stop it
by force of arms. The Czechs are equally opposed to union with Germany.

"So what do you say?" I asked of a Czech. "Do you think that what is
left of Austria ought to be divided up between her neighbours?"

"God forbid!" said he. "We've got enough Germans in Czecho-Slovakia
already. Austria can very well exist by herself. Does not Switzerland
exist by herself, and do very well, without half the natural advantages
of the new Austria?"

The French solution for the problem is known to lie in the possible
detachment of Bavaria from Germany, and the setting up of a new
South-German State in union with Austria. Only on such terms would
France agree to Austria joining part of Germany. The Bavarians,
however, show no signs of desiring to cut loose from the still great
German confederation. A purely deliberative plebiscite taken in the
Austrian Tyrol is all for union with Germany. A similar plebiscite in
the province of Salzburg shows the same tendency, another in Styria is
certain to go the same way. These plebiscites are called passive
propaganda by the French, and they for their part egg on the Petite
Entente to stop them. But there seems little doubt that were Austria
free to choose she would now give up her name and fame, and merge
herself in the German whole of which, ethnographically, she is a
natural part.

How strange that all the luxury and glamour of Vienna, as you see it at
this moment, is the concomitant of complete decline and mortal peril.
In arriving in the city one felt at last that one was in Europe, but it
proves to be not the Europe of the future. Vienna in 1921 is part of
the sunset of that old radiant, peaceful Europe we knew before the war.
Night has to swallow it up, and the future lies on other horizons, in
Prague and Belgrade and Budapest, in the capitals of that new Europe
which arises from the defeat and ruin of the war.

N.B.--By Article 10 of the Treaty of Versailles, "Germany recognises
and respects strictly the independence of Austria, and recognises that
this independence is inalienable unless the League of Nations gives
consent to change." And by Article 88 of the Treaty of Saint-Germain
Austria engages "to abstain from all acts calculated to prejudice her
independence either directly or indirectly."

[1] Travellers to Austria are seldom warned beforehand that there is an
internal and external rate of exchange, and they frequently lose 50% on
the exchange of t