II.
Not only were the consequences of the Bukarest treaty disastrous to Pangerman ambitions in the Balkan peninsula, they also, to the boundless fury of William II., considerably accelerated that internal political evolution of Austria-Hungary which of itself had already threatened to upset all his plans.
Unfortunately the notions held about Austria-Hungary in France, and above all, in England, have far too long been of a very vague nature. Public opinion in France and England was totally unable to grasp the situation, when war broke out. It was incapable of seeing the important part played during the war, and to be played after the war, by the populations living in the Hapsburg Monarchy. The vast majority of these peoples devoutly pray for the victory of the Triple Entente, for they only fight against it because they are forcibly constrained to do so. At heart they look to the victory of the Allies for deliverance from a hateful yoke which has weighed on them heavily for centuries. That is why it is of the utmost importance to educate public opinion in the allied countries as to the actual racial facts in Austria-Hungary. Then it will be clearly understood of what abominable treason Francis Joseph was guilty against his peoples; then it will be clearly understood also that as these peoples were more and more inclined, before the war, to lean to the side of France and England, quite as much as to that of Russia, William II. had a strong additional motive for precipitating hostilities.
THE NATIONALITIES IN AUSTRIA-HUNGARY.
The nine different nationalities who live in the Hapsburg Monarchy can be divided into four races:
| Germanic. | |
|---|---|
| Germans | 12,000,000 |
| Magyar. | |
| Magyars (peculiar race of Asiatic origin) | 10,000,000 |
| Latin. | |
| Italians | 1,000,000 |
| Roumanian | 3,000,000 |
| 4,000,000 | |
| Slav. | |
| Czecks and Slovak | 8,500,000 |
| Poles | 5,000,000 |
| Ruthenes | 3,500,000 |
| Slovenes | 1,000,000 |
| Serbo-Croats | 6,000,000 |
| 24,000,000 | |
In a political sense the Germans and Magyars, forming a total of 22 millions, have agreed since 1867 to exercise and maintain for their own profit the supremacy over the Slavs and Latins, although these latter form the majority of the subjects of the Monarchy, since they constitute a group of 28 million inhabitants.
Now, it is needful to note and it is important to remember, that the figures which I quote, are incorrect, because they are those furnished by the Government statistics at Vienna and at Budapest by German and Magyar officials. These have their instructions to use various artful tricks for falsifying systematically the true statistics in favour of their own races, in order to contribute by that stratagem to the maintenance, as long as possible, of the supremacy held by the Germans and the Magyars. In truth, there are in Austria-Hungary far less than 22 million Germans and Magyars, and far more than 28 Slavs and Latins. What again is certain, is that for centuries the Slavs and Latins have been oppressed in Austria-Hungary in the most odious fashion by a feudal aristocracy, who engross enormous landed properties, and who exercise in the Hapsburg Monarchy as baneful a social influence as that of the Junkers in Prussia.
With the exception of the Polish aristocracy of Galicia and a small group of Ruthenes, who since 1867 joined hands with the Germans, all these Slavs and Latins have been endeavouring to the very utmost, especially for the last thirty years, to obtain, in accordance with modern justice, such political rights as are proportionate to their numbers. In that way they hope to win for themselves in the Monarchy the legal majority that is their due, by reason of their being human flesh and blood liable to be taxed and to be called on for service at the will of the Government.
These tendencies have long excited extreme alarm in William II. and his Pangermans. This is readily understood, for, if the political power, in the Hapsburg Monarchy, were vested, as justice demands, in the Slavs and Latins, who hate Prussianism, that in itself would have been the ruin of the Kaiser’s plan for the economic absorption of Austria-Hungary. Yet this very absorption is indispensable to William II. if he is to carry out his inadmissible plans of exclusive influence in the Balkans and in the East. His game has therefore been, especially since 1890, to say, in the main, to Francis Joseph and to the Magyars: “Above all, do not concede the claims of your Slav and Latin subjects. Keep up absolutely the Germano-Magyar supremacy. I will uphold you, with all my power, in your struggle with the Slav-Latin elements.” For a long time these tactics of the Kaiser were successful but they were on the point of breaking down a short time before the war.
In spite of the most ingenious and cynical obstacles raised by the Germans and Magyars the culture of the Slavs and Latins kept growing; their national organizations kept progressing; also they were much more prolific than their political rivals. All these conditions together gave Francis Joseph and his henchmen at Budapest increasing trouble in their efforts to resist the enlarged demands of their Latin and Slav subjects. Berlin had already become anxious on that score, when the mental effervescence stirred up among the Slavs and Latins of Austria-Hungary by the result of the Bukarest treaty suddenly changed for the worse the outlook of the Pangerman scheme.
As a matter of fact, almost the whole of the 28 million Slav and Latin subjects of the Hapsburgs had been roused to enthusiasm by the victories of the Slavs in the Balkans in 1912, and by the success of Roumania in 1913; for they saw, above all, in these events, the triumph of the principle of nationality, that is, their very own cause. Hence they became more than ever determined in their endeavours to obtain from Vienna and Budapest those political rights, proportionate to their number, which the Germano-Magyars persisted in refusing, although of late years that refusal had lost much of its energy.
If peace had been maintained, the effect of the Bukarest treaty on Austria-Hungary would have lent irresistible force to the claims of the Slav and Latin subjects of Francis Joseph. On the other hand, Roumania, exulting in her annexation of the Bulgarian Dobrudja, cast longing eyes on Transylvania, and hoped to secure it at the expense of Hungary. The moment appeared opportune when a thorough transformation of the Hapsburg Monarchy might be effected, and that transformation seemed relatively so near that Roumania already looked upon Transylvania as a ripe fruit which merely needed gathering.
If this new order of things resulting from the treaty of Bukarest had been allowed to develop fully, the influence of Germanism would have been infallibly ruined in the Hapsburg Monarchy, just as had happened in the Balkans. Under the growing pressure of her Slav and Latin elements the partition, or at any rate, the evolution towards federation of Austria-Hungary would have become a necessity. This federalism would not have affected the frontiers of the Hapsburg Dominions, but it would necessarily, and without doubt, have given political preponderance to the Slav and Latin elements, which were the most numerous and the most prolific. Now, those elements form an enormous majority, which was and is resolutely hostile to any alliance with Germany. Thus, progressively, the Hapsburg Monarchy in evolution would have become more and more independent of Berlin in regard to her foreign policy, and as it gradually shook itself free from its bondage to Berlin, it would, as a necessary consequence, have drawn closer and closer to Russia, France and England. Thus Germany would have been deprived of the artificial prop which she has found at Vienna and at Budapest ever since the days of Sadowa through the Germano-Magyar predominance. Finally, as a result of peaceful development, William II. would have been confronted by a state of things in Austria-Hungary which would have opposed a far more formidable barrier to his oriental ambitions than that which was created in 1913 in the Balkans, as a consequence of the treaty of Bukarest.
If we bear in mind the powerful and extraordinarily important series of after-effects which must have followed on the new situation produced by the treaty of Bukarest and its inevitable influence on the 28 million Slavs and Latins of Austria-Hungary, we can readily understand that had the European peace been maintained, the chances of executing the Pangerman plan would have been totally and simultaneously ruined in Turkey, in the Balkans, and in Austria-Hungary; that is to say in the three territorial zones which, as will be seen from Chapter III, constituted by far the most important part of the regions mapped out for Pangerman operations in the plan of 1911.
Thus we see how the internal evolution of Austria-Hungary had reached a point at which, as the result of the treaty of Bukarest, it was just about to escape for ever from the influence of Berlin; this would have broken the pivot on which all the Pangerman combinations revolved. It was that consideration which decided William II. to make war at once.