The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF

Germany’s shining armour, could continue the pursuance of its cherished ideas of territorial aggrandisement and rule over the nations in the good old way of centralisation and absolutism.

The predominant factor was her dynasty, which, secluded on the summit of its exalted position, wrapped as in an impenetrable cloud in the belief in its divine right, never stooped to the reality of modern exigencies nor tried to act in harmony with the spirit of the time or the wants and needs of its peoples. The advent of democracy meant for it the loss of its prerogatives, and, like one of his predecessors, Ferdinand the Catholic, who preferred to rule over a desert than to govern an empire of heretics, Francis Joseph preferred not to rule at all than to rule according to some new and by him detested principle.

There was no soul in Austria-Hungary, she was always lacking an ideal, as Napoleon used to say of her. The ideal that could save Austria and spare Europe the awful slaughter of our days, was the complete enfranchisement of her nations and the reconstruction of the Empire on a broad and sincere democratic basis. But that which seems most natural and easy for a Western mind was a most difficult thing to accomplish in Austria-Hungary. It meant really the advent of a new world; it meant a complete change in the ruling psychology, it would be the abandonment of deeply rooted prejudices, the forsaking

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