. The Mannlicher
rifle will be of little avail in the hands of a people
without loyalty and without enthusiasm, but instead
of kindling enthusiasm for the State at large by
making the Bohemian people contented, they are
brought to hate—yes, I say, to hate—this same
State. Mark my words, the day of reckoning will
come!” And a shadow thereof seems already dis-
cernible,
THE CZECH 45
V
The Slavonic Croat, for centuries the truest type
of the loyal Austrian soldier, nowadays keeps the
picture of the Russian Czar hanging in his cottage.
The Catholic priest is no longer there to denounce
him and to see that he is shot for high treason, as
might have been the case of old. The Roman
Catholic, too, shares the sympathies of his Slavonic
brethren for those Russians whom, but for other
counterbalancing influences, he would be obliged
to combat as schismatic Greeks.
This Slavonic and Catholic sympathy for Russia
is indeed one of the most extraordinary features
with which we have to deal.
In her politics and national poetry alike, this Russia
possesses something ungraspable and weird, some-
thing recalling the inorganic forces of the earth, the
sky, the ocean—of Nature at large. The distant
roar of some mighty force yet struggling for out-
ward articulation, or at least as yet imperfectly
understood by listeners; yet withal wonderfully
disciplined to suffer while advancing as by some
natural law.
Silent and slow, yet irrevocably fixed on her onward
march, capable as 1¢ 1s of endless self-sacrifice, the
great Slavonic power, wedged in on Austria’s north-
eastern flank, resembles some strange elementary
force in what is still a chaotic form. What is it
that the Bohemian Czech expects from her? Can
it be that the Roman Catholic Church, which is at
46 THE REALM OF THE AABSBURGS
the bottom of so much in Austria-Hungary, has here
even wider aims in view than those to be realised
by Holy Russia? How would it be to unite the
whole of the Slaves of Hastern Europe into one
Roman Catholic republican conglomeration, crushing
dissentient Hungary, and raising the cross of Saint
Peter equally against the autocratic Romanoffs of
Russia and Protestant Germany? Large views allied
to a capacious mouth, wide open, with a glib tongue
playing, have before now done big things in politics,
and never more so than at present. But the Tarpeian
rock was near the Capitol for a thousand years !
Perhaps, however, the Czech may go too far.
The intense hatred of the Slaves for their neighbours
should not blind them to the fact that the battle
of the White Mountain took place but 272 years
ago.
rE Ate Esch IeV.
THE HUNGARIANS
Extra Hungariam non est vita
POPULAR PROVERB
I
THE kingdom of Hungary, comprising Hungary
proper, Transylvania, Croatia and Slavonia, as well
as the port and territory of Fiume, embraces an
area of about 124,400 square miles, and is thus
larger 1» extent than either Austria, Great Britain,
or Italy.
When in the hands of the Romans, Hungary
seems to have been inhabited by people of Celtic
race. In the fifth and sixth centuries, however, the
- immigration of peoples (Vélkerwanderungen) altered
its complexion. So thoroughly, indeed, did the
Goths, Vandals, Huns and other invaders destroy
all remains of previous civilisation, that while in
Germany, France, Belgium, and Hngland many
towns and rivers bear names of Roman origin, not
a single locality in Hungary has a name of Roman
derivation.
For a time settlements of Slavonic races seem
48 THE REAUM OF STH HABSBURG
to have taken the place vacated by the westward-
pushing hordes of Teutons and others; but these, in
their turn, were conquered by the Avares, a warlike
Asiatic race of horsemen. ‘The latter remained
masters of Hungary, and pushed even as far west
as Bavaria, until finally subdued by Charlemagne in
the year 803.
The first authentic mention of the dominant race
in the Hungary of to-day, the Magyars, dates from
the year 836, when the Greek writer, Leo Gram-
maticus, styles them successively by the three
distinct names of ‘“ Hungarians,” “ Turks,’ and
“Huns.” ‘They are then referred to as encamped
on the banks of the Lower Danube. Their origin
and early history are alike shrouded in mystery.
By language they are distinctly related to the
Finns; by race they belong to the 'l'uranian tribes,
of which the Turks are representatives. According
to a Russian chronicle, they were to be met with
as an army of wild horsemen in the neighbour-
hood of Kiev in the year 898. They seem to have
originally come from the plateaux of Asia, and to
have established themselves as conquerors in the
land which the Avares acquired as above mentioned
about the end of the ninth century. |
Originally a nomadic people, it is under their
first Christian king, Stephen, the Patron Saint of
Hungary (997), that they were first organised into
a State, possessing permanent institutions, and
having a settled form of government. St. Stephen
thus may be fairly considered to be the founder of
THE HUNGARIANS 49
the Hungarian kingdom and with his reign does her
history, properly speaking, begin.
Il
The Magyars, although sufficiently numerous for
purposes of conquest, were from the first inadequate
to fill the expansive provinces which their valour
had acquired. Hence foreign elements were intro-
duced, first by compulsion ; later on, as Christianity
spread, by invitation and grants of privileges. This
policy, which has been persevered in for centuries,
is one of the causes of the varied racial character of
Hungary as we know it.
For ages the history of Hungary is a bare record
of heroic struggle with foreign invasion; notably
that of the Mongolians, who, in the thirteenth
century, spread devastation and ruin far and
wide. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
the country existed as an independent elective
- monarchy, and under its various dynasties attained
a high degree of power and prosperity. Its progress,
~ however, received a sudden check in the year 1526,
at the battle of Mohacs, when the Turkish Sultan,
Suleiman the Magnificent, completely annihilated
- the Hungarian forces. A partition of the country
between the victorious Turks and the Austrians
followed this disaster, the principality of Transyl-
vania alone being able to retain its independence
under elective native dynasties. Since then till now
the fortunes of Hungary have been linked with
D
50 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
those of the House of Habsburg, the Sovereigns of
which were elected kings of that portion of Hungary
which was not held by the Turks.
In 1686, Buda, the ancient capital of Hungary,
was wrested from the Infidel, and by the end of the
seventeenth century her territory was entirely and
finally freed from Turkish dominion.
It was in 1687 that the House of Habsburg
succeeded to the throne of Hungary by the right of
dynastic inheritance. But even in the days of
Habsburg omnipotence the Magyars never really
lost sight of their claim to national autonomy ; for,
in literal harmony with the words of an Austrian
law of 1790, Hungaria cwm partibus adnexis est
regnum liberum et independans, we find that which
was rudely abolished in 1849 expressly re-estab-
lished for ever in 1867.
ia!
In former days, when the Poles were compli-
mented on being the ‘“‘ French of the North,” the
Hungarians used to be styled the ‘‘ English of the
Kast.” And there are points of affinity enough
between the history of the two countries to warrant
more than a passing reference to the comparison.
No other country* except England can show such
an unbroken continuity of constitutional develop-
* See a lecture delivered by Professor Franz. v. Pulzsky in
London, entitled “ National Life and Thought.”” Fisher Unwin.
1891,
THE HUNGARIANS 51
ment. In no other country except England has a
mixed form of government continually prevailed in
which the balance of the respective powers of the
monarchic, the aristocratic, and the democratic
elements—however much it may have fluctuated—
has never been irretrievably destroyed.
In England, from the days of Queen Elizabeth,
when the country definitively accepted Protestant
supremacy, the cause of national independence was
always intimately allied to that of liberty. Likewise
was it in the case of Hungary. Amid the troubles
of foreign invasion, the Reformation spread rapidly
over the whole country; imbued all classes of the
population, and gave the people a new interest in
religion, in education, and in literature. It was the
means of keeping alive their national aspirations,
the outcome of the traditions of the past, and
leavening these with dreams of moral and material
progress and spiritual liberty. The spirit of Pro-
testantism is the source of the magnetic power
' which is enabling Hungary to realise her national
dreams. For, at the present time, hemmed in by
Catholicism on all sides, the intellectual backbone
of the country—the small nobility—is Protestant,
and that of a Calvinistic type. The Protestant
_ population of Hungary numbers 3,174,000.
But while in these respects many parallels
suggest themselves between the development of
Hungary and England, in point of racial tempera-
ment there is a strong affinity between the Turanian
Magyar and the Celtic Irish. Both possess the
52 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
same combination of wild animal spirit, chivalrous
courage allied to a tinge of sadness, as is evidenced
by their national songs, Both are noted for the same
qualities—ardent patriotism, imaginative optimism,
and extravagance. The Saxon has long enjoyed a
laugh over innumerable funny anecdotes of the one
and the other. But in the case of the Hungarians,
the laugh has lately been largely on their own side.
There is a story told of a Hungarian going into a
shop to buy a geographical globe. He tries to find
Hungary on it, and when the tiny spot is pointed
out to him, exclaims in disgust: ‘‘ Nonsense; what
IT want is a globe of Hungary!” *
This little story possesses significance inasmuch
as it reflects two leading features of the Magyar
character: patriotism and its excess, an exag-
gerated idea of the importance of his own countvry,
national conceit. Here again is a Celtic quality
which we find more fully represented in the French
race. ‘This exaggerated notion of theirs may pos-
sibly harbour disappointments for the Hungarians
in the future; but their energetic patriotism has
already produced astonishing results. We need not
refer to the uprising of Hungary in 1848, when
her heroism excited the admiration of the civilised
world. It is enough to note that the kingdom of
Hungary is the part of the Realm of the Habsburgs
which for years past has attracted most public at-
tention, and that deservedly. For if the Germans
* “ Nicht doch, will ich haben Globus von Ungarn.’
THESHUNGARIANS 53
of Austria may be said to typify the past, the Slaves
a possible future, the Hungarians are, politically and
economically at least, eminently characteristic of the
present day.
IV
We have noted elsewhere the part which tho
Germans played in the making of Hungary. The
Magyars are now the ruling race, and although they
only form at the very utmost forty-eight per cent.*
of the seventeen million inhabitants of the kingdom
of Hungary and its appendages, their will is supreme,
and their energy in national, political, and economical
matters something astonishing. What makes this
perhaps all the more surprising is, that the Magyar
is said to be deficient in many qualities to which we
are accustomed to look as guarantees of worldly
success in every-day life ; notably, thrift, industry, so-
called conscientious right-mindedness, with an added
sprinkling of canting hypocrisy. The lack of the
latter explains why the frankly aggressive egotism
occasionally offends sensitive outsiders. The Magyar
is wanting here all along the line. He is pleasure-
loving ; the oppressive heat in the summer makes
him disinclined for persistent effort, and somewhat
of a spendthrift. He has even been typified as a
man holding a bottle of champagne in one hand,
* According to the Almanach de Gotha (1892), only about six
millions in the whole of the Hungarian monarchy speak the
Magyar tongue.
54 THE READM OF THE PABSECKG>
and a promissory note in the other. And yet he
has a record of national self-assertion, and, within
the brief space of one generation, has achieved an
opening up of the material resources of the country
which may well call forth both envy and admiration.
The world has been accustomed to marvel at the
growth of trans-oceanic communities. Hungary,
however, can show an almost equally remarkable
spectacle. Here is a great country of the past, in
which national independence had been forfeited two
hundred and fifty years prior to the collapse of
Poland, and which continued to exist at one time as
a Turkish province, at another as a portion of
Austria, but which suddenly becomes endowed with
new life, makes peace on equal terms with its
conqueror, and rises up again a new nation. In the
course of a short spaco of twenty-five years, this
people succeeds in creating commerce and manu-
facture, a network of railways, a thorcugh system of
public education, a national school of literature,
science, journalism,* drama,t painting and music.
These, and many other things besides, have the
Hungarians succeeded in bringing to life, mainly by
the force of national enthusiasm. Other factors as
well have, of course, been at work. In the first
place, the bounteous hand of Nature herself has
* They had almost to create a language of journalism for
themselves.
+ Budapesth possesses four theatres in which the Hungarian
language is used, against two in which the performances are in
German.
THE HUNGARIANS ss
given her in the,Danube a river similar to what
the Mississippi is to North America. Then, again,
she is possessed of a soil, the fertility of which
qualifies her to be the granary of Hurope; though
against this must be placed the excess of heat, and
consequently recurring disastrous droughts and
floods.
In the second category of causes of Hungary’s
flourishing state (Zmporbltihen) must be placed the
removal of the deadening hand of Austria. The
protective commercial policy of Austria, notably
that of Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II.,
practically cut Hungary off from the rest of the
world, and made her economical development
‘impossible, These impediments, however, are now
removed; and the new commercial treaty of
Austria with Germany must result in a further
material increase of prosperity for Hungary, par-
ticularly when the canal between the Danube and
the Oder and Elbe is made complete, and Hun-
garian grain can find its way to the sandy north at
nominal freights. ‘This and many other move-
ments inevitably point to the transferment of
Austria's centre of gravity to Budapesth. But more
than any treaties, the qualities of the Hungarians
themselves are likely to ensure this consummation.
And it is of these that we wish to treat, for, beside
his defects, the Magyar possesses some very strong
qualities, We need only take a glance at Buda-
pesth, the beautiful capital, to recognise this; for,
if the Hungarian is, as stated, averse to work, he
56 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
must at least possess the talent to make others
work for him, this greatest necessary gift of our
time, to have achieved such a splendid result
in so short a space. To this outward tangible
result must be added one of still greater signifi-
cance—namely, the enthusiasm which the Magyar
nationality seems able to inspire in others. The
German and the Jew gladly exchange their nation-
ality for that of the Magyar, and in 1848 the Jews
were devoted adherents of the cause of Hungary, as
they have since remained.
Vv
What strikes us, perhaps, most forcibly in Hun-
gary, is the union of all classes alike in action and
striving in the pursuit of common aims. While in
the past, when the Germans were the ruling
element, there was continual bickering and jealousy
between the town population, the peasantry, and
the landed nobility (in France the convulsion of the
Revolution ended by the extirpation of the old
French nobility), in Hungary, peasant, townsman,
and Hungarian magnate are all at this day
harmoniously and enthusiastically allied in the fur-
therance of the same national endeavours. If any
qualification is necessary to this, it 1s at most as to
“how far” they wish to go, not a question of
difference of principle or antagonism of class
interests. Most interesting to us in England is
this at the present time, when our democracy is
more or Jess indifferent to the possession of India,
THE HUNGARIANS 57
which it looks upon at most as a gigantic institu-
tion of out-door relief for the sons of the upper
classes.
To the attainment of this strong unity of pur-
pose, the Hungarian aristocracy contributed their
share in a manner which will make their high-
minded patriotism stand out for all time as a
subject for admiration. ‘The share of the Huvga-
rian aristocracy in the national uprising of 1848-9,
and in its disastrous results—ruin and death by
bullet or the common hangman—these are matter of
history. Less generally appreciated, however, are
the results of this community of all classes in the
shambles and on the scaffold; for the memory of it
undoubtedly acts as a strong bond of union be-
tween them.
Down to the year 1848 the nobility of Hungary
enjoyed the same privileges which they possessed in
the Middle Ages. It is a significant feature in the
history of Hungary, however, that while the hard
feudal condition of life which existed elsewhere in
-Kurope never held sway in Hungary, the common
man always had a higher status than elsewhere,
although up to our time the peasant in Hungary
has remained stationary in the same rank which
‘he oceupied in the past.
In 1848 the Hungarian nobility,“ under the
* The term of: nobility includes here the class which we in
England call landed gentry. The only privilege which the
nobility retained almost unchanged was the right of the
‘‘Magnates” to form the Upper House—the “Table of the
Magnates.”’ ;
58 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
inspiration of Count Szechenyi, Franz Deak,
Koloman Tisza (to-day ex-Minister) and others,
came to the conclusion that their ancient class
privileges only meant stagnation for the country at
large, and made all ideas of progress illusory.
They were eager to create and foster enthusiasm
among the people for the broader idea of a national
existence, and, rising above class selfishness, they
led the way by abolishing their own privileges.
And in acting thus, in yielding up _ their
enormous privileges of their own accord, without
pressure from below and in spite of opposition
from above, the Hungarian nobility, strange as it
may appear, so strengthened their social and
political position in a moral sense, that to-day, merely
by the force of tradition, it has remained almost the
same as it was formerly by force of law. The
nobility is now essentially what it ever was, the
main constituent part of the public and official life
of the country.”
On the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary
of the coronation of the Emperor of Austria, the
Vienna New Press (5th May 1892) paid the Hun-
garian nobility the following tribute :
‘“‘ An aristocracy which is in no need of material
aid, possessed of a spirit of independence, and
educated in a broad conception of national rights,
never placed itself in opposition to the people, nor
* Der Adelin Ungarn. Johann von Asboth.
THE HUNGARIANS 59
nurtured any class hatred, but always stood in the
full vitality of the present.”
Again, unlike the nobility of Germany, all the poli-
tical talent of the Hungarian nobility is enlisted on
the side of the people; they do not form a coterie
among themselves, but belong promiscuously to
every party.
The aristocracy of Hungary offers the most
pregnant contrast to the Sarmatian nobility of
Poland, which by its impoverishment and gradual
extinction is now paying for the sins that brought
about the ruin of that once powerful kingdom. No
amount of belated heroism in the field could in
truth suffice to atone for the class selfishness and
political incapacity of the aristocracy which were so
conspicuous in Poland’s miserable history.
In taking note of the political virtue of the
modern Hungarians, it is well to bear in mind
that the Hungarian nobility has ever been distin-
guished by the possession of marked political
talent. ‘Thus, as early as the year 1223, within
three years of the granting of our Magna Charta,
we find them originating in the Golden Bull a
similar charter to that which safeguarded the
liberty of the subject in England—a constitutional
guarantee exacted from King Anareas the Third.
Its main provisions concerned the liberty of the
people: the inviolability of property, and the right
of the subject to petition the Sovereign for redress
of wrongs. Other provisions applied to the right
of the nation to oppose the wishes of the monarch,
60 THE REALM (OF THE HABSBURGS
should these be in controversion to the law of the ©
constitution. Hven now the king of Hungary, in
the person of Francis Joseph, takes his oath of
fidelity to the Golden Bull of 1223. And, indeed,
as early as the year 1505, we find the aristocracy
insisting on the responsibility of Ministers, which is
to-day common to all constitutional countries.
Bearing all this in mind, then, it is not surprising
that those who know best have a very high opinion
of the political talents of the Hungarians, and of
the possibilities which the future may have in store
for them.
Atal
It seems to us to be a good augury for the political
future of the Hungarians, that, although modern par-
liamentary institutions came suddenly upon them,
they have shown strong signs of understanding how
to work them, instead of being worked by them.
The fact of the matter is, that this people, in
pursuance of their national aims, combine so-called
liberalism with a deal of the method of paternal
government, And the results have exceeded every
expectation in ctimulating activity and production
in every conceivable direction. ‘They already show
us what a numerically small practical people, who
pull in one direction, can achieve in material and
political progress.
The Dual Monarchy had hardly been established
on its present basis in 1867, when the Hungarians
Tere EUNGAKIANS 61
gave proof that they were well able to take care of
their interests in more ways than one.
The Government wanted money. ‘The Austrian-
Hungarian Empire had none. Germany was not
likely to respond very liberally. Wnhat was to be
done? Why, work on public opinion elsewhere. Now
this occurred at the time when the French were very
tired of American (read Mexican) investments. For-
tunately, the construction of the Suez Canal turned
the eyes of the French investing public eastward !
Hungary is also in the Hast. The Suez Canal will
bring figurative grist to the mills of Hungary!
“Thus argued the wily Hungarians; and the way
they succeeded in convincing the I'rench investor of
this reflects the highest possible credit on them, and
adds one more cogent reason for believing in their
political future.
The leading organs of the Paris press were
“ given to understand,” that in proportion to their
influence and circulation a certain percentage of the
Royal Hungarian Loan would be placed at their
disposal. Thus began one of the most amusing
episodes of baiting the many-headed beast that the
record of publicity can show. The French public
were suddenly “ encouraged” to take an abnormal
interest in Hungary, a country the resources, even
the geographical position, of which the average
Frenchman was probably less acquainted with than
with those of Cochin China! The Figaro brought
a series of highly coloured descriptions of the social
aspect—the charm of Hungarian life. The serious
62 LTHE-REATLW-OF THE HABSBURG.
Temps followed suit with a compilation of rose-tinted
statistics, showing the wonderful economic possibi-
lities of the Magyar kingdom, designed, as if by
Providence, as the most suitable repository for the
hard-earned savings of Jacques Bonhomme and
Joseph Prudhomme. Thus were the changes dexte-
rously rung throughout the gamut. And the result
was a most successful floating of the Hungarian loan
on the Paris money market !
No doubt it was only fear of Russia that pre-
vented Austria from joining in the war of 1870,
and equally sure is it, that had she done so the
national bankruptcy of Hungary would have fol-
lowed as a matter of course, and added the
Hungarian millions to those of Panama. Such con-
siderations, however, are in no way calculated to
lessen our admiration of Hungarian astuteness in
this business.
aL
A far more difficult task awaited the leading
minds of Hungary in the matter of parliamentary
government,
From having formed part of the most grand-
motherly State in Europe, the Hungarians suddeniy
found themselves in possession of an amount of
liberty almost boraering on license. They now
possess complete freedom of the press, freedom in
all forras of co-operative association, political meet-
ing and individual enterprise, and an extension of
BES HUNGARIANS 63
the franchise tantamount to manhood suffrage.
Surely this is liberty enough to favour the growth
of the toadstool of selfishness, of vanity and conceit ;
liberty enough to encourage any amount of shrieking
for “rights ” and silencing every call for self-deny-
ing duty! And this with a frontier exposed on
every side! As if, too, so much liberty were not in
itself sufficient to tax their best energies, they have
from the first had a hidden relentless foe in the
priesthood of Rome. Be this as it may, however,
they still look as if they could ride safely at anchor
amid it all—a splendid testimony surely to their
political ability. .
At the same time, it must be borne in mind that
the Hungarians started with many practical advan-
tages on their side. One of these—the community
of feeling between all classes—we have already de-
scribed.
Besides that, however, the very blank of their
past has been of great moral advantage to them.
Few crying injustices, few striking anomalies, few
vested interests, either in land, in drink, or in law,
exist ; no class privileges have survived the sweep-
ing innovations of the Revolution of 1348. Thus
Hungarian legislators could come before the country
with clean hands; equality for all before the law
was not a phrase, but a reality. Instead of a
barren policy of negation, instead of a_ half-
hearted righting of wrongs, they could make a fair
start with measures for the benefit of the community
at large. Foremost among these came measures for
64 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
a beneficial subdivision of the land wherever .
practicable ; energetic taxation of land, which had
formerly been totally exempt from every contribu-
tion ; protection against commercial fraud, bogus
companies, etc. Measures, too, were passed against
every form of modern filth and license, such as the
spread of drunkenness, betting and adulteration,
etc. etc,
In the attainment of these ends there was no
social servility to conquer; the dread word “ com-:
petition” had not yet had sufficient play to
accentuate unduly the spirit of abject prostration of
the poor before the rich. Nor also had privilege
and beggary, pauperism and charity, time to sap the
independence of character of large classes of the
community.
VIII
With these positive and negative advantages in
hand, the Hungarians proceeded to work out
parliamentary government. Being a young country,
the beginning was naturally characterised by the
boisterous roughness of youth. Thus we read that
the Hungarian elections are still attended with
brutal savagery—that people on such occasions are
killed and wounded, in out-of-the-way places.
We must not, however, forget that when England
was fighting the world and building up the Colonial
Empire which belts the globe, our parliamentary
elections produced periodical crops of broken pates
——
THE HUNGARIANS 65
and damaged limbs all over the country. Bearing
this in mind, we must not be too hard on
Hungarian electoral enthusiasm. It will be for the
future to prove whether a few broken heads or a
meek electorate, pledging its candidates to female
suffrage, is the healthier omen. ,
In the meantime, it is undoubtedly a good sign
of the political earnestness of a country, when
peasants are said to travel thirty miles to record
their votes. This surely is, from a parliamentary
point of view, a more promising outlook for a
backward country than are the complaints we read
of elsewhere, particularly in Germany, regarding the
apathy of the electorate,
The Hungarian electors require educating before
they become capable of insisting on pledges and able
to choose the mealy-mouthed huckster to redeem
them. As yet their only ken is the capability of
discerning broader aims of patriotism.
It is within the walls of parliament itself, however,
that the Hungarians appear to the greatest advan-
tage. There they. show qualities, notably common
sense, which prove them to be born parliamentarians
in the best sense of the term.
They have little belief in empty words. Thus,
some years ago, when a member exclaimed, ‘ Yes,
IT am a Republican,” the whole assembly burst out
laughing. By nature passionate and impulsive,
they have introduced an honest business-like sobriety
into their language, which is as striking as it is
impressive. Nor have they patience with fads,
1D)
66 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
crotchets, and empty party cries. They would even
scorn to pledge themselves to vote in accordance
with such. It is therefore not surprising that they
do not for a moment take the parliamentarian
windbag at his own valuation. He is laughed at or
sat upon, and sometimes exploded altogether.
Should a parliamentarian, however, add hypocrisy
to his ‘‘ windiness,” it becomes a serious matter.
The cant of ‘‘conscientious scruples,” the ‘‘all-
importance of principle,” and the “insignificance ”
of the speaker’s personality, being “open to con-
viction,” but only after “careful weighing of
evidence,”—all this, instead of exciting admiration,
provokes deadly animosity. ‘‘ How are we to hold
up our heads,” they say, ‘‘and face our national
foes in the hour of danger, if we allow unscrupulous
politicians of this stamp tc demoralise us with their
hypocrisy?” Tor, strange to say, the Hungarians
are afraid of becoming infected by the devilry of
falsehood. This hot-blooded but primitive people
on such occasions lose all control of themselves.
They do not babble about fighting elections with a
glib tongue, but they endeavour to provoke the
hypocrite to deadly combat with sword or pistol,
and if possible to send him into everlasting retire-
ment. Hungary, in her precarious condition, cannot
aford to allow such noxious weeds to flourish.
The Hungarians may be primitive in the method
adopted for their eradication, but there can be no
doubt as to the soundness of the principle involved.
THE HUNGARIANS 67
IX
The power of wealth and patronage and so-called
social influences go for very little in parliamentary
life in Hungary. Membership is not a stepping-
stone to social recognition: men of the stamp that
are elected in Hungary possess social standing which
satisfies them without it. There is a tacit Free-
masonry among Hungarian members, inasmuch as
from the Ministers down to the most insignificant
member of the House they address each other in the
familiar “thou”; but this is merely a conventional
form which enhances mutual good-feeling, and
never leads to undue familiarity, for the educated
Hungarian is a gentleman by instinct. The Hun-
garian member of parliament, moreover, always
retains his independence, because of his not being
an office-seeker or ambitious of titular distinction.
It is a strange feature of parliamentary life in
Hungary that there is no opposition which endea-
yours to turn out the Government and take its
place. At least such a thing as a change of
Government, in the sense in which we understand
it, has not taken place since Hungary acquired an
independent legislature. Hence there exists no
motive for one party to continually question the
purity of conduct and principle of their opponents.
Hence too they have not yet come to practise a policy
of “office at any price.” An unpopular personage
retires and another takes his place, that is all; for
the main body have the same aim—the good of their
68 THE REALM OF ‘THE HABSBURGS
country. The political huckster is as yet an
unknown feature; the rich man, who subscribes
funds to help to turn out a party and earn a
trumpery title in exchange, has hitherto not shown
himself.
The capitalist is, it is quite true, utilised—
nowhere is he ‘‘ worked” more effectually; but
neither the Government nor the members in general
allow themselves to be swayed by him. Were
the wealthy landowner to ask compensation for
public improvements which increase the value of
his property, he would be ridiculed. As for the
sinecurist, the brazen parliamentary beggar, the
cunning little self-seeker, the small-brained scion
of the aristocracy—these have in parliamentary
Hungary but little scope, and at most an uncertain,
obscure position. ‘‘ Brandy ” and the liquor interest
generally have little influence there.
The Hungarians have been on the look-out for
strong, honest men to do their work, and in
their efforts to find such they have been fairly
successful. The array of eminent names the
Hungarian parliament can show during the last
twenty-five years would do honour to the oldest
established national House of Representatives.
There is Koloman Szell, who was Minister of
I’inance at the same age as Pitt. There is Count
Julius Szapary, who has been Minister of Finance,
and is now Prime Minister, There is Koloman
Tisza, one of the strong men of Hungary, who for
ten years was an all-powerful Prime Minister,
THE HUNGARIANS 69
There is Count Alexander Carolyi, a man_ of
princely fortune and estate, who, disdaining to take
his seat in the Upper House, has entered the arena
where no privilege of birth can assist him. And
lastly, there is the recently deceased Gabriel von
Baross. Such are a few of the men who have done
good parliamentary work in Hungary. And they
have had their hands full!
x
One of the most striking features of Hungarian
legislation has been that connected with industry,
commerce, and the opening up of railroads, etc.
And here, somehow, this passionate, excitable
Asiatic race has got hold of the sober utilitarian
watchword of our time—‘ competition.” The
Magyars are determined ‘‘to compete” all along
the line. And their efforts in this direction prove
them to be no unworthy rivals, much less servile
imitators, of more phlegmatic races. Nay, on the
contrary, they even excel among their competitors.
From being shut out from the markets of the
world, they have come to compete successfully with
the world at large. How they managed to do this
is, indeed, an instructive page in contemporary
history. 7
In the first place, the Magyars, hand in hand
with the Jewish element in their midst, are an
eminently practical people. ‘They instinctively
discovered for themselves the cardinal truth, which
70 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
was only revealed to us by Professor Bryce, that
‘nothing is more pernicious in politics than abstract
doctrines.”
They have not been slow to rid themselves of
theories, and to face the concrete fact that even
without powder and shot there is war, unrelenting
war, ever going on in the world. At the present
day it is the war of freights, tariffs, and prices.
And the Hungarians are determined to have their
fair share of the spoil in this warfare, though it be
only in the economic form of florins and kreuzers.
They set to work accordingly to find a man who
could assist them in this; and they found him in
the late Minister of Commerce, Gabriel von Baross,
the typical Hungarian national politician. Born
in the momentous year 1848, of humble parentage,
Baross studied law and drifted into journalism.
Hlected for parliament, he became Secretary of State at
the age of thirty-five, and at thirty-eight full Minister.
Of singular force of character, arbitrary or pliant: as
circumstances dictated, he was a man of boundless
resource and herculean powers for work. Hxacting
towards himself, never taking an hour’s holiday,
he demanded the same of his subordinates. He
found the railway system of Hungary in hopeless
disorder, and set to work to put it right. No
vested interests were allowed to stand in the way of
what he recognised to be an essential condition of
national growth and prosperity. He discerned that
it was of the first importance to develop the means
of communication of the country, in order that the
THE HUNGARIANS 71
people might be able to wage the economic warfare,
advantageously “fighting light.” He was intimately
acquainted with railway matters in other countries,
and had heard that the exorbitant freights of
English railway companies were choking the agri-
cultural produce markets in England to such an
extent that foreign fruit was being imported,
whilst the home article was actually rotting in the
orchards which produced it. J urther, he had
heard that the English passenger world is still pay-
ing interest on the 460,000,000 given by the
railway companies as compensation to English land-
owners for trespassing on their property and
increasing its value, and that the English parcel post,
and even the letter post in some places, has to be
served by mail-coaches because the railway monopo-
lists will not carry them at reasonable rates.
Such were some of the abuses from which Baross
determined that Hungary should be spared; and
the result has been the so-called Zone tariff,* and
the cheapening of freights to such an extent that
Hungary, which twenty-five years ago could only
show 1400 miles of railway, to-day possesses 7000
miles (4000 belonging to the State) as well as the
cheapest railway rates in Hurope.
But railway reforms by no means exhausted the
energies of G. von Baross. He was an enthusiastic
furtherer of home production. To him also are, in
* See “Special Inquiry into the Zone Railway System.”
Glasgow: Hedderwick & Sons. 1890.
72 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
a measure, due the introduction of the Postal
Savings Banks, the recent treaties of commerce, as
well as a deal of the social legislation of Hungary.
In short, Baross may be said to have literally
consumed himself in the service of his country.
Although only forty-four years of age when he died
last May, his name had attained eminence even
outside Hungary. ‘The occasion of his death was
one of national mourning throughout the country,
the Emperor of Austria (king of Hungary) himself
taking the lead in the expression of his deep
sympathy.
XI
Opinions are somewhat divided as to the correct
value of the reformatory labours of Gabriel von
Baross. The more so, as his revolutionary reforms,
and those of his immediate predecessors, could never
have been carried through except at the price of
great sacrifices from many legitimate vested interests.
Jn his enthusiastic cheapening of freights, in his
encouragement and assistance of native industries, he
went a long way on the road toward State Socialism.
The results, however, cannot be said as yet to have
come up to expectations. Many are of opinion
that they have only served to bring into relief the
‘“‘over-haste” and ‘“‘ unripeness,” the want of per-
sistent effort, which still largely characterises
Hungary, intellectually * and economically.
* The number of those who cannot read and write in Hungary
is larger than in any other part of the Dnal Monarchy.
THE HUNGARIANS re
Be this as it may, the importance of Herr von
Baross to us is, that he concentrated and typified in
his person the virtues and aspirations of the latter-
day Hungarians: burning patriotism, restless energy,
free from all mean personal self-seeking egotism ;
self-denial and self-sacrifice, devoted to the further-
ance of a noble object. :
A most significant and hopeful feature to us is
the enthusiasm which a bit of genuine “ character ”
seems able to call forth in Hungary. Even the
town corporations of Croatia—a country which stands
in about the same relation to Hungary as Ireland
does to England—joined in the mourning for the
death of Baross. This man had been neither a
popularity hunting demagogue, nor one whom
vanity, even when ministered to by royalty itself,
moved one hair’s-breadth from pursuing what he
believed to be the sum of his life’s work. Strength
of character and zeal for the material progress of
his country distinguished him in the eyes of his
fellows, and in our opinion the impulse his example
has furnished to his countrymen will beneficially
outweigh any of the shortcomings or fallacies
inherent in his feverish legislative activity. Of one
thing there can be no doubt, that if Hungary had
been forced to depend on the class of politicians
who only take the initiative in more advanced com-
munities, where the intolerable pressure of public
opinion forces them to act, she would not hold the
political position or enjoy the economic prospects
she has. These possible ‘‘ prospects” stamp Hun-
74 THE REALM OF THE HABSBSURGS
gary as an Eldorado for the adventurous agricultural
emigrant with capital. But he must be ready to
work, as he is forced to work in America and the
British colonies. Unfortunately, there is something
in the very air and climate of Hungary which,
whilst it lends to life the charm of floating on a
sunbeam, soon subjects the hardiest foreigner to the
weird intoxicating influence of the passionate and
yet dreamy, work-killing sounds of the Czardas. _
Who shall say that the future of this people
will not manifest what the present seems to fore-
shadow ? Much may be expected of this mysterious,
and still almost unknown, half-Asiatic race. It
unites with many splendid qualities a keen utilitarian
level-headedness, an eagerness to go ahead—to
overcome every obstacle to its self-assertiveness.
Yet there is a dread shadow cast upon its future, for
a mighty race looms amid the gloom of Hungary’s
snow-tipped hills. Of this the Hungarians can
never lose sight, nor are they likely to forget soon
the mournful day of Vilagos.*
* Tdentified with the collapse of the national rising of 1849,
At Vilagos, the Hungarian army under Gorgei surrendered to the
Russians, 13th August 1840.
77
"on
Yr
CHAPTER” V
THE JEW
Naturam expellas furca ; tamen usque recurret
HORACE
1
Russia, Germany and Austria, when they dismem-
bered Poland and divided it anong themselves, took
over the nucleus of its present large Jewish popula-
tion. For Poland had long been the favourite
resting-place of the Semitic race in Europe, driven
thither from the West by medizval persecutions in
Germany, France, and elsewhere.
There would, indeed, seem to be a touch of the
Nemesis of history in the fact that nowadays the
Jews threaten to compete for intellectual and ma-
terial supremacy in Russia, in Germany, as well
as in Austria,
Under the early Romanoffs, the Jews were for-
bidden to reside in Russia. ‘To-day the Polish Jews
of Russia have spread far and wide through the
dominions of the Czar, and are said to number
from four to six millions of souls.
74 le REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
cary f , :
2 No enormous has been the increase in the Jewish
vace in Europe during the present century, that
Germany alone possesses a greater number of Jews
than did the kingdom of Poland at the time of its
first partition;* at which time Poland contained
more Jews than the rest of Europe combined.
But Austria-Hungary is the country in which,
next to Russia, the heritage of Poland has resulted
in the greatest increase in the Jewish population.
When the Emperor Francis the First arrived at
Lemberg, the capital of Austrian Poland, for the first
time, he was so struck by the number of Jews that
he called out to his suite: ‘‘ Now I know why I
hold the title of ‘King of Jerusalem’”” t And
verily in modern times there is no country in the
world where the Jews form so influential a body as
in Austria-Hungary. As the life of the country
concentrates itself more and more in the great
towns, the Teuton, the Slave, and the Hungarian
find a tougher competitor in the Israelite.
It was only as recently as 1867 that they first
obtained equal political rights; and yet already it
is impossible to treat of the country ethnologically,
psychologically, or economically without taking into
account the Jewish elements to be found there.
Their astonishing increase in numbers, as also in
* The official census of Poland and Lithuania of 1772 gives the
total Jewish population at 308,500 souls. Germany to-day has
600,000 Jews.
+ The Emperor of Austria holds, among his other titles, that of
“ King of Jerusalem.”
THE ¥EW 77
influence and wealth, throws the strongest light on
the political and intellectual weakness, or rather
want of resisting power, on the part of the Austrians,
be they considered as a race or as a conglomeration
of races. The power of the Jews in Austria affords
us, by reason of the antagonism it encounters every-
where, an exact scale by which to measure the
inertia of the Austrian in competing with them in
the battle of life of the nineteenth century.
From an economic point of view, too, the Jew is
the most significant factor in Austria-Hungary ; for
while other race struggles may affect Austria-Hun-
gary's political future, the Jewish element is threat-
ening in course of time to transform her both
economically and socially
The following figures will give some idea of the
proportion and growth of the Jewish population of
Austria-Hungary.
According to the census of 1880,* among a
total population of 37,786,346, Austria-Hungary
counted 1,643,708 Jews,f of which 641,000 fall to
Hungary alone. One hundred thousand of these
latter belong to the capital, Budapesth; forming
one-fifth of its total inhabitants.{ But these figures
* The census of 1890 for Hungary is not yet accessible.
+ The full significance of these figures will be best understood
when we bear in mind that in 1848-49 there were, according to
the Almanach de Gotha, only 746,891 Jews in the whole country.
In 1864 this number had risen to 1,121,000 (683,000 in Austria,
428,000 in Translcithania, Hungary).
{ Since the Hungarian Edict of Tolerance of the Jews of 1872
the Jews have swarmed to Budapesth. In the year 1842 there
78 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
by no means exhaust the presence of the Jewish
race in Hungary. For it is a well-known fact,
that about 25 per cent. of the Jews in Hungary
have gradually become Hungarians, and adopted
names of Magyar character: these do not figure in
the statistical columns as Jews at all. The fact of
the Hungarians being themselves of Asiatic origin
and also largely of the Protestant faith, is said to
have facilitated this process, which elsewhere the
Catholic Church does all in its power to prevent.
That this increase of the Jews in Hungary is
evidently destined to become still greater, is proved
by the statistics of births and deaths. Whereas in
the years 1866—70 the average surplus of births
over deaths in Hungary was 17 per cent., among
the Jews it amounted to 49°30. ‘There is no reascn
to suppose that this proportion has materially
altered since.
according to the census of Austria proper of
1890, out of a population of 23,895,000, there were
1,143,000 Jews. There are upwards of thirty
synagogues in Prague alone.
While in the year 1857 there were only thirty-
two Jews for every thousand inhabitants of Vienna,
in the year 1890 this proportion had risen to one
hundred and twenty-two. According to the census
of the latter year there were 118,495 Jews in Vienna
out of 1,214,363 inhabitants. In the. same year
were only 7586 Jews living in Pesth, which was then distinct
from Buda, the other half of the town on the opposite bank of
the Danube.
THE FEW 79
fifty-five Catholics went over to Judaism in Vienna!
In one district of the city alone (Leopoldstadt) there
are at present 49,098 Jews against 104,934 Roman
Catholics: nearly as many as in the whole of Great
Britain, Close upon five hundred entries in the
Vienna Postal Directory answer alone to the name
of Kohn. ‘These figures, taking an average of five
to represent a family, would mean that there are
two thousand five hundred Jews in Vienna bearing
the name of Koln.
Kyven these imposing statistics, however, do not,
nor would the aggregate of their wealth, convey a
full idea of the relative preponderance of the Jewish
race in Austria-Hungary.
ET
The intellectual grip of the Jews in the Austrian
Empire is even more surprising than the accumula-
tion of their wealth and the variety of their occupa-
tions. ‘To begin with, although in number they
only form about five per cent. of the entire population,
their proportional number at the Austrian univer-
sities in 1887-88 was 19°3 percent.” Once started
- in life, these nineteen per cent. infuse into every
branch of the professions, leaving the gross of the
Jewish population to grapple with the sadly incom-
petent Austrian in the field of speculative commerce
and manufacture.
* There were 15,362 students at Austrian universities in the
winter of 1887-88.
80 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
In Germany the Jew is almost, though not quite,
as powerful in finance and in commerce as in Austria,
but he is rarely met with as a manufacturer; the
control of labour and the slow mechanical method
of making money by manufacturing being perhaps
the vocations for which the Jew is least fitted. In
Austria, however, he is omnipresent even as a
manufacturer. ‘This fact is, perhaps, the most
crushing indication of Austrian incapacity to wage
the battle of modern life on equal terms with the
tougher Oriental.
In the communal schools of Vienna (Stddtische
Volksschulen) in the year 1890-91, among 42,624
boys there were, roughly speaking, 5600 Jews.
Now whereas there were at the same time 6274
pupils at the technical schools (Gewerbe-schulen),
drawing their pupils from the communal schools,
there were among these only 110 Jews. This shows
distinctly how small is the percentage of Jews who
think it worth their while to take to the humbler
vocation of learning a handicraft, as distinct from
a trade.
The Jews are all-powerfully represented in every
walk of life which leads to influence, money-making,
and ‘‘getting on” generally. Everywhere their
influence is out of all proportion to their represen-
tative numbers, large though it be, both in the
liberal professions of law, medicine and literature,
and in commerce and industry. ‘hey are to be
found dominant in all the large urban centres of
political life and commerce, as well as in the rural
THE JEW 81
centres of agriculture. They rule the markets, are
at the head of finance, and, except in the case of
the Czech, direct public opinion. The produce
Exchange, and, of course, the Bourse, at Vienna,
Pragueor Budapesth, are deserted on Jewish holidays.
Jewish syndicates of bankers in Vienna are said to
hold mortgages over most of the land of Hungary.
All the railways which do not belong to the State
are controlled by them. Numberless manufacturers
could not carry on their business at all, but for the
accommodation afforded them by Jewish bankers.
As for public opinion, as expressed through the
medium of the press, with the single exception
already mentioned, it is the Jew who speaks in the
name of the people, be it the Hungarian or the
German. Notwithstanding the aggressive national
consciousness of the Hungarian, whenever this senti-
ment finds expression, it is in all probability through
the pen of a Jew. So, too, if an emperor, a states-
man, or a great soldier die, it is a Jew who prepares
the necrological notice setting forth the virtues of
the deceased to public appreciation. On occasions
of great Roman Catholic festivais, such as Whitsun-
tide, Haster, etc., it is again a Jew who celebrates the
occasion with a leading article and tells the good
Christians to behave themselves as such; often with
quotations from the Bible. Thus, on the recent
occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the
Covenant between Austria and Hungary, the Vienna
New Free Press™ aptly concludes a highly optimistic
* June 5, 1892.
F
82 THE REALM (OF THE HABSEO. Ge
leader with the following quotation from the Acts of
the Apostles, chap ii. verse 1: ‘And when the
day of Pentecost was come, they were all with one
accord in one place.”
III
The foregoing leaves no room for doubt, that in
the battle of life, as it is now waged in Austria-
Hungary, the Jews are undoubtedly the victors, and
are likely to remain so. And when we come to
consider the prejudice and hatred they have had,
and still have, to encounter, it is difficult to avoid the
conclusion that their fighting powers must be such
as are likely to make their superiority in the future
proportionate to the geometrical square of the
development of their wealth and number. It is but
another case of the figurative snowball.
It follows, moreover, that being alien in race and
~ the object of our dislike, and thus only able to
succeed in the rivalry of daily life in spite of us,
their success is the exact measure of our weakness,
whether it be social, political, or economical.
In Austria this weakness is partly political, though
chiefly commercial, economical, as has already been
pointed out. For socially Austria is still true to its
standard and will have none of the Jew, and, with
very few exceptions, keeps him outside its circle,
whatever be his wealth.”
* In countries in which society deserts its traditional land-
marks, the Jew, although perhaps disliked, becomes in virtue of
his money all-powerful as a leader of society.
THE FEW 83
All this becomes the more significant as regards
the future when we bear in mind that, unlike the
Jews in France, England, America and Germany,
the greater number of the Austrian-Hungarian Jews
are still huddled together in poverty in the eastern
provinces of Galicia and in the wilds of Hungary.*
Thus it is as yet only the é/ite, a small minority of
the Jews, who have achieved so much. If their
success continues, they are evidently destined to
form a large percentage of the aristocracy of the
country, notwithstanding every opposition. Nor do
we see how this could well be otherwise. For the
aristocracy of to-morrow must be merely the repre-
sentatives of the most clever, the most successful,
in all walks of life. The most successful, the
best—o. apicror—of the past were in reality only
those who were most distinguished in war, character,
ability, and intellect—the best-balanced heads—the
strongest. To-day there is war still, only it is of a
different kind. Its character is economical; its
prizes, millions; its defeats, poverty.
Thus excellence in the art of money-making is
the largest and most important attribute of every
conception of the best: the most seaworthy in the
storms of modern life. And it looks very much as
if in time to come it would be the only attribute
necessary, not in Austria alone, but all the world
over.
* Though yearly an increasing contingent is moving up west-
ward to swell their victorious ranks in the capital.
84 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
IV
It is this strength of the Jew and this weakness of
the Austrian that are largely, if not entirely, at the
root of the hatred and slander of which the former
is the object. The weakest Christians are those
who slander the Jews most; they cannot realise
that slander is no logical attribute of dislike. Not
that the Jews are at all inclined to take this hatred
meekly. They already feel their power, and when
threatened with expulsion have been known to
reply: “‘Go away yourselves, you stupid Christians,
if you don’t feel happy here.”
It is a pity that in our antipathy towards a race
which is so widely dissimilar to our own, we are
apt to lose sight of its virtues and to omit the lesson
to be derived from them ; for these virtues, strange
to say, partake largely of a Christian character.
True charity, union among themselves, strong family
ties, and fellow-feeling to assist and enable the
poorest of their brethren to succeed, are characteristic
of them. And the fact most easily lost sight of is,
that these so-called Christian virtues are almost as
much the cause of the Jew’s success as his clear-
headed sobriety in money matters, his keen instinct
for discovering our weak spots, his dexterity in
availing himself of them, and his persistence of
effort, all concentrated on the one aim of worldly
success. In truth, the secret of Jewish success
consists not only in his strong qualities, but in our
untruthfulness to our ideals (wnsere Unechtheit).
THE YEW 85
If we were true to the latter, he might assail us in
vain. As itis, he has assimilated our strong points,
even our virtues, and overcomes us by playing on
our weakness. And yet the most widespread
accusation against the Jew is, that he is commercially
unscrupulous, dishonest. We hold this to be the
most unjust of all the reproaches levelled at him.
We have yet to gauge the measure of our own
scrupulosity. In the meantime, it is a positive fact
that the biggest swindles in London, Paris and New
York, during the last twenty years, have been
almost exclusively the work of the Caucasian, sad
to say !
Let us even go a step further. When we bear
in mind the natural tricky instincts of kindred races
in the East, whence the Jews sprang—-when we
remember the persecutions the latter have suffered
during so many centuries—-we cannot refuse a tribute
of respect to the many excellent qualities they possess.
We may cal) them unscrupulous; but they may
justly retort that our ideals are not theirs, and that
they are more faithful to theirs than we to ours.
We were once discussing the question of business
confidence with an Austrian. ‘‘ Confidence,” he
said; “I have no confidence in anybody.” Now
this is all very well, but the Catholic priest has
confidence in the Jewish banker, for he intrusts him
with the funds of his Church. We have it on the
authority of one priest, that the Jews are the only
people he would care to trust.
In the press the Jew is accused of trickery.
86 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
Then why do we read the papers which we are |
thoroughly aware are edited by him? In Austria
the answer is simple: because they are almost
the only ones worth reading.
V
The Austrians cannot reproach the Hebrew,
because, being a sober Asiatic, he is not carried
away by their passions and their ideals. He simply —
panders in a legitimate commercial way to their
wants and tastes, to the best of his intellectual and
commercial ability. The Hmperor is not of his race ;
why should he be ready to shed tears for him, let
alone to die for him? The aristocracy does not
recognise him; why then should he refrain from
twitting it with its weaknesses? The Austrians
are ready to fly at each other’s throats. What
interest can the Jew have to prevent their doing so?
Their squabbles only deviate their hatred for the
time being from him, and are thus of service to
him. That they take what he openly offers as
eagerly as the baby takes to the feeding-bottle—for in
Vienna newspaper reading is a serious occupation—
this surely cannot constitute a reproach to be levelled
at the Hebrew. On the contrary, it is a splendid
testimony to his intellectual abilities that your full-
grown manhood swarms the cafés of Vienna from
morning until night, eager to partake of the pabulum
provided by a coterie of, perhaps, thirty to forty
Hebrews. Whether it consist mainly of clever
ae
THE {EW 87
banter and ridicule of your institutions and your
public men, or of critical opinions telling the reader
what to applaud and what to condemn, the result is
the same. It is a clear case of intellectual bondage,
as effectual and far-reaching as any other kind.
And we are even inclined to think that, taken all
in all, the Austrian Jews do not abuse their
journalistic power, but rather wield it with a fair
amount of moderation—indeed, very much more so
than the Czech press use theirs. But. so little is
this dominion of the Jews realised, that people are
said to exist in Austria and elsewhere who still
speak of converting the Jews. ‘‘ Why, good Chris-
tians, they have nearly succeeded in converting
you.
Another complaint which the Austrian makes
against the Jew is, that he is what the Germans
call evn Streber: a “ striver ”—a clever tricky self-
seeker; a man who is not particular as to the
means he employs as long as he “gets on.” As if
Christianity had none such! As if in Austria the
cunning little Saxon or the astute Wurtemburger
who comes to Austria to make his fortune, are
more particular in this respect! As if we had
never heard the motto of an eminent Christian
railway director: ‘“‘ The world is my oyster; I will
open it!”
In one sense a Jew is tempted to employ means,
if he wishes to succeed, of which the Christian
need not avail himself. For he starts with hatred -
against him. ‘Thus, however learned he may be in
88 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
law, clever in science, or conscientious as a business
man, he must first conquer aversion before you will
employ him. And the wonder is that he succeeds
in this. If he does this by trickery alone, how
foolish must those be who oppose him and after-
wards trust hin! As a matter of fact, when the
Jew succeeds, it is often not money that is his
ultimate aim, but rather the respect which we would
fain deny him, and which we only accord to those
who possess money.
No, we refuse to believe that the Jew is one
whit more money-grasping than the Christian. On
the contrary, according to the laws of psychology he
might even be less so, for it is in human nature to
value highest that which is most difficult to attain.
And the average Jew makes money with facility
(speelend). He may prize titles and other distinc-
tions more than the Christian, because they have
hitherto been more out of his reach; this last, how-
ever, is no longer the case, for a German rhyme
has it:
* Jeder Schmul wird Consul,
Jeder Aaron wird Baron.”
But no title or distinction will affect his sober
judgment in business matters. His steady success
proves this up to the hilt in Austria. He is further
accused of arrogance. Our experience is, that Iree-
masonic good-nature is more characteristic of the
Jew than arrogance, at least towards those who
meet him without arrogance. There can be no
THE EW 89
doubt that between Jews of different spheres of life,
there is less arrogance than among Christians.
VI
It has been often said that the Jew is a disinte-
grating force; that the preponderance of the Jew
spells decay. And this we are inclined to believe ;
and for this reason, that the population is infe-
rior in powers of resistance, which allows a foreign
antipathetic race, which is not productive in the
word’s highest sense, to predominate. Even Spinoza,
perhaps the greatest Jew of modern times, was more
noted for the nobility of his thoughts than for the
originality of his philosophical system. No Jewish
inventor, no Jewish painter, dramatist or architect of
undisputed first rank is known. This certainly lends
some colour to the assertion of his enemies, that
he originates nothing, but manipulates everything.
He certainly does not shine as an originator or pro-
ducer. ‘That, however, means nothing. It is not
to genius that we look up, or which succeeds.
The prize is to the “clever” as opposed to the
cacellent, and the Jew is “ clever.” As a matter of
fact, the Jew is unsurpassed as a manipulator, and
we live in the age of the successful manipulator.
And this largely explains why the dominion of the
Jews is of our own, and not of a previous era.
There are others beside the Jew adept in this;
but in Austria the Jew has no serious competitor
worth mentioning. Not that the worthy Austrian
90 THE REALM OK FRE HABSBURG.
need take this as an unalloyed compliment. For,
if he is less able, that does not mean that he is less
eager: witness the arrogant, purse-proud, Austrian
Christian parvenu, who has completely gone off his
head since his millions brought him the title of
Imperial Councillor! Surely it is nothing to be
ashamed of in the Jew that he remains cool in
dealing with money matters, whilst the Christian
loses his head in similar circumstances.
‘Thus had I sought him, the great Hmperor,
whom we can never forget, whom the people still
love so much. ‘Thus, with the simplicity of a child,
and with a persistence (Beharrlichkeit) born of holy
veneration, I had come to the very spot, had gone
down to his grave.
‘Not a word could I utter: I felt a shivering
sensation. I hardly looked again at the sacred
sarcophagus, which was dimly illuminated by the
monk’s candle; nor did I direct a single glance
even towards the other coffins. I reeled up the
stone steps, and in a corner of the church I burst
into a fit of bitter crying.
“The gentleman from the Hofburg laid his hand
upon my shoulder, but did not say a single word,”
CHAPTER XVII
WOMANKIND IN AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
Bella gerant alii! Tu, felix Austria, nube!
I
Ir is said to have been a Hungarian king,
Matthias Corvinus, living in the fifteenth century,
who gave Austria the above quoted advice: to “ let
others make war,” but, as for herself, to “ believe in
matrimony.”
And the rulers of Austria have taken the hint
and acted in this spirit throughout their family
history ; for. the constant extension of their
dominions has been almost invariably due to
prudent marriages.* No wonder, then, that the
saying, Zu felia Austria, nube, has in course of
* Albert V., by marrying thedaughterof the EmperorSigismund,
first broughtthe throne of Hungary (1438) tothe Habsburg dynasty.
Maximilian I., by marrying the daughter of Charles the Bold
(1477), acquired the Netherlands. His son Philip, by marriage _
with the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, acquired the right
of succession to the throne of Spain, which indeed fell to his son,
Charles V. The Emperor Ferdinand (1524), by his marriage to
WOMANKIND IN AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 279
time come to possess a national significance in the
Realm of the Habsburgs. And quite apart from
their application in the utilitarian sphere of politics,
these words contain a significant reference to the
prominent part which lovely woman has ever played
im the affairs of Austria.
The Hungarian women in particular have always
been the theme of the rapturous enthusiasm of the
poet and the nation at large. It is not the sentimental
devotion to an ideality of imnocence, such as we
find among the poets and the folk-lore of Germany,
No, it is burning earthly passion that gleams
through the words of the hot-blooded Hungarian
devotee. And, in truth, there is something inherent
in the Hungarian woman which casts a halo o’er
the worship of the senses, and robs even frailty of
half its ugliness.
** Weder blond noch braun zu schauen
Sind die echten Ungarfrauen,”
says the ‘‘ Volkslied.”
The thoughtful (¢ce/simnige) velvety eye, which
flashes disdain, and quickly turns to playful roguery,
is said to reflect the three moods typical of the
the sister of the king of Hungary, acquired again the right of
succession to the kingdoms of Hungary, Bohemia, as also to
Moravia, Silesia, and Lausatia. As a crowning instance of what
the Habsburgs owe to the fair sex, it may be mentioned that the
country of Tyrol came to them by voluntary cession on the part of
the Dowager Countess Margaretha Maultasche (Pursed Mouth),
1395-
280 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURG.
beautiful Hungarian woman. These moods a poet
has compared to the tranquil moon, the flashing
lightning, and then again to the refreshing rosy
dew of the morn. The women of Hungary are also
famed for the heroism and devotion which they have
displayed in many a romantic incident of their
country’s history.
13
It is hardly too much to say, that the Austrians
as well as the Hungarians of to-day owe their social
amenities, the charm of their manner—yes, and we
are afraid their pleasure-loving, work-shirking char-
acteristics, too—largely to the seductive influence
of their womankind. For the Austrians, Roman
Catholics though they be, have yet practically
appropriated and practise the great Dr. Martin
Luther’s precept of worldly philosophy :
“Wer nicht liebt Weib, Wein und Gesang,
Der bleibt ein Narr sein Leben lang.’’*
In Austria who worships not woman must un-
doubtedly be a fool !
Thus the woman in Austria is the centre and
pivot of social life among all classes. She does not,
however, seek to extend her influence to polities.
It is only among the Hungarian nobility that /es
* “Who loves not woman, wine and song,
Remains a fool his whole life long,”
WOMANKIND IN AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 281
femmes politiques are to be found ; and these figure
in this capacity merely as partisans of their male-kind,
and because they are imbued with a strong sense
of high-spirited patriotism. As for that interest
in politics which has for its end the emancipation
of woman herself, for it the Austrian woman has
no hankering. She has no desire to obtain the
franchise. ‘lhe Austrians themselves say that the
reason women in other countries desire political
power, is that they no longer possess the feminine
charms which make their own women so seductive.
Moreover, it is a strange coincidence, that the hard-
featured, angular type of female we are accustomed
to associate with popular agitation for the removal
of certain Acts, and the proposed introduction of
many other wncertain ones, is absolutely absent in
Austria!
Still it would be a great mistake to argue from
this absence of the self-asserting female, that woman
is a down-trodden creature in the Realm of the
Habsburgs. Those who think so had better lose
no time in convincing themselves of the contrary,
and perhaps in the process they may learn to feel,
in propria persona, the bewitching power the Austrian
woman wields over man by the mere force of her
feminine magnetism.
It is by the aid of the charms with which Nature
has so richly endowed her, that woman rules in
Austria. Was not the greatest ruler the Austrians
ever had, Maria Theresa, a true example of this
Austrian type ?
282 THE’ REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
Tit
“ The beauty of Austria’s women, whether they be
of Hungarian, Slave, Polish, or mixed German race,
has become proverbial. All books of travel relating
to Austria are full of the admiration which her women
call forth, not only by reason of their grace and
beauty of feature, but also of their fine physical
proportions. And this is the more striking when
we bear in mind that, whilst makin® every allow-
ance for exceptions, the men of Austria generally
do not come up to the physical standard of the
women. If in Germany we occasionally wonder how
women so insignificant and plain (hausbacken) be-
come the mothers of fine handsome men, in Austria
we are surprised that such lovely women should be
the mothers of weedy-looking men. May we not
have here a riddle of Nature before us, inasmuch
as a community, noted for its sensuous enjoyment
of life, produces lovely women, whereas in Nature’s
laboratory a sterner atmosphere of moral rigidity is
required for the production of a high-class virile
type of man?
No female type in Austria may come up to the
unique dark-haired, blue-eyed Irish woman, nor do
we meet the finely chiselled English aristocratic
face. There is, however, no country in the world
which produces so high an average of female
attractiveness. And the special feature of this is,
that physical beauty and feminine charms are
equally present in all classes, from the highest to
WOMANKIND IN AUSTRIA-HUNGARY 283
the lowest. If there be a distinction, it is that a
plain woman is oftener seen among the aristocracy
than elsewhere. In truth, there is something
indefinitely aristocratic in Austrian womanhood of
all classes. Even the physical attributes of blue
blood, faultless complexion, finely moulded limbs,
dainty bands and feet, are to be met with in the
Hungarian and Slavonic peasant equally with,
sometimes more markedly than in, the oldest
families of the nobility. In all classes, and of all
races more or less, their bearing, their manners,
possess a touch of unspoilt simplicity and dignity
which is essentially their own. ‘They are endowed
with a distinction which is lacking in countries
where you can tell at a glance in what sphere of
life a woman is born. Somehow, here grace and
beauty know no difference between high and low,
and, in Austria, Nature often bestows upon a poor,
barefooted, short-skirted peasant-girl (with her face
framed in a kerchief tied under the chin) the same
enchanting form, the same graceful walk, the same
magically attractive glance, as upon her more high-
born sister. Not that they are prodigal of their
glances to strangers. As we have elsewhere re-
marked, the Slavonic peasant-girl, working in the
fields in Hungary, will hardly deign to turn
her head to look at the passing traveller. The
stranger, too, who sees the peasant-girls on a
Sunday evening dancing the Csardas in some
country garden, need not expect many glances from
them,
284 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
Along the Danube there are sturdy, barefooted
peasant women who help to make the steamers fast
at the landing-stage. This is astrange sight for such
of us as have only seen poor drudging womankind in
highly civilised countries. These women do the
work which in other countries is left to men; but
they are not degraded in consequence. ‘There is even
something about their appearance which commands
respect, and receives it. Nature has conferred a
certain dignity on the humblest of which civilisa-
tion has not yet robbed them, even as competition
has not yet ruined them physically.
IV
It does not surprise us to find that, all
aristocratic class prejudice notwithstanding, there is
perhaps no country in which more romantic love
marriages are made between the highest and the
humblest than in Austria. The many instances of
this among the Habsburg family are well known.
Was there not once, and that not so very long ago,
an Archduke who married the daughter of a toll-gate
collector? He saw her pretty face peeping out
as he passed by, and he came back and wedded
her. Among the Austrian aristocracy, the number
of such matches is legion; while in Republican,
but socially most conservative, France such a thing
as the marriage of an actress into the nobility
is almost unknown. The famous dancer,
Taglioni, became Princess Windischgraetz; Char-
WOMANKIND IN AUSTRIA-HUNGARY — 285
lotte Wolter, the ¢ragédienne, has long been a
Countess Sullivan; Princess Lori Schwarzenberg
was originally a singer, Sophie Loewe by name;
Marie Marberg, the actress, is now a Countess
Westphal; Countess Schoenfeld is the daughter of
an actress. A Prince Liechtenstein is married to a
fascinating widow of humble birth. The late
Princess Batthyany was the daughter of a Hebrew
banker. ‘The beautiful women of the people are
ever receiving the legitimate homage of Austria’s
nobility, and no race of women are more fitted to
evoke it,
Vv
N The love of pleasure and the distaste for con-
tinuous hard work, which is typical of the nation,
naturally also affects its women. When they do
excel in serious effort, it is usually in some walk
connected with the fine arts, such as dancing,
music, or the drama, for which they are singularly
gifted. Some of the most renowned female musical
executants, as well as actresses, in Hurope are
Austrians.
The influence of the Catholic Church is as
evident in the female world as it is everywhere
else in Austria. The spirit of Catholicism tinges
the character of Austrian womanhood in more
ways than one. Catholicism is answerable for the
bigotry, small-mindedness, the lack of intellectual
culture among them; although the exceptions to
286 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
this rule embrace some of the best read and some of
the most highly cultivated women in Europe. But
the independence of thought, the serious views of
the higher vocation of women, which are reflected
in the literature of Western Europe, find few
disciples among the women of Catholic Austria.
It is only among the Protestant aristocracy of
Hungary that such are to be met. As a general
rule, Catholicism is indirectly at the root of the
extraordinary influence which Austrian womanhood
wields over the men, causing the latter to behave in
many respects like big children. ;
On the other hand, Catholicism must be credited
with a share in the large amount of true charity to
which Austrian ladies devote themselves. The
so-called Verveinsleben™ of female Austria is one
of its main features. In most Austrian towns
charitable institutions exist, in which Austrian
ladies take an active part, and which call forth the
highest encomiums.
The Church must also be credited in some degree
with that absence of heartless worldliness, which it is
so pleasant to note among Austrian women as a
whole. [or although the Catholic priest may
“squeeze” the rich man, and only say Masses for
those who can afford to pay for the luxury, he does
not himself toady the rich man socially, or fall
down in adoration before the golden calf. Thus
while he acts strongly by example on the female
* Meaning the activity connected with charitable institutions,
WOMANKIND IN AUSTRIA-HUNGARY — 287
mind, he does not inculcate the blind worship of
Mammon or worldly position by bowing to them
himself. On the contrary, many traits of the
Catholic Church tend to emphasise an equality of
rich and poor before him—notably the mixing up
of high and low, rich and poor, in Catholic churches.
Thus it is indirectly due to the priest that the female
snob is very rare in Austria, And this is, perhaps,
the reason why among the cosmopolitan female
rubbish which is continually begging its way mto
the Courts of Europe—one of the ugliest sights of
our time—there is next to no Austrian element.
Even when frail, the Austrian woman is rarely
venal. The absence of the slavish adoration of
wealth and position by her women is one of the
causes of the quiet, contented social life that is so
widely existent in Austria. It also prevents the
spread of that hideous clammy ostracism and con-
tempt for poverty which is the direct outcome of
opposite conditions, and which does so much to
sterilise the female heart in many places.
VI
There is a large amount of domestic happiness to
be found in every sphere of life in Austria: perhaps
more than is to be met with elsewhere. And
there is no doubt in cur mind that this is almost
entirely due to the excellent qualities of the Austrian
women. It is not that married people are ‘“ better ”
there than in other places: perhaps rather the
288 THE REALM OF THE HADSBURGS
reverse ; for, according to some of our standards, they
are sometimes even downright “wicked.” It is
whispered that they do not practise a Puritanic
immaculateness with regard to the seventh Com-
mandment ; that they are more pleasure-loving, more
light-hearted than is strictly consonant with a due
regard for their higher spiritual interests. But they
make up for these defects, as far as it is possible
for poor weak-kneed humanity to make up for such, —
by generally leading a simple life, devoid of outward
glamour and artificiality.
So, too, the Austrian wife is far more of a companion
to her husband than is usually the case in Germany.
Her vivacity and brightness of disposition bring
sunshine in their train. She, as well as her hus-
band, are more free from that petty nagging pro-
pensity which seems too often to be the damnosa
hereditas of the harder-grained German stock.
Again, there is usually less distance between the
mental culture of man and wife than in Germany.
The tastes of both are lighter, more pleasurable, and
these they share more often in common. The
Austrian himself does not possess in an equal
degree that rather rigid sense of domestic attach-
ment and discipline so notably omnipresent in Ger
many, or the good-natured unselfishness of the
domestic Englishman. Austrian husbands often
take the responsibilities of married life too lightly,
particularly in not sufficiently watching the educa-
tion of their children. Whatever domestic discipline
exists in Austria is mostly due to the mother.
WOMANKIND IN AUSTRIA HUNGARY — 289
However, it is not of that sterner kind which makes
a typical French mother often the directing spiritual
and intellectual force of a family. It is more of a
twining ivy variety; it has its root rather in the
heart than in the mind. Their kind-heartedness
makes them too indulgent. An Austrian mother
can rarely refuse her sons any request. Hence
they are partly responsible for much of the weakness
which adheres to Austrian manhood through life.
VII
But if her warmth of heart is the source of her
indulgence, as it is of her passionate nature, it also
shows itself in a rare capacity for “ forgiving,” as
many Austrian husbands can vouch. The Empress-
Queen, Maria Theresa, was a true Austrian woman
in this respect. Coming from the death-bed of her
husband, the Emperor Francis, to whom, notwith-
standing his gallantry, she had ever been devotedly
attached, she met Princess Auersperg, who was
supposed to have been her rival in her husband’s
affections. Maria Theresa possessed greatness of
~ soul enough to say to her: “ My dear Princess, we
have both lost much.”
The Austrian wife has often been known to for-
give where others might be more ready to. upbraid,
or to light the torch of domestic conflagration, even
though they themselves be buried beneath the ruins.
She remembers that, after all, certain things do not
alone constitute her sole orbit of life: she has her
T
290 THE REALM’ OF JHE HABSBUKGS
household and her children; the family honour is
in her keeping, and they think a deal of that in
some circles in Austria. She instinctively shrinks
from dragging her wrongs into the public courts of
the country. She thus practises the very gospel of
self-abnegation we now and then hear preached, yet
so seldom see practised. Disappointment does not
lead her to drink or.despair. She seeks consolation
in her devotion to her daughters. However bigoted,
however narrow-minded she may be, in this she is
honestly conscious of her vocation. She has herself
been brought up to feel that it is a privilege to possess
children, which must be deserved. Thus she brings
up her daughters in the same way as she has been
brought up herself. Without having ever heard of
the pregnant sentiments of Mrs. Fawcett,* she in-
structs her daughters to value affection above mere
position, and to deserve both by the domestic train-
ing she affords them. And the general simplicity of
Austrian domestic life, in which outward appearances
are not everything, assists her in this.
* “ Many of the shipwrecks of domestic happiness which most
people can call to mind have been caused either by the wife
having no real vocation for the duties and responsibilities of
marriage, or from her having married without deep affection for
her husband, simply because she felt it was a chance she ought
not to miss of what is euphemistically called settling herself in
life. Sucha marriage is as much a sale as the grosser institu-
tions of the East can provide. It is a desecration of holy things ;
a wrong to the man, and a wrong to the children who may be
born of the marriage.”
WOMANKIND IN AUSTRIA-HUNGARY — 291
Vil
Some people assume that domestic qualities in
women, however. desirable, are merely a means to
an end, and that the drudgery of home unfits a
woman for the dignities of’ a drawing-room. A
closer acquaintance with the womankind of Austria
would soon show the fallacy of this view. For,
next to the I'rench women, there are perhaps none
who combine domestic talents to such a degree,
with the bearing and savoir faire of the modern
“lady,” as do the women of Austria. The Polish
lady is the only exception to this rule. She some-
times inherits the proverbial slovenliness of her race
(Polnische Wirthschaft).
Even among the highest ladies in the land, it is
not thought infra diy. to do their own marketing,
and to see to the details of the household. The
proudest of countesses will think nothing of getting
up at daybreak to see that her husband has his
breakfast properly served before starting on a
shooting expedition. She even takes a pride in
doing this.
_\y Theaverage Austrian lady may not possess in the
fullest degree the strong sense of order and discipline
that distinguishes her German sister, but her short-
comings have their compensating advantages. Her
artistic sense lends a charm to her home; and,
above all, as a housekeeper she has few rivals.
Her superiority here is evident to the most
cursory observer; for it applies to the women of all
292 THE REALM OF THE HABSBURGS
classes. And a striking proof of this is seen as soon
as the Austrian frontier is crossed. However
humble the inn, the coffee is excellent, because the
women sce that it is excellent; they see to it
themselves, and take a pride in doing this. ‘There
is a deal of domestic morality hidden in the Austrian
coffee-pot; in the bright cooking utensil; the
honest fulfilment of household duty. Who knows
whether the coffee-pot may not be the explanation of
there being so few crazy women in Austria? They
have something to do, and thus steer clear of the
origin of so much female vice and misery—idleness.
IX
It is notably among the peasantry and the work-
ing classes that the domestic and other good
qualities of the women of Austria tell their tale.
This has been indirectly found out by ‘ General ”
Booth. For Austria is one of those Catholic
countries which, he has admitted, are least in want
of the syren charms of the Salvationist tromhone.
Moreover, drunkenness is non-existent among the
womanhood of Austria-Hungary !
The significance of this fact only comes home to
us when we bear in mind that, in the town of
Glasgow alone, during the year 1891, eleven
thousand women were arrested in public resorts and
thoroughfares for being drunk and _ disorderly.*
For, in a social sense, this is perhaps more ominous
* Drunkenness, unless accompanied by incapacity and dis-
order, calls for no comment in our statistics.
WOMANKIND IN AUSTRIA-HUNGARY — 293
than if fifty convictions for murder had been
registered within the same pericd in that town. It
would take a deal of frailty to strike the balance
unfavourably against the absence of this miserable
human scourge ! |
x
The women are the mainstay of the peasant and
working classes. ‘They are the backbone of the
social life, which holds them together and banishes
the foul scenes of degradation which manufacture and
poverty bring more or less everywhere in their train.
The immense importance of the social life of the
lower classes in. Austria, already referred to else-
where, whether industrial or agricultural, can only
be understood by those who have been able to
witness it and draw comparisons.
For whilst the working classes, when dwelling in
the towns, are becoming more and more like those
of other industrial countries—the men seeking the
dram-shops, the women sinking to the drudge—in
the country the conditions of life are still primitive,
and the social influence of the women is especially
marked. ‘The wife of the humblest knows how to
place a decently cooked meal before her family. In
factory districts, you may sometimes see the women
bustling along the road, either going to their own
work, or carrying the midday meal to their hus-
bands, ‘They, as a rule, are scrupulously clean in
appearance, with their bright red- or blue-coloured
handkerchiefs tied round their heads in picturesque
294 THE: REALM OF SARE VAAbobURG Ss
fashion. Their homes, generally speaking, are
wonderfully clean and tidy. And, strange to say,
these daughters of the lower classes—particularly if
sprung from the peasantry, walking abroad bare-
headed all their lives—never think of wearing
the cast-off clothing of their betters. They would
be ashamed to do so. In the words of an English
traveller: * ‘It is curious with what pertinacity the
peasant women in every part of Hungary retain
the costume of their ancestors. A sentiment of
shame is attached to a change, especially to any
imitation of the higher classes. It may be very
well for a lady to put on such foreign fashions if
she lhkes, but an honest Hungarian peasant-girl
should wear the same clothes as her grandmother
wore before her.” On the other hand, it is rare to
find women of this stamp, who do not possess a
richer stock of under-linen than many a “lady”
elsewhere brings with her into her married home.
As in the coffee-pot, so is there a deal of female
morality in the linen chest.
And of an evening, when work is done, or it may
be a general holiday (and there are too many such),
the womankind invariably share the recreations of
the men. On Sunday, they sometimes finish their
afternoon’s outing by entering the parlour of the
village inn. ‘The women have a cup of coffee, and
pull out their knitting. The men indulge in a glass
* «Wungary and Transylvania.’”’’ John Paget. London:
Murray,
WOMANKIND IN AUSTRIA HUNGARY 295
of beer. Very often the village priest, the lodge-
keeper or forester from the neighbouring estate, the
doctor, the high and mighty post-office super-
intendent, are there too; perhaps also the very
capitalist whose energy has created the whole place
out of virgin forest. And if they are personally
known to one another, the evening is often whiled
away by all of them joining in a general con-
versation.
In the winter, the working classes in the country
have their dances, and it would surprise many to
witness some of them. ‘Those who speak from ex-
perience, can testify to pleasant hours spent at such
gatherings. In fact, we have seen more female
beauty, more natural grace of bearing, on such occa-
sions than elsewhere, when the diamonds sprinkled
over the half-naked humanity would have sufficed
for a king’s ransom. But, stranger still, we have
never witnessed at such festive gatherings one single
instance of misbehaviour or intoxication. And it
is the womanhood of Austria who have made this
possible,
CHAPTER XVIII
CONCLUSION
There is a Spring coming. Nay, as I hope, one day an Eternal
Spring, when all that is dead and deserved not to die shall bloom
forth again and live for ever !—THOMAS CARLYLE
I
Cross the Austrian-Hungarian frontier from the
south-east—say from the direction of Constanti-
nople—and the first impressions of a_ traveller
hailing from the west of Europe will be of a dis-
tinctly congenial kind. Fresh from the depressing
influence of the universal decay so noticeable in
Turkey, you cannot fail to be gratified upon enter-
ing a country which approaches much more nearly
to your own forms of civilisation. You may recall
the splendid physical type you have left behind in
Turkey, but even the sight of the easy-going popu-
lations of the Lower Danube cannot undo the
impression that you have come from a country of
total stagnation into one which at least makes some
show of life.
Almost analogous is the feeling of the stranger
CONCLUSION 297
journeying from Russia to Galicia, otherwise Austrian
Poland. It is not decay which is left behind this
time, but merely a backward civilisation—a country
in some respects still in the Middle Ages, but withal
endowed with the buoyant strength of youth. Its
rough methods, typical of a barbaric past, are here
replaced by a kinder and more humane administra-
tion. The very aspect of the population is more
civilised, more gentle, less repellent. Here the
Pole may, without molestation, sing his plaintive
national song, ‘‘ Noch «ist Polen nicht verloren” ;
whereas in Russian Poland it is prohibited. Here
also the Polish Jew may roam at will in the full
adornment of those peyes (long ringleted curls
down each temple) which are ruthlessly forbidden in
Holy Russia. Lastly, there is a congenial absence
of the dirt which we have heard of as inseparable
from everything Polish, and which caused Geueral
Sebastiani* to exclaim, on alighting amid mud
ankle-deep at his hotel in Warsaw: “ Est-ce que
c'est ceci que cette canaille appelle sa patrie!”T
Austrian municipal government, whatever its short-
- comings, has cleansed the aspect even of Polish
towns. They are singularly primitive and _back-
ward in sanitary. arrangements ; but otherwise the
towns of Austria-Hungary wear a far brighter and
cleaner look than do most of our own, both as
regards the streets and the inhabitants.
* French General sent by Napoleon the First after the peace
of Tilsit, 1807, to arrange the delimitation of the frontier.
+ “Is it this, that these dogs call their fatherland?”
298 THE REALM OFTHE AApSE Once
II
The general impression is thus a favourable one,
even though one may be unable to overlook the
physical falling off in the population as compared
with the rough, sturdy, military types of Russian
Poland.* There is here, too, a lack of that quiet
decision, that silent discipline, so noticeable all over
Russia. Perhaps it is, however, that our eyes are
not yet quite prepared for the discrimination of
bright colours on emerging from darkness.
The transition from west to east is perhaps least
perceptible if you enter Austria from the south by
way of Bavaria. ‘There, on either side of the fron-
tier, is to be found community of race, religion, and
popular life.
At the same time, if one must be critical, and
desirous of reaping instruction from sight-seeing,
he must enter Austria from the north-west, from
Prussia; either from Upper Silesia vid Oderberg,
into Moravia, or from Lower Silesia through one of
the valleys of the Giant Mountains, or again from
Saxony vid Bodenbach, into Bohemia. In every
such case the change is from sober, and mainly
Protestant, Germany into warm-coloured, Roman
Catholic Austria, which only thirty years ago was
* There are said to be about 200,000 horsemen in Russian
Poland at present, many of them fierce Cossacks of the Don, the
Ural, and the Ukraine; untamed sons of the endless steppes,
little distinct from their savage ancestors,
CONCLUSION 299
the acknowledged political head of the German
Confederation.
Catholicism, be it noted, shares with the Emperor
the quality of omnipresence in Austria. If every
inn or tavern contains a portrait of the latter,
almost every private house has its nook where hang
pictures of Patron Saints or of the Virgin Mary. In
fact, you cannot walk abroad without being con-
stantly reminded of, and brought into contact with,
the Church of Rome. Along the high-roads you
will notice, at fixed intervals, little chapels dedicated
to the service of one of the numerous saints of the
Roman Catholic Calendar. If it be night, too, you
will see a tiny lamp burning dimly behind a
coloured glass. It is, let us suppose, the evening
of the particular day dedicated to some saint—NSt.
Joseph’s day, for instance, the 19th of March; in
that case, those who are named after this very
popular saint—men, women (Josephine), and children
—will congregate on the high-road in front of the
little lamp, and say their evening prayers in silent
reverence,
TI
Look carefully around, and it will not require
much mental effort to understand how the changes
of our time have come to pass. ‘The eternal fitness
of things is of itself sufficient to explain all. A
sense of easy-going, passive unreadiness is every-
where apparent. The very frontier guard-house, if
300 THE KREALM OPT HESAAGSEUNGS
travelling vid Prussian Silesia by road, will show
you that clock dials are lazy here, and still strike
the hours of a time long since dead and buried in
the west of Europe. ‘The custom-house officers,
with their hands in their pockets, philosophically
contributing to the income of the State by smoking
the State monopoly cigars or tobacco, are full of
the dignity and phlegm only to be found where the
wheel of time drags on at a snail’s pace. Beggars,
cripples, or harmless Schanis,* are in evidence by
the roadside, and among the crowd a few small-pox-
marked} creatures may also be noted: the whole
betraying a lack of that discipline which is obsery-
able in Prussia, and which, combined with high
intellectual and moral training, has made that
country great on the field of battle, as well as in
the quiet offices of her administration.
IV
There is little evidence of hand work any-
where, and apparently there is no necessity for
it. Things move on merrily (gemiithlich) enough
without it.
The moment, however, that an inn is entered, a
change comes o’er the scene. Here you are in the
* Austrian term for the harmless idiots to be met with every-
where in the rural nooks and corners of the country.
+ Vaccination is not properly controlled in Austria ; hence the
many small-pox-marked faces. In 1888, out of 923,835 children
who ought to have been vaccinated, only 727,802 were registered,
and of those only 650,318 were successfully treated,
CONCLUSION 301
J
domain of Austria’s womankind, and therefore there is
excellence. Hvery kind of refreshment is of good
quality, and its preparation far superior to that
obtainable on the Prussian side. Whether it be at
a village inn, or at a small railway station, the beer,
the bread, and especially the coffee, are invariably
good. The moment you come in contact with
Austrian culinary comforts, you will unwittingly
have put your finger on one of her strong points,
a big vital nerve in the social organism: the love
and care of her people for everything connected
with the physical appetites or sensuous enjoyments
of life.
Hyerything points to the culture alike of senti-
ment and of the feelings in general. And this
strikes you the more forcibly on arriving from
Germany, since there, as with us in England, even
in a lesser degree, comparatively little is outwardly
offered to attract the senses.
Austria is essentially the country for pageants of
every kind. The clergy, the military, and even the
civil population vie with one another on festive
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