Deák and the Hungarians in general demanded. In that he may have been right. However that may be, it remains true that Austria, by abstaining from any interference in the FrancoGerman war, practically abdicated from her former position as a Great Power. The worst, and after all unlikely defeat at the hands of the Germans, had Austria interfered in 1870, could not have left her in a position more reduced in international prestige than that in which her inactivity had landed her after the peace of Frankfort on the Maine in 1871. The fear of Russia, then (1870) the ally of Germany, is one of those legendary nightmares that the innumerable victories of a small nation like the Turks over Russia ought to have dispelled long ago. When finally in 1879, a close alliance was made with Germany, and in 1883 widened into a Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, Austria definitively abdicated from her former international position, although apparently she was placed on a basis offering more security than she enjoyed before. The utterly misleading view of the alleged beneficial effects of the Triplice on Austria-Hungary is shared by all those who have carefully omitted to study the history of the Danubian Empire and its just claims to a firstclass position in Europe. The Triple Alliance, by averting for a given number of years in advance, any danger of attack from Germany and Italy, the only two neighbours possibly threatening Austria with war (Russia being quite absorbed in her Asiatic policy), most effectively contributed to cripple all independent or energetic foreign policy in Austria, where, as we have seen, foreign policy is anyhow suffering from a want of adequate organization. In reality, Austria-Hungary has for the last twenty years had no foreign policy at all. In that she committed an error that the most stupid of the Hapsburgs in the seventeenth or eighteenth century avoided doing. Better a thousand mistakes than to abstain from making any mistake at all. Death alone is the end of all mistakes; life means The anarchy in modern Austria is due neither to the

errors.

H. L.

ΙΟ

unreasonableness or conceit of this or that nation or party alone; it is neither indicative of sheer wickedness, nor caused by mere ignorance. It is largely due to a hopelessly wrong foreign policy. The ballast of a spirited foreign policy being indispensable for Austria, no wonder her vessel is tossed and buffeted about in a somewhat helpless manner. Her foreign policy is, or ought to be, quite clear. It is dictated by her history, and by her geographical position. Its chief axis runs through the near east. It is Austria, not Germany, that ought to have built and acquired the Baghdad railway. As long as Austrian foreign policy remains on its present lines of inertia and barren alliances, the old historic life of the Empire must largely remain toned down, if not more and more weakened.

In turning now to the third common feature of both halves of the Dual Empire, to the Ausgleich proper (the second feature, the common army, needing no special comment), it is necessary to note that that famous term refers to financial questions only. Ausgleich, in German, may seem to include political or constitutional matters too. The Ausgleich between Austria and Hungary, however, refers only to the quota to be paid by the two halves towards their common expenditure. The financial arrangement called Ausgleich is indeed of the utmost importance for both monarchies, and forms an integral portion of the Dualism as established by Deák. It is generally agreed to for a period of ten years. Roughly speaking, the Hungarians contribute 32 to 34 per cent., the Austrians 66 to 68 per cent. to the common expenses. The Hungarians, although much wealthier now than they were in 1867, do not want to accept a greater share of the common expenses; and this together with a natural jealousy of Austria's distracted parties against united Hungary, has rendered the renewal of the Ausgleich increasingly difficult.

As to the future of the Austro-Hungarian Empire it is safe to state, that the pessimistic predictions of the near downfall and partition of the Empire are unworthy of any serious dis

cussion. Austria, like France, has a hundred times been predicted to be nearing her final dissolution; every time falsely. Austria is as necessary to the balance of Europe, as is France; and the vitality of both has been probed and not found wanting in hundreds of campaigns and in numberless trials of strength from 1527 to 1866. With all the vaunted strength of the Prussian system Austria has never known a period of collapse as ignominious as that which degraded the realm of Frederick the Great only twenty years after his death, in consequence of one double-battle lost. The fighting material, the natural wealth, the strategic position of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy are such as to warrant her a dominant place in European politics for a very long time to come, provided her statesmen learn the lessons of her history and act up to it. The present turbulence of the Austrian Parliament; the numerous scandalous scenes of which we read in the papers; the disruptive tendencies of the extreme Cech or German parties in Austria, all that must not blind us to the fact, that far from being symptoms of decay, they are rather welcome indications of a rising interest in public life, an interest which previous to 1875 was practically absent among large classes of Austria. Like all people, the Austrians too have to learn the business of representative government by long and painful experience. The English behaved just as badly in their time of apprenticeship, say at the Parliament of Oxford in 1681, and even very much later. It might rather be suggested that the present turbulence of Austrian parties is probably too academic, and that the flinging of inkstands is too tame a procedure to inculcate political lessons with. Austria will scarcely reach political manhood without internal disturbances very much more acute than all that we have heard of so far. But far from misreading such disturbances into signs of the approaching end; far from thinking that the life of the present Emperor and King is the only mainstay of the Empire, it will be both more prudent and more in keeping with the facts not to prognosticate rashly a

dismemberment of a realm that has, these three hundred years, directed many a principal current of European history, and has in that secular struggle acquired powers, latent and explicit, too great to be rendered useless or inefficient by the brawlings of a few agitators. As the Alps, the Carpathians, and the Danube now form, after prehistoric geological revolutions, the natural Triple Basis of the Dual Empire, so the Germans, the Magyars, and the Slavs are destined to form her true political Triple Alliance, each of them, if by a few catastrophes, finding in the end their proper sphere for the common weal of Austria-Hungary.

FRANCE AS THE LAND OF THE

REVOLUTION.

BY PROFESSOR PAUL MANTOUX.

A CENTURY of Revolution: so Mr Bodley, in his able book on modern France, describes the French history of the last hundred years. But what does that word Revolution mean? Does it mean mere disorder, barricades, kings flying from their palace through the back door, while provisional governments are hailed by equally provisional supporters in the hall of some Hôtel de Ville? If it means nothing more, why is France more interesting than any South American Republic, the modern history of which would show a more continuous series of Revolutions? Mr Bodley does not really answer this question. He seems to have come to the conclusion that the French people, as he has seen them in most provinces, are a quiet, home-keeping, hard-working sort of people, who have no taste whatever for Revolution, and who would like a strong Government to preserve them for ever from revolutionary agitation.— But Revolution means something else and something better than disturbance and civil war. The French Revolution has not been, as Mr Bodley hints, a great tragedy, followed in the course of a century by accessory little plays, the chief benefit of which would have been to supply mankind, in a dull and