om the economic thraldom of the German and the Jew--all this
has slowly but surely undermined the Dual System and rendered its final
collapse inevitable. Indeed for some time past it has merely owed its
survival to the old age of the Emperor, who has a natural reluctance to
destroy his own creation. For some years it has been known that his heir,
Francis Ferdinand, was the advocate of far-reaching changes, which would
have taken the form of a compromise between a federalist and a centralist
system. His abrupt removal from the scene was secretly welcomed by all
those whose political and racial monopoly was bound up with the existing
_regime_.

German dominance in Austria, it should be added, meant a close alliance
with the German Empire; and every fresh effort of the subject races to
emancipate themselves from Germanising or Magyarising tendencies forged the
chains of the alliance closer and increased the dependence of the Magyar
oligarchy upon Berlin. As in mediaeval times, so in the twentieth century
Habsburg policy is explained by two famous Latin mottoes--_Viribus unitis_
("Union is strength") and _Divide et impera_ ("Divide and rule"). Between
these two watchwords Francis Joseph and his advisers have wavered for
sixty-five years.

What then are the forces which have held Austria-Hungary together under
Francis Joseph? First unquestionably comes the dynasty; for it would be
difficult to over-estimate the power exercised by the dynastic tradition on
the many races under Habsburg sway. Next comes the Joint Army; for there is
no finer body of men in Europe than the Austrian officers' corps, poorly
paid, hard-worked, but inspired to the last man with unbounded devotion to
the Imperial house, and to a large extent immune from that spirit of caste
which is the most offensive feature of the allied German army.[1] Hardly
less important are the Catholic Church, with its vast material resources
and its powerful influence on peasant, small tradesman and court alike,
and the bureaucracy, with its traditions of red tape, small-mindedness,
slowness of movement and genial _Gemuetlichkeit_ ("easy-goingness"). It is
only _after_ these forces that we can fairly count the parliaments and
representative government. And yet there are no fewer than twenty-three
legislative bodies in the Monarchy--the two central parliaments of Vienna
and Budapest, entirely distinct from each other; the two Delegations; the
provincial Diets, seventeen in Au