The Press.
London, England, 1855-06-16 00:00:00

AUSTRIA.

WHEN the nation recovers from the trance into
which it has been mesmerised by the late
Coalition—and this last debate has gone far
towards recovering it—it will be a standing
marvel how it was ever seduced into dawdling
away these two priceless years of the prepara-
tion for the war and the first campaign, and
(but for the vigorous counterpasses of Mr.
DISRAELI and his colleagues) very possibly a
third, while we were dancing attendance at
the Court of Vienna and soliciting her as-
sistance, on the strength of LORD ABERDEEN'S
belief that she is "England's natural ally."
After every imaginable pretext for vacillation
and procrastinating has been exhausted, Aus-
tria speaks out plainly at last, or as plainly as
she knows how, and tells us that "the attitude
" of Austria is henceforth one of expectancy.'
Vienna notes and valiant words, Alma congra-

tulations and Second-of-December protocols,
stars and autograph letters from France and
"judicious bottle-holding " from England not
Austria has taken her time to see
which way her interests lie, and to calculate
the chances of the war—has thought (rather
prematurely, after all,) that she saw signs of a
dead lock at Sebastopol, and eventually has
taken the magnanimous resolution to stand
stock still. So the bottle-holding and bonbon-
nerie are all thrown away, and a couple of
years' diplomacy has only filled a few waste-
paper baskets.
We do not seriously blame Austria for all
this; we only blame the sagacious Ministry
who did not see what every one else saw from
the beginning, that her tortuous conduct was,
in fact, a necessity of her position. True, she
might have acted straightforwardly, and by
one vigorous, early word have stifled the war
in its beginning, or by one vigorous act have
prevented the invasion of the Principalities,
which she is as much bound to defend as we
are by treaty, and infinitely more by interest:
if they become Russian provinces the Danube
is lost to her, and her whole commerce (except
through Trieste) is gone. True enough, only
straightforwardness is not everybody's ape-
cialiter ; and in this degenerate age we must be
contented to see the affairs of even great
nations carried on upon the principles that
regulate the lower sort of huckstering trades.
That on these principles of base, naked self-
interest, and self-interest for the moment only,
Austria is justified in her present course, is
evident in a moment from two consideration*,
which lie on the very surface.
1. Austria has everything to lose by takin
a side. If she joins Russia, besides the fa
confession of impotence which an act of
gratitude for the Hungarian intervention
would amount to, she encounters a French
invasion of Italy, a costly war, and very pro.
bably the loss of her Lombardic provinces :
and this is only one of many dangers. On the
other hand, if she sides with the Allies, her
frontier towards Russia is not what it was
before her suicidal share in the plunder of.
Poland. The new fortresses of Gallicia
said to be good ; only they are in themsel
evidences of her fear, and (at all events) they
are untried, and probably will not be improved
by a Russian cannonade. We fear the road
over the Carpathians is still a painfully open
one. Vienna is not many leagues from the
Russian frontier.
And, 2, while she has all to lose from taking
a side, she has much to gain from neutrality.
Firstly, the three great Powers, " the only
" ones (as was well observed by Lord H. VAN/I
the other night) that can stand alone," are
wearing each other out in treasure, sinew,
and blood. Let them go on long enough,
Austria will be the arbiter of the destinies
Central Europe. (It is a ghastly speculation,
if one comes to think of it; but what of that,
at Vienna?) Then, again, in a happy moment
of profitable fraternisation after Inkermann,
Austria signed something or other on Dec. 2,
1854 ; she does not quite know what : she
only remembers she was to occupy the Prin.;
cipalities--occupies them occordingly—is
careful to make known at St. Petersburg that
she occupies the provinces of one belligerent
"in the interest of" the other: and very.
devoutly at this moment the Principalitariannl
wish either the Russians or the Turks well
back again. However, Austria has now the
command of the Danube, and means to keep

558

it, like the fox in the fable, when the lions
have done fighting about it. The " Four
Points" (now happily defunct) were all in her
interest. Whatever treaty may be eventually
concluded between Ede hostile powers, it,
almost must be in her interest, begipse ghq
has the territorial tikitntage of be* alwayq
"on the spot." Finely, she is pry poor, an 4
can hardly afford to light, even if she wished
and her whole empire ;a an aggrewate pf con:
flicting nationalities; she rules each by the
pressure of the rest ; the more separate creeds
and countries she embraces, the stronger (if
no sweeter) becomes the " hannonia discors"
of her sovereignty. There is the whole story ;
Anstrian vacillations are anything but weak
nesses, they are the staid and settled acts of
a deliberate policy, of which the Allies are at
present rather unpleasantly the victims.
Whether Austria is, permanently, wise and
far-sighted in all this chicanery, we take
leave to doubt. There is something to excuse
her cowardice, but nothing to excuse her
selfishness, and in the end there will be no-
thing to reward it. But we are now only
asking whether the Ministers who have been
gulled—and, as far as we can see, allowed
themselves to be gulled with their eyes open—
by the transparent intriguing of all this help-
less selfishness, are to be allowed much longer
to damage our reputation and peril our safety?
The continental sky is beginning to look
" nasty," and a general European war may be
nearer than poltroons and poco-curantes are
at present fancying.