Before the World War

In my youth, my energy was dampened by the world erecting temples of fame only in honour of businessmen and State officials.

Historical achievements seemed no longer important. The future belonged to the peaceful competition between the nations.

This simply meant a system of mutual exploitation by fraudulent means.

• The principle of resorting to the use of force in self defence was formally excluded.

Individual countries increasingly assumed commercial undertakings, grabbing territory, clients, and concessions from each other under any and every kind of pretext.

Having the support of public approbation, it seemed bound eventually to transform the world into a mammoth department store.

• The salesmen were represented by the English.
• The administrative functionaries were represented by the Germans.
• The Jews would be sacrificed to the unprofitable calling of proprietorship.
  • They constantly avow that they make no profits
  • They have the advantage of being versed in the foreign languages.

Why could I not have been born a hundred years ago during the Wars of Liberation, when a man was still of some value even though he had no ‘business’?

When the Boer War came I used to gaze intently at the newspapers and almost ‘devoured’ the telegrams and COMMUNIQUES, overjoyed to think that I could witness that heroic struggle, even though from so great a distance.

When the Russo-Japanese War came I was older and better able to judge for myself. For national reasons I sided with the Japanese in our discussions. I looked upon the defeat of the Russians as a blow to Austrian Slavism.

Many years had passed between that time and my arrival in Munich.

I now realized that the morbid decadence was only the lull before the storm. During my Vienna days, the Balkans were already in the grip of that sultry pause which presages the violent storm.

Here and there a flash of lightning could be occasionally seen; but it rapidly disappeared in sinister gloom. Then the Balkan War broke out. Then the first gusts of the forthcoming tornado swept across a highly-strung Europe.

When the news came to Munich that the Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been murdered, I had been at home all day. At first I feared that the shots may have been fired by some German-Austrian students who hated the persistent pro-Slav activities of the Heir to the Habsburg Throne.

But the assassins were Serbs. The greatest friend of the Slavs had fallen a victim to the bullets of Slav patriots.

It is unjust to the Vienna government of that time to blame it now for the form and tenor of the ultimatum which was then presented. In a similar position and under similar circumstances, no other Power in the world would have acted otherwise. On her southern frontiers Austria had a relentless mortal foe who indulged in acts of provocation against the Dual Monarchy at intervals which were becoming more and more frequent.

This persistent line of conduct would not have been relaxed until the arrival of the opportune moment for the destruction of the Empire. In Austria there was good reason to fear that, at the latest, this moment would come with the death of the old Emperor.

Once that had taken place, it was quite possible that the Monarchy would not be able to offer any serious resistance.

For some years past the State had been so completely identified with the personality of Francis Joseph that, in the eyes of the great mass of the people, the death of this venerable personification of the Empire would be tantamount to the death of the Empire itself.

It was one of the clever artifices of Slav policy to foster the impression that the Austrian State owed its very existence exclusively to the prodigies and rare talents of that monarch.

This kind of flattery was particularly welcomed at the Hofburg, all the more because it had no relation whatsoever to the services actually rendered by the Emperor. No effort whatsoever was made to locate the carefully prepared sting which lay hidden in this glorifying praise.

The more the Empire remained dependent on the administrative talents of ’the wisest Monarch of all times’, the more catastrophic the situation would be when Fate demanded its tribute.

Was it possible even to imagine the Austrian Empire without its venerable ruler?

Would not the tragedy which befell Maria Theresa be repeated at once?

It is really unjust to the Vienna governmental circles to reproach them with having instigated a war which might have been prevented. The war was bound to come.

Perhaps it might have been postponed for a year or two at the most. But it had always been the misfortune of German, as well as Austrian, diplomats that they endeavoured to put off the inevitable day of reckoning, with the result that they were finally compelled to deliver their blow at a most inopportune moment.

No. Those who did not wish this war ought to have had the courage to take the consequences of the refusal upon themselves. Those consequences must necessarily have meant the sacrifice of Austria.

Even then war would have come, not as a war in which all the nations would have been banded against us but in the form of a dismemberment of the Habsburg Monarchy.

In that case we should have had to decide whether we should come to the assistance of the Habsburg or stand aside as spectators, with our arms folded, and thus allow Fate to run its course.

Just those who are loudest in their imprecations to-day and make a great parade of wisdom in judging the causes of the war are the very same people whose collaboration was the most fatal factor in steering towards the war.

For several decades previously the German Social-Democrats had been agitating in an underhand and knavish way for war against Russia; whereas the German Centre Party, with religious ends in view, had worked to make the Austrian State the chief centre and turning-point of German policy.

The consequences of this folly had now to be borne. What came was bound to come and under no circumstances could it have been avoided.

The fault of the German Government lay in the fact that, merely for the sake of preserving peace at all costs, it continued to miss the occasions that were favourable for action, got entangled in an alliance for the purpose of preserving the peace of the world, and thus finally became the victim of a world coalition which opposed the German effort for the maintenance of peace and was determined to bring about the world war.

Had the Vienna Government of that time formulated its ultimatum in less drastic terms, that would not have altered the situation at all: but such a course might have aroused public indignation. For, in the eyes of the great masses, the ultimatum was too moderate and certainly not excessive or brutal. Those who would deny this to-day are either simpletons with feeble memories or else deliberate falsehood-mongers.