366 THE CLASS STRUGGLE DOCUMENTS 367 ments, its policy was a call for the dropping of all war aims which might prolong the war. Official Austria has adopted a more conservative philosophy, the Catholic pacifism of the Papal Note. It is lukewarm and uncertain about the democratic theory of self determination. It looks further into the future than the Russians did, and lays stress (as they did not) on disarmament, partly perhaps as a means of lessening its own dependence on the Prussian war machine, but chiefly because it dreads the prospect of bankruptcy. He would be a blind cynic who doubted the sincerity of the Emperor pacifism; there are phrases in all his public declarations which could have been coined only by a mind which had reached its position by its own mental travail. None the less, the brutal fact is very simple, and it dues not differ from the Russian fact. Austria renounces conquests for herself, and calls on her allies as loudly as she dares, to renounce them also, primarily because she knows that she cannot stagger without permanent ruin through an indefinitely prolonged war.
Count Czernin pleaded, as Kerensky pleaded, for moderation, because Austria, like Russia, is very nearly worn out. His fate has been the same. He has not moved his allies. He has had to acquiesce, though with no direct profit to Austria, in the cruel eastern peace. On the eve of his fall he stood helpless before the consequences of his failure the ascendancy of the German war lords, the inevitable refusal of the western Powers to make peace on the basis of German domination, the renewal of the offensive in the west and the prolongation of the war, which he had desperately tried to shorten. He has fallen, as Kerenski fell, in the hopeless effort at once to secure a moderate peace and to please his own allies.
Up to this point, the parallel between the cases of Austria and Russia is close. Is it destined to be closer yet? There are unluckily sharp differences as well as likenesses. Germany exerts over her ally a power which Great Britain and France did not posses over Russia.
There is, moreover, in the Magyar and German governing classes of the Dual Monarchy an element which responds to Berlin far more promptly than any element in Russia responded to London or Paris.
The Emperor may seek to explain or repudiate his compromising letter; Count Czernin may rally in public speeches to the defense of Alsace, and resign when complications overwhelm him. None the less, the economic reasons which drive Austria imperatively to an early peace, are still operative. Count Czernin anxiety was very legible in his last speech. He seems to dread not so much mass movement for peace on the part of the working class, which may repeat the general strike of January, as the refusal of the Slavs to be reconciled, and to take part in any reorganization and consolidation of the monarchy.
The Czechs in particular have played a part which exactly reproduces the tactics of Sinn Fein in Ireland. They want no settlement arranged at Vienna: they cling doggedly to the hope of a settlement dictated by the Peace Conference. In Russia, all the masses wanted an early peace. In Austria the Slav politicians, and still more the Slav exiles, are driven by the logic of their maximum demands to desire a prolongation of the war, since at no less a price can they hope for a settlement dictated by the Entente. There was in Russia no such fundamental division of opinion. The Emperor may have behind him the mass of the German working class of Austria, but he cannot reckon, for all his liberalism and his desire for reconciliation, on the support of his Slavs. Even if he were to break finally with the German and Magyar parties of ascendancy, he has no assurance that he would gain the Czechs, or even the Poles and the South Slavs.
While the war lasts, he is condemned by these internal divisions to impotence. Nothing less than the conviction that a forcible settlement of internal questions is excluded will bring the Slavs to compromise. Austria can take no decided action on her own initiative; yet she knows that the failure to act may be her ruin. The refusal of the Entente to consider the needs of Russia led to her collapse and disintegration. The refusal of Germany to consider the needs of Austria may have consequences even more disastrous to her. Her influence will not count again among the Central Powers until Germany experiences another period of war weariness, more acute than that of last summer. Passive, hopeless and hunger driven, in what condition will Austria emerge from the ordeal. The Public)
Mr. Gompers and the British Labor Party (By a Member of the British Labor Party)
The great gulf which is fixed between Mr. Gompers and British labor is still there, in spite of the happy party in New York the other day at which Mr. Gompers flayed Mr. Paul Kellogg, presumably (for there is no contrary evidence) with the assent of the labor delegation sent by the British Government to this country. The press may play the ostrich; but the fact remains that Mr. Kellogg is a more trustworthy exponent of the present spirit and outlook of British labor than Mr. Appleton. This is no reflection on Mr. Appleton, for he is a good man; but he and his colleagues belong to the same school and stage of labor leadership as Mr. Gompers. The British labor move