The Petite Entente of Czecho-Slovakia, Serbia, and Roumania, is strongly opposed to a reunion of Austria and Hungary, and would stop it by force of arms. The Czechs are equally opposed to union with Germany.
"So what do you say?" I asked of a Czech. "Do you think that what is left of Austria ought to be divided up between her neighbours?"
"God forbid!" said he. "We've got enough Germans in Czecho-Slovakia already. Austria can very well exist by herself. Does not Switzerland exist by herself, and do very well, without half the natural advantages of the new Austria?"
The French solution for the problem is known to lie in the possible detachment of Bavaria from Germany, and the setting up of a new South-German State in union with Austria. Only on such terms would France agree to Austria joining part of Germany. The Bavarians, however, show no signs of desiring to cut loose from the still great German confederation. A purely deliberative plebiscite taken in the Austrian Tyrol is all for union with Germany. A similar plebiscite in the province of Salzburg shows the same tendency, another in Styria is certain to go the same way. These plebiscites are called passive propaganda by the French, and they for their part egg on the Petite Entente to stop them. But there seems little doubt that were Austria free to choose she would now give up her name and fame, and merge herself in the German whole of which, ethnographically, she is a natural part.
How strange that all the luxury and glamour of Vienna, as you see it at this moment, is the concomitant of complete decline and mortal peril. In arriving in the city one felt at last that one was in Europe, but it proves to be not the Europe of the future. Vienna in 1921 is part of the sunset of that old radiant, peaceful Europe we knew before the war. Night has to swallow it up, and the future lies on other horizons, in Prague and Belgrade and Budapest, in the capitals of that new Europe which arises from the defeat and ruin of the war.
N.B.—By Article 10 of the Treaty of Versailles, "Germany recognises and respects strictly the independence of Austria, and recognises that this independence is inalienable unless the League of Nations gives consent to change." And by Article 88 of the Treaty of Saint-Germain Austria engages "to abstain from all acts calculated to prejudice her independence either directly or indirectly."
[1] Travellers to Austria are seldom warned beforehand that there is an internal and external rate of exchange, and they frequently lose 50% on the exchange of their money.
EXTRA LEAVES
(iii) On Money and League of Nations Currency
In the course of this little tour of Europe I bought 1,000 francs and 4,000 liras, and 1,500 drachmas, 3,000 dinars, and the same number of levas, some lei and 20,000 piastres, 7,000 Hungarian crowns and 32,000 Austrian crowns, 3,000 Czech crowns, 10,000 German marks, 15,000 odd Polish marks, 500 Belgian francs, and some paper money of the principality of Monaco.