DemocracyRussian Revolution

364 THE CLASS STRUGGLE DOCUMENTS 365 the civilian ministers had declared that no Austrian troops would take part in the last invasion of Russian soil, the military command set them in motion. few weeks after Count Czernin had vowed that he would not take a yard of Russian territory, the Magyars forced him to assent to what is no less a violation of his professed principles the strategic rectifications at the expense of Rumania. Finally, when Count Czernin in public speeches doubly underlined his solidarity with Germany in the question of Alsace, he declared, in a sort of cipher which the French government would understand, that the Emperor recognition of the justice of French claims (if he ever made it) is now a thing of the past. Clemenceau had some reason to dismiss Austrian pacifism as a negligible factor. Sincere it may bc, with the sincerity of desperation, passionate it may be, with all the resentment of a helpless victim toward an overbearing master, but it is powerless. It cannot act for itself. It cannot influence its ally.
The conclusion of this reasoning was evidently that the only use which can be made of Austrian pacifism is to expose its rather pitiful manoeuvres, in order to sap the cohesion of the hostile alliance.
It was after the Russian Revolution that Austrian pacifism openly declared itself from high places. The connection of these two events was not accidental. The Revolution meant the end of pan Slavism.
The dread of that aggressive, disintegrating movement was suddenly lifted from the mind of Austria rulers, and they realized their liberation from the fear which had made them Germany allies, if not her vassals. They had tolerated Prussian militarism because they found it useful; it was the foil to the ambitions of Tsardom in Galicia and the Balkans. There was, however, another reason why the Russian Revolution caused Austria to sigh more than ever for peace. In the fate of Russia she saw an anticipation of her own destiny. After the first beginnings of the abortive Russian Revolution of 1905, Emperor Francis Joseph conceded manhood suffrage to Austria. After the successful Russian Revolution of 1917, the Emperor Karl talked of Democracy, proclaimed the ideal of an Austria composed of cqual privileged nationalities, furthered franchise reform in Hungary, and tried to conciliate the Czechs, really counted in the balance was the attrition of her means of transport, the wearing out of her rails, her locomotives, her wagons, the dearth of the simplest agricultural implements, the massacre of her horses, and paralysis of a primitive industry which could no longer supply even the spades and the horse shoes which she required. She could not import, she could not produce. She collapsed, partly because her organization was primitive, and partly because her bureaucracy was too stupid, too disloyal, too distrustful to improvise an efficient, popular substitute for itself.
In a less degree, Austria presented the same features. She, too, is primarily an agricultural nation. Her organization also is relatively medieval in mind. Her rhythm of work is slow and easy going. Even her agriculture (to say nothing of her industry) as Herr Naumann puts it, is in Austria twenty, and in Hungary forty years behind that of Germany. Like Russia, she exports food in normal times. Like Russia, she has come near starvation in time of war. If her bureaucracy was much less corrupt and much less stupid than that of Russia, it also has shrunk from the test of fostering a popular substitute for itself. There is a limit to the endurance of every state engaged in this war. The Russian limit was three years. There is some absolute figure which measures Austrian endurance. It may be four years; a little less or a little more; it may be five. It is not indefinitely elastic, because the Austrian mechanism shows in a much less degree the same fatal incapacity as the Russian: it can not replace its own worn out parts.
Most of us realize today that the period of Russia endurance was shortened because the Entente turned a deaf ear to her pleading, and refused to revise its war aims. The same symptoms are evident within the Central Alliance. Since the Emperor Karl first came to the throne and cleared the ministries of the men who made the war, Austria has stood within the central group, as Russia stood within the Entente, for a moderate programme, a status quo settlement of territorial questions, and the reconstruction of European society on the basis of disarmament, and arbitration. Like Russia, she renounced all conquests for herself, and even now the re drawing of the Rumanian frontier on which Hungary has insisted, though bad in principle, is trivial in extent.
War weariness always seeks a theoretical disguise, which may, none the less, be sincere. When the Russian Revolution in its early stages renounced the dream of Constantinople, called for the abandonment of all imperialism, and began to evolve the simple, but farreaching philosophy of self determination, it saw before it the limit of its active participation in the war. Stripped of academic refineIn the long run, the working out of the parallel between Austria and Russia is a question only of time. The ultimate factor in this war, as in any protracted modern war, is economic endurance. The collapse of Russia had its local and temperamental features which cannot be reproduced elsewhere. Ultimately, it meant that a backward agrtcultural nation cannot survive a long war of attrition on the present scale. There were picturesque aggravations of Russia case her Rasputin, her Empress, her tendency to theoretical extremes. What