The World Crisis

by Winston S. Churchill

  Vain to assemble such contrary elements in an Empire Parliament house. Vain to suppose that the processes and amenities of English House of Commons procedure would afford expression to such bitter divergencies. Parliaments can only flourish when fundamentals are agreed or at least accepted by the great majority of all parties. In the Parliaments of the Hapsburgs bands of excited deputies sat and howled at each other by the hour in rival languages, accompanying their choruses with the ceaseless slamming of desks which eventually by a sudden crescendo swelled into a cannonade. All gave rein to hatred; and all have paid for its indulgence with blood and tears.

  These racial manifestations and their allied, though not coincident socialistic and proletarian tendencies were viewed with gnawing anxiety by the cultured, privileged, land-owning aristocracy, by the numerous hierarchies of officials and by the military classes upon whom the defence of property, the cohesion of the Empire and the maintenance of the monarchy depended. Three or four Irelands, at once Sinn Fein and socialistic, brawled together and wrenched at the structure of the Empire, while the powerful governing classes whose safety and prosperity were wrapt in its survival, watched the scene with wrath, fear and perplexity. Thus the twentieth century dawned upon the sixty million persons over whom the weary, stricken, tragic, octogenarian heir of the ages and their curses continued for a space to reign.

  The spectacle of Turkish decrepitude, of Balkan ambitions and Austrian decay would not be complete without the Polish dream. While along the Danube the centrifugal forces gathered momentum, the centripetal preserved an undying energy on both sides of the Vistula. Here lay the famous kingdom of Poland, for one hundred and thirty years partitioned between the three military empires which surrounded it, but treasuring always the hope of freedom and reunion and capable of shaking to their very vitals every one of its three devourers. Deep hidden in the vaults of Warsaw reposed the old banners of the Polish nation. Helpless in the talons of the three Imperial eagles, closely woven into the texture of the three proud armies, liable at any moment to be marched against each other in compulsory fratricidal strife, twenty or thirty million Poles awaited the day when amid the ruins of Empires, their hidden flags would once again salute the daylight. Here too was a dream which has not failed.

  The creaking and straining system of the Dual Monarchy revolved ponderously around the person of the aged Emperor. Francis Joseph had ascended his throne in 1848 amid executions, martial law and the rigorous suppression of revolt. He had sustained every kind of public tribulation and domestic tragedy. His brother the Emperor Maximilian had been executed in Mexico by a rebel firing party. His only son Rudolf, heir to the throne, had perished tragically in 1889. His wife had been stabbed through the heart on a jetty at Geneva by an Italian anarchist. He had never declared a foreign war he did not lose, nor bent himself to a domestic policy which was not evidently failing. In 1859 the fields of Solferino and Magenta had stripped him of north Italy. In 1866 the battle of Sadowa had transferred the hegemony of Germany from Austria to Prussia. Hungary against whom he had warred with severity asserted a challenging separatism in the heart of the Empire. Bohemia, whom he would never recognize as a partner, chafed bitterly under his hands.

  However, he lived and thrived. He had sat on the throne for more than sixty years when King Edward VII died. At seventy-five he was not only well preserved, but vigorous. He walked far; he could still ride: his chief amusement was shooting boar and bears and deer. He had borne his bereavements stoically. He was jealous of his brother Maximilian; he did not love his wife; he had been on bad terms with all his family, some of whom had incurred a public notoriety which by his rigid standards was beyond any pardon; he politely acquiesced in the existence of his nephew, the new heir, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand; but he could never forgive him for his love-marriage. General Marchenko, Russian Military Attaché at Vienna from 1905 to 1911, in memoirs which are a definite contribution to history, says that a colleague, Major von Bülow, the German Attaché (brother of the German Ex-Chancellor, and afterwards killed in Belgium), remarked upon the Emperor’s troubles: ‘He is used to all that. Without a misfortune in the day’s work he would be bored.’ Marchenko himself says that Francis Joseph ‘regarded his defeats and reverses as sacrifices to fortune.’ A courtly, sagacious, crabbed, disillusioned old gentleman, reared in the purple, harassed from youth up by awful public responsibilities, with an ever-present self-questioning about their adequate discharge.

  In the closing phase of his reign he had become almost an automaton. He discharged routine duties without pleasure, indeed with distaste, punctually and assiduously, literally from dawn to dusk. He rose usually at four in the morning, and, dressed in his sky-blue uniform, drank his coffee at his desk amid official portfolios and files. His wish was to go to sleep not later than eight o’clock at night. He resented keenly all functions which interrupted this rule. When compelled to entertain company he dined as late as five or even six o’clock in the afternoon. Otherwise, although in Vienna the usual hour was between eight and nine o’clock, the Emperor took his evening meal between three and four. Alone upon his rocky pinnacle from which the tides of time had sunk, this venerable, conscientious functionary continued in harness pulling faithfully at the collar, mostly in the right direction, to the last gasp.

  A living picture of the Court is given by Baron von Margutti who was for the last seventeen years of the Empire high in the Household. Francis Joseph lived in intimacy with a curious small coterie consisting of two septuagenarian aides-de-camp—Count Paar and Baron Bolfras, who was also chief of the military cabinet—and Count Beck, seventy years of age in 1906, and perhaps the Emperor’s one trusted male friend. All these three men stood around the centre of power. They had dwelt there before most of Francis Joseph’s subjects had been born. Their lives were wrapped up in the service of the Emperor. Paar, ably served by younger men, dealt with all the questions, great and small, of etiquette and a large part of patronage. Bolfras presided over the court side of the military sphere; but he brooded over higher matters of policy, had constant occasions to give his advice, and indeed claims to have both counselled and planned in 1878 the original occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Beck, who had served the Emperor for fifty years in 1906, managed and looked after all the movements and public appearances of his beloved master. He knew exactly how he liked reviews, manœuvres, inspections of camps or garrisons, and every non-political public activity to be conducted. He studied the imperial wants and idiosyncrasies; he protected his Sovereign from every kind of minor annoyance; he also no doubt supplied him with a stream of antiquated opinion upon military matters, for he had been, in his day, Chief of the Staff of the Austro-Hungarian army.

  Such was this ancient band of survivors eminently Victorian, unswervingly faithful, who surrounded the very old but clear-headed potentate in whose person all the loyalties of a disrupting Empire centred, and against whose régime all its hatreds welled.

  The Emperor had one other confidante. Katharina Schratt, the daughter of a post-master in Baden, near Vienna, had been in the eighties a successful actress. Francis Joseph admired her beauty, charm and humour. The Empress welcomed her. She became associated with the Court. For over thirty years she was the Emperor’s cherished friend. Whether at Schönbrunn or Ischl her discreet dwelling was always close at hand. Very early in the mornings the old gentleman would leave his palace by a private door and walking by carefully-secluded paths would breakfast with Frau Schratt, ‘always good-tempered and smiling,’ in an old-fashioned room ‘with a white-clothed table, gay with flowers.’ Here he found peace, happiness, and a window on the world, which none of his punctually-handled portfolios would have given him.

  Frau von Schratt, as she came to be called, was extremely well informed upon all kinds of public and social matters. Ministers, bankers, nobles and actors found it both wise and agreeable to keep in touch with her. ‘She was,’ says Tschuppik, ‘the link between the Emperor and the outer world. She was his newspaper; f
rom her he learnt more… than from all his ministers put together:… it was often only from her that he learnt the truth.’ Indeed on the tragic morning when the suicide or murder of the Emperor’s only son had to be announced to him, it was to Frau von Schratt that the Empress Elizabeth turned, and the two women went together to break the news. This gifted woman, who had within limits the power to make and mar, remained always a private figure. She never abused her position to amass a fortune or aggrandize herself. She spoke to the Emperor on matters of State with tact and modesty. But she knew how to tell him what she believed was for his good; and he was always ready to listen and ponder on all she said. Her influence was jealously resented by the Court Chamberlain, the Count of Montenuovo, the guardian of etiquette and correctitude. He laboured continually to disturb the relationship between her and his Imperial master; but he laboured without success. This companionship was Francis Joseph’s only happiness. He held tenaciously to it to the end.

  It remains to be said that the Emperor, of course, was a strong Conservative. He thought that old-fashioned habits and methods and a conservative outlook were enjoined upon him by his position and by the complicated texture of his Empire. He did not conceal his abhorrence of innovation. He would never use a lift, avowed dislike for electrical appliances, detested the telephone, only rode in a motor-car to please King Edward, and disapproved of flying. All we can say with our superior knowledge is that in these unfashionable opinions he has not yet been proved wrong.

  The death of the Crown Prince Rudolf in 1889 transferred the succession to the Emperor’s brother Charles, and on the latter’s death in 1896 it passed to his eldest son, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand.1 The Heir-Apparent had the advantage of being educated without any expectation of the throne. He was a fine-looking man of moderate ability, simple tastes, tactless manners, a sincere character and a strong will. From his maternal grandfather, the ‘Bomb King’ of Sicily, he inherited a distrust of strangers and a tendency to believe himself disliked. It is said of him that he once remarked to his Chief of Staff: ‘You generally expect that every man will prove an angel…. For my part, I always assume that anyone I see for the first time is a scoundrel, and later on, if possible, I revise my opinion.’

  At the castle of the Archduke Frederick at Pressburg he was a welcome guest, because it was hoped he might marry the eldest daughter-princess. However, it was gradually suspected that his interest was engaged by a young maid of honour, a German-Czech lady of honourable but not elevated parentage, Countess Chotek. Cross-questioned by her mistress the Archduchess Isabella, the Countess Chotek disposed of these rumours by a complete denial. But one day during a holiday by the Adriatic the Archduchess picked up by chance a locket dropped unwittingly by its owner. She opened the locket and found therein a miniature of Franz Ferdinand with the inscription ‘Thine for ever.’ She recognized the locket as usually worn by the Countess Chotek.

  No time was lost in dismissing the maid of honour. The sequel startled the Austrian world. Franz Ferdinand, considering that he had compromised a young lady and involved her in disgrace and dismissal, gave full reign to the passion of his life. He announced at once that he would marry her. The old Emperor, who had planned to wed his new heir to the widow of his son Rudolf, the Crown Princess Stephanie, was deeply shocked; Vienna was thrilled, and the Dual Monarchy agog. A score of obstacles, arguments and vetoes were interposed. Franz Ferdinand crashed through them all. He signed an act of renunciation of any right to the throne for his future wife and children. He was ready to renounce it for himself, if need be. The marriage took place. This was the greatest, the happiest and the grandest event of his life. They were a devoted couple, inseparable in life—and death.

  However, persistent and renewing complications disturbed the rigid etiquette of the Imperial Court. The Archduke Franz Ferdinand was a figure of the highest importance, and as the Emperor aged, he was bound to play an ever-increasing and almost dominant part in the politics and military affairs of the Empire. There was one key which always unlocked his regard. The ceremonial treatment accorded to his wife was for him decisive. She was by Hungarian law, whose generous principles considered only the fact of marriage, bound to become Queen of Hungary on her husband’s accession to the Empire. In Austria, however, her precedence was lowly, and kept lowly, and embarrassing situations arose at every public function at which both sexes were present. With the birth of his children the Archduke found a new incentive. He looked back with remorse upon his oath of renunciation of their rights. ‘Ease would retract vows made in pain, as violent and void.’ To procure for his loved ones the recognition which he deemed their due became the paramount object of his life. The Countess Chotek fanned this flame incessantly. ‘The woman’s ambition,’ said the suffragan Bishop of Vienna to Margutti, ‘is unbridled and her unusual intelligence will soon show her the way to translate it into actual fact.’

  The Kaiser William2 was not slow to pick up the obvious key and fit it in the all-important lock. Before his marriage Franz Ferdinand was antagonistic to the Germans, hated the Kaiser and spoke of him with even more than his usual candour. But William II took pains. Whenever he passed through Vienna, it was to the Countess Chotek that he paid special attention. Friendship was soon established. Franz Ferdinand and his wife, invited to Berlin, were entertained with every possible honour. At the banquet the adoption of small round tables enabled the Kaiser to place the Countess at his side without departing from the rules. Compliments and courtesies were unceasing. The Countess Chotek, who was a charming woman, amiable, capable and discreet, became a German partisan. She spoke of the Kaiser in terms of the highest regard and admiration. She had no difficulty in carrying her husband with her. He discarded his former prejudices and from 1908 or 1909 onwards the two men were close friends. The old Emperor continued to disapprove the marriage, but as the weight of years descended upon him, resigned himself to events. Meanwhile the charge of the Imperial Army and the Navy devolved upon the Heir-Apparent and in spite of the prejudices and resistances of Francis Joseph and his ancient military cabinet, very considerable reforms were introduced into the army, especially in the artillery, and it was gradually Germanized, and furnished with new weapons and young leaders.

  Foremost among these new chiefs stood—to give him for the first and last time his full title—General of Infantry Franz, Freiherr Conrad von Hötzendorf. In 1914 his name was scarcely known outside his own country. Even during the conflict his repute did not extend outside purely military circles. The large, agitated publics who devoured the war news in France, England or America never heard of him. Nevertheless he played a greater part in the World War and in its origins than any other of the sixty million subjects of the Hapsburg Empire. He was in fact the Commander of all their armies during the greater part of the war. He made the plans, he conducted the mobilization and fought almost all the battles. He went beyond these important duties. He was a diplomat as well as a soldier, a politician as well as a strategist. Indeed it is said by those who knew him that he was a politician first and a soldier second. He represented that most dangerous of combinations, a Chief of the General Staff absorbed in Foreign Policy. What Ludendorff became in 1917, Conrad was already some ten years earlier.

  Born in 1852 the son of a Colonel of Hussars, Conrad mounted steadily the grades of the Austrian army. As a lecturer and a writer upon tactics and military training he was one of those apostles of the Offensive for whom machine guns and barbed wire had prepared so many disillusions. In 1906 the Archduke Franz Ferdinand entrusted him with the reorganization of the Imperial armies and marked him out for the first military position both in peace and war. Conrad was inspired in his duties by an intense realization of the dire and increasing peril of the Empire. He saw it racked at home by racial stresses and surrounded by fierce, powerful and hungry foreign foes. Russia, Italy, Roumania and above all Serbia, seemed to him enemies who waited but for the chance to fall upon the dying Empire and carve their fortunes from its body. Russia covet
ed Galacia, Roumania aimed at Transylvania; Italy sought the redemption of the Tirol and the Adriatic coast; while Serbia, aspiring to found with Russian sympathy a great kingdom for the Southern Slavs, seemed to Conrad the most malignant and hateful of all. It cannot be denied that when the time came all these countries proved themselves mortal enemies of the Austrian Empire, nor that they all invaded or threatened the provinces on which their hearts were set; nor that three out of the four have gained their objects in the main, if not to the full.

  FIELD-MARSHAL CONRAD VON HÖTZENDORF

  Studying these strategic problems as a soldier, Conrad convinced himself that if all his country’s enemies combined, ruin was certain. He wished therefore to fight them one by one. ‘We must,’ he said, ‘take the first opportunity of reckoning with our most vulnerable enemy… lest our foes… deliver a blow.’ He was ‘for… knocking out each enemy as occasion arose, so as to be sure that they would not all set upon Austria simultaneously.’ He believed in preventive wars and was convinced Austria could fight two or three in succession; first Italy, then Serbia, and so on. For nearly ten years he laid siege to the Emperor. His persistency often offended his master, and his sincerity and ability won him renewed opportunities to offend. In the end he had his way. Constant dropping wears away stone.