Appendix No. 2.
[National Zeitung, Berlin.]
The elections in Austria.
The electoral movements in the German provinces of Austria are daily increasing in interest. The aggressive policy of the Hohenwart ministry is fulfilling a mission not intended by its authors; it is uniting the statesmen of the constitutional party, and purifying their policy from the petty secondary objects and constant collisions which have hitherto been the misfortune of that party, and have rendered fruitless the days of its rule.
We cannot yet see clearly the result of the elections, but if any gain should accrue to the government, it would only come from parties in whose eyes the open production of unconstitutional plans would not have injured the ministry; for beyond the Imperial House, and the nobility dependent upon it, the ministry can only count upon the support of those feudalists and ultramontanes, who are more inclined to assist the government in proportion to its hostility against Germanism and the constitution; there was no need for Count Hohenwart to conceal any of his plans from them. But the Germans are stirred up by the hostility of the ministry against them, and are united as they never were before. It is impossible to conceive a greater contrast than that between the last and the present elections; the uniting community of endangered interests has taken the place of personal wrangling, the finer shades of political opinion have disappeared; Rechbauer and Giskra, Kaiserfield and Skene, the candidates of the towns, of landed property, and of the chambers of commerce, all solicit the suffrages of the electors under the same conditions and on the same programmes; and the electoral speeches of all the constitutional candidates exhibit a delightful harmony.
Full of significance are the words in which the old Deputy Skene again solicits the votes of his constituents. He says: “I am an Austrian, and abhor the policy of nationalities; but I must, unfortunately, expect that the conspiracy formed by the ministry against Germanism will have this consequence, that the Germans will be only national. When the time has come that the Germans are only national, then all parties in Austria will be outside the state.” From the stand-point of the good Austrian patriot, the indictment against the “conspiracy” of the Hohenwart ministry could not be more strikingly formulated; but these words become still more important in the mouth of Deputy Skene, because they show in what way the opposite shades of opinion in the formerly divided party of the constitutional Germans arrive at the same point of union. We in Germany can very well understand the peculiar anxieties of the good Austrian patriots.
We, too, in the common interests of both empires, have most earnestly wished that the question of German nationality should not be stirred up in Austria. Whatever the more distant future may bring to pass, at present friendly relations between the two empires would be most serviceable to peace. We have, therefore, done all in our power to prevent a German nationality question in Austria from becoming the burning question immediately after the conclusion of peace with France. The Hohenwart ministry has deliberately, or from want of insight, introduced the dreaded question into politics at a very unsuitable time, for Europe is not yet sufficiently restored to peace to be able to bear without apprehension even a passing game with the dangerous question.
The most zealous efforts of diplomatists have little power over the national sympathies of peoples, which the present Austrian ministry so lightly inflames.
Whatever the foreign ministers may agree upon in their repeated interviews, for some time to come the relations between the two empires will be determined by the internal policy of Austria. Should the Hohenwart ministry succeed, with the aid of “successful” elections, in uniting the Germans of Austria into a national party outside the constitution, jealousy will be created which will be a bar to any friendship with Germany. The result of the elections will be decisive, not only as to the next stages, of the constitution, but also as to the foreign relations of Austria.