The New Germany

by George Young

But, apart from such moral considerations which must in the long run defeat our policy of segregating Austro-Germans, that policy might have been seen to be impolitic even in its most material and immediate aspects.

The idea of a union of Germany and Austria presented itself to our minds as an aggrandisement of Germany. But if the union of Germany and Austria would have been a concession to the force of German nationality, yet it would have been no reinforcement of German nationalism. Union with German-Austria would indeed have been the best guarantee against Germany's relapse into Prussianism. For the marriage of Prussia and Austria would not be due to affection nor to ambition nor even to advantage, but to affinity. German-Austria might indeed consider herself fortunate in having a relation bound by family ties to take her for better or worse, for richer or poorer, with all her dowry of decrepitude and debt. "Tu felix Austria nube" would have acquired a new meaning.

The phrase, "union of Germany with Austria" might suggest a great extension eastwards of German imperialism over Eastern Europe and Asia Minor. But a glance at the map shows that, whereas previously Germany enjoyed by alliance with Austria political control eastwards to the Carpathians and Balkans and economic control to the Ægean and Black Sea, now Germany is barricaded on the east at its national frontier by strong national States; and by union with German-Austria would receive an extension of its own national frontier not eastward but southward. The effect of union with Austria would be to add to Germany not another East Prussia or Silesia, but another Baden or Bavaria.

What would be the political consequence of this geographical extension southward? We all know the blood differences between Southerner and Northerner in German politics. The North with a Protestant and Prussian mentality, a bureaucratic and burgher government, an efficient and energetic morale, a land of big business and big battalions; and the south a Catholic and conservative mentality, an easy-going and eclectic morale, a land of fat farms and the fine arts. And war and revolution have only changed without lessening these differences. The new Austrian province in the south would have acted as ballast to steady the rollings of the Ship of State, top-heavy with its northern profiteers and proletariat. Nor would we be right if we assumed from the short-lived Räte-Republik of Munich that Vienna would bring an accession of strength to the Communists. It is the clerical Centrum, Parliamentary Government and Federalism that would have benefited from the Union.

And, not only as a community, but as individuals, Austrians would have a useful political rôle in the new German democracy. Some of us may have noticed how the Bavarians and Rheinländers come to the front in Germany as liberal speakers and writers. The Austrians would have brought a like leaven into the lump of half-baked German civilisation. The Austrian in all the elegancies of life is as superior to the German as he is inferior to him in all life's efficiencies. Finally, they would have served as interpreters and intermediaries between Germans and other races. It is as difficult to dislike an Austrian as to like a Prussian.

As to the material effect of the Union, we find that the total population of the German Republic after union would have been no more than was that of the German Empire before the war. At the beginning of the war the latter was 68 millions. Up to January, 1919, the excess of deaths over births was 700,000, the war casualties 1.8 millions. Losses in Alsace-Lorraine, Posen and Schleswig will reduce this, at least, to 61 millions and probably to below 60 millions. German-Austria cannot bring in more than 9 millions and may bring in as little as 6 millions. So that Germany would about have regained in the south what it has lost in the east, north and west.

Now, as to money. The public debt of Austria, without Hungary, was 83.17 milliard kronen. This has still to be apportioned among the new national States; but even on the most favourable basis for German-Austria, that of population, it will mean a debt of about 30 milliard kronen with an annual charge of 1.5 milliards. This will mean a much heavier charge per head than that in Germany. The note circulation was 37.5 milliards, of which less than 10 per cent. is secured in gold; and a restoration of the currency will therefore be a costly business.

Economically, German-Austria is a poor country with a few prosperous rural districts and an imperial capital. Its agriculture produces between half and two-thirds per acre of the average German production. Its live stock is so depleted as to be practically destroyed. Its few factories and inferior railways are in worse condition even than the German, which is saying much. It has no coal supplies and no port. As to Vienna, it is difficult to say what will happen to it. It may have a future as the land-port of Germany on the east, as Hamburg is on the west, and as a commercial and financial centre for the new nations; but for the next few years it will be in industrial and financial liquidation, as the imperial banks and businesses reorganise and redistribute themselves among the nations. Vienna's machine, motor and railway works and the Alpine Montant Company with large iron ore deposits, are the most important assets that go with German-Austria. Of course, there are wealthy industrial districts and mineral deposits in German-Bohemia and the Sudetic country, but the question of their union with Germany is a different one. The Bohemian Republic is making a strong bid to the industrial "interests" of these German districts, which fear the competition of Saxony should they enter the German union. It will be interesting to see whether this alliance between plutocracy and diplomacy will avail to keep these German populations permanently in the Tchech State. But with the exception of a few dynastic, clerical and capitalistic interests, German-Austria is to-day German, not Austrian.

You would have a better idea of the difference between German-Austria and the old Austrian Empire if you had visited Dr. Hartmann, the representative of German-Austria in the old Austrian Embassy in Berlin. There, in a palladian palace that was once a centre of the peculiar blend of courtly brilliance and corrupt brutality with which the Austrian Empire kept itself going, you found a modest rather melancholy don and a young secretary; looking like lost souls of a national democracy buried in the sarcophagus of imperialist diplomacy. But after a few minutes' talk you also found that these mild-mannered men represented that force that broke to fragments the Iron Crown of the House of Habsburg, and that will break its way to Union over the paper barricade of the Hall of Mirrors.

There is, indeed, nothing to be said for the insistence of the Supreme Council at Paris on delaying the union of Austro-Germany with Germany. The forcible splitting off of East Prussia and the subjection of millions of Germans to Polish, Tchecho-Slovak and Yugo-Slav governments, though indefensible in principle, may be defended by practical arguments—for instance that these German ports and lands are geographically essential to the new States, while their German population will be a valuable element in them. The assignment of the Tyrol to Italy may have a diplomatic defence as a design to falsify future relations between Germans and Italians, to the advantage of France and England. The acquisition of German Lorraine and the Saar valley by France may be explained by the policy of making France industrially independent of Germany and of preventing any future economic hegemony of Germany in Europe. An insistence on Austro-Germany entering the German Republic might have been explained as an attempt to save Germany from Bolshevism and Prussianism, and to keep it quiet. But an insistence on Austro-Germany remaining independent, with its corollary in the intrigues for a separate Rhine Republic, seem to me as diplomatically ill-considered as they are democratically ill-conceived. We intended a material injury to German nationalists, but we have only inflicted a mortal insult on the German nation.