t4 I CHRONICLESnjoining the “Watch and Ward Society.”nThe unfortunate mistake of the Danubian Monarchy wasnits veering towards poHtical democracy. Ever since thenmiddle of the 19th century the constitution provided for annever-increasing suffrage, and by 1907, earlier than innEngland (or America, with its poll tax), the one man-onenvote system was adopted, thereby rendering parliamentarismninoperable. The warning of John Stuart Mill in hisnRepresentative Government that “free institutions are nextnto impossible in a country made up of different nationalities”nwas ignored. (Nor are they workable with a substantialnreligious rift, as in Northern Ireland; it would also be sheernmadness to adopt them in South Africa!) The language ofnthe army and (basically) of the administration was German,nbut the sovereign, from childhood on, had a multilingualntraining. Language was a problem: An educated Slovak innNorthern Hungary had to “start” with a knowledge ofnSlovak, Magyar, and German before he could think ofnlearning French and English.nThe “nationalists” in the age of nationalism were not toonhappy in the old Monarchy, but C.A. McCartney saidnrightly: “For a very considerable proportion of the people ofnthe Monarchy, then, the Monarchy with all its faultsnrepresented a degree of protection and national securitynwhich was not lightly to be hazarded.”nWorld War I has correctly been called by Sir DennisnBrogan the “Second War of Austrian Succession.” It wasnactually not at all the Treaty of Versailles with Germany butnthe treaties of St. Germain-en-Laye with Austria and ofnTrianon with Hungary that radically changed the map ofnEurope. The fall of the Russian monarchy made it possiblenfor Woodrow Wilson, egged on by his “left hand in foreignnaffairs,” the socialist George D. Herron, to arrange America’snentry into the war—a war transformed from a bloodyncontest between nations into an ideological crusade “tonmake the world safe for democracy.” It actually made it safenfor Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler.nIn Wilson’s original “Fourteen Points,” the phrase concerningnthe “autonomous development of the nations ofnAustria-Hungary” (as their real author, Walter Lippmannntold me) merely aimed at the decentralization of thenMonarchy. (This also had been the plan of the murderednArchduke Francis Ferdinand and of Emperor Charles.) YetnWilson let himself be persuaded by Thomas Masaryk tondestroy the Dual Monarchy. (Masaryk also convinced himnthat it was not Germany but Austria-Hungary who was thenreal enemy of freedom, democracy, world peace, enlightenment,nand progress.) Herron, who actually had becomenWilson’s agent in Europe, ruined the second Austriannpeace effort in February 1918. He met the secret emissariesnof Emperor Charles in Switzerland and rejected the offernbecause it implied the political survival of the Hapsburgs,nwhich would have meant, as he said, that the whole warnhad been fought in vain. So the hostihties continued fornanother nine months, to effect a real holocaust.nThe nations of Austria-Hungary paid dearly for the folliesnof some of their leaders and for the fanaticism of Westernn”democratists.” According to Max Eastman, SigmundnFreud had called Wilson “the greatest idiot of this century,nno, of all centuries, and a real criminal, albeit not consciousnof it.” How many Americans laid down their lives innnnWorld War II for the misconceptions of Woodrow Wilson?nThe first part of that butchery was an outcome of thenHitler-Stalin partnership while the second part resultednfrom the Stalin-Roosevelt alliance. As Winston Churchillnconfessed, “There is not one of the peoples or provinces thatnconstituted the empire of the Hapsburgs to whom gainingntheir independence has not brought the tortures whichnancient poets and theologians -had reserved for thendamned.”nWorld War II, the “Third War of Austrian Succession,”ncould have been easily foreseen. (Even the naive George D.nHerron prophesied in 1920 “Wars of Tartaric Ferocity.”)nThe Versailles Treaty contained the notorious Article 231naffirming Germany’s war guilt, based on the PotsdamnCrown Council of July 29, I9I4, which G.P. Goochnproved had never taken place! Nevertheless, it was made thenmoral foundation of the ruinous reparations leading to ancrisis which, in turn, made Hitler’s rise, within the democraticnframework prescribed by the Allies, truly inevitable.nTo make matters worse, the impoverished and methodicallynhumiliated Germany had geopolitically won the war.nThe Dual Monarchy, which Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu hadncalled the keystone of Europe, was no more.nHis Magnificence, Professor Ernst Kornemann of BreslaunUniversity, pointed out in his Rectorial Address onnOctober 15, 1926, that Germany was by now in a uniquengeographic position. Before 1914, it bordered on three greatnpowers—France, Austria-Hungary and Russia—but nownonly on one. Between Germany and Russia, with thenexception of Poland, there was now only a mosaic of eitherntotally artificial or thoroughly maimed and tiny countries.nThis was a situation, he explained, which he hopednGermany would take good advantage of in the future. Hitlerndid. Born an Austrian, he hated Austria (as he did hisnfather) so intensely that he made even its very name taboo.n(It became “the Alpine and Danubian districts.”) Togethernwith Stalin he started the Third War of Austrian Successionnduring which the heart of Europe fell first to the Germansnand finally to the Soviets.nIn the little Austrian Republic, the “Imperial Idea” is notnentirely dead, and it is gaining nostalgically in all the othernparts of the former Empire—not only in North-EasternnItaly but, above all, in the lands now under Red Rule. InnItaly these sentiments can obviously be far more freelynexpressed: In Trieste (which became Austrian in 1383 andnnow is a center of intensive studies of the Imperial past), innGorizia, even in the Province of Venice (where the Austriannrule terminated in 1866) T-shirts with the portrait of FrancisnJoseph are being sold, and a real Movimento Mitteleuropan(Italian-German words for “Central European Movement”)nis gaining enthusiasts. There is the mounting feeling thatnfaraway Rome does not understand their problems. InnSlovenia and Croatia, now ruled by the Balkan city ofnBelgrade; in Prague, which the Soviets reoccupied in 1968;nin Budapest, where according to a poll the Austrians arenconsidered the “best neighbors,” the past appears in a verynnew light. (There, Austrian aid in 1956 is remembered, andnthe silly, brutal treatment of Hungary in 1849 is forgivennand forgotten.) Never had the old Monarchy a greaternprestige than now. It is “Paradise Lost.” The feeling is nowngeneral that all these countries between Germany andn