560 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE AWAKENING OF AUSTRIA 561 The Awakening of Austria old song which we used to sing in the 90 s, beginning with the words: The state is in danger, it never was anywhere else, and ending with the line: To with all the states; the people will survive anyway. To day that is perhaps a very great consolation to some, but the knowledge that it is so has made it possible for us to bear our lot in this Austria of ours.
It does not require any skill today, to speak disrespectfully of Austria. It goes against my grain to do so just at this particular time when it is open and evident that the bankruptcy of this old state is a fact.
VICTOR ADLER Last Speech (Delivered in the Austrian Parliament, October 4, 1918. The debate which we are conducting cannot be viewed in the proper light unless we always keep in mind the background on which it is based. The people of all the states and territories, without distinction, are exhausted and starved, and have but one thought, Let us stop! We have had enough. am not of the opinion that it is a wise thing to make political considerations depend on the war map. But it seems that the political leaders, of other nationalities, are addicted to the same error that those of the German nation have these five years been making, the error of jingoism at the time when the war map looks to be in their favor. Even from a purely selfish point of view it is not wise to permit a given moment to be decisive with respect to our sentiments, and thereupon to make our political attitude an outgrowth of these sentiments.
There have been times when the Slav gentlemen were in a different mood, and the Germans too. Neither the hysteria of invincibility nor of despair is the way to arrive at a sane, clear political course. The gentlemen of the German National Association can not take offense if we recall only with bitterness, the time when they led the people of Vienna to the monument of the Teutonic Knights and entered the war with joy and ecstasy, when the song of Prince Eugene alternated with the Austrian national hymn, whereas we who kept our heads were regarded as guilty of high treason; and if the gentlemen had had their way, we would have been treated the same as the Bosnians, the Italians, the Ruthenians, the Poles, the Czechs, the way all the world was treated. They did not scare us. We stuck to our guns.
Neither do we now hang our flag at half mast or become broken in spirit. It merely serves to revive the memory of the It is not my place to moralize just now. We can readily understand the bitterness that emanates from the speeches, but it is our duty in this solemn hour to restrain bitter sentiments, and to ask: What is to be done? You can readily appreciate that do not intend to propose to you to rally around the black yellow flag, forget all our differences, etc. etc. That was what the war was to have accomplished. First it was to be a cure to harden us, then it was to be a fountain of youth.
The outside world was to be deluded into believing that in the first years of the war the peoples had discovered their common destiny and the old Austria was being regenerated by war. We were not even permitted to laugh audibly for in place of sarcastic laughter there was to be found a blank space.
We knew that it was otherwise. It would have doubtless been one of the worst consequences of the war if it had led to the preservation of the old Austria Hungary, it would have meant a world historical calamity. We knew: neither victory nor defeat can bring this about. The old Austria is gone. But what we are concerned with first of all, what everyone of us must recognize as his task, our opponents included, is this: First and foremost the path to peace must be sought. That is the most important thing that all the nationalities without distinction expect from us. Not a peace at any price; that is to say, not a peace in any form, e. a peace without any future. We want to let the past rest in peace, but we want to get away from the present. Now that is naturally more than