The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-10-22
From the Boston Globe.

From the Boston Globe
 N EW interest in the strange his O tory of Austria and the Aus tro-Hungarian empire under the rule of Francis Joseph has been awak- ened by the illness of the aged mon arch, whose advanced years give a significant aspect to reports even of slight sickness The emperor will soon celebrate the seventy-eighth anniversary of his birth and the sixtieth of his corona ton.
 He was youth of IS when he ascended a throne which had been so rudely shaken that his uncle, the Emperor Ferdinand. was eager to abandon 1t. Francis Jo- seph was a child of the Holy Alliance, that union of sovereigns who, after the downfall of the great Napoleon, had con- stituted themselves the champions of the principle of absolute monarchy. When the ascended the throne of Austria, Europe was lit by the flames of the great popu- lar risinss of 1s4s against the tyranny which, the enforcement of this principle had involved.
 Hungary in Austria was fighting for a representative government. Francis Jo- seph soon showed his determination to en- force the policy in which Austria had been foremost, and he began the execu- tion of plans which finally resulted in erasing for 12 years the name of Hungary as a state from the map of Europe.
 Francis Joseph had inherited the true Hapsburg spirit, the spirit of a family that never produced men Of the higher intellectual powers or of the higher qual- ities of heart. Yet from the time that Rodolph, count of Hapsburg, was elected emperor in the 18th century, it was family which proved to possess extraor- dinary vitality.
 Through victory over the king of bo- hemia Rodolph acquired the duchy Of of Austria and added to it's possessions. Hapsburg was the house of Austria. In the course of the centuries one coronet after another was plucked by the house of Ausaria and added to its possessions. And yet in all this long period Austria never became a nation.
 Freeman. the historian, said: ''I have come across people who believed that Austria was one land inhabited by 'Austrians,' and that 'Austrians' spoke the Austrian language. All such phrases are misapplied." By the Austrian sover- eigns indeed, there came to be ruled a mixture of races the most extraordi- nary in Europe.
 It was the acquisition of Hungary, dat ing back more than 3s0 years, that gave to the Austrian empire the weight Of nationality which without this kingdom it does not possess. For Hungary Is nation the people of which are the Mag vars. possessing a common speech, and common feeling and interest.
 Upon ascending the throne the young Emperor Francis Joseph would have crushed Hungary and destroyed it's na- tional spirit. For time he succeeded in apparently accomplishing this result, and on the last day of 1851 Austria be- came a pure despotism.
 From Vienna henceforth were to issue decrees governing the most trival things of life, regulating even the exact amount of hair which the employe was permitted to wear upon his face. But by bitter les sons, by msfortuntes in war, and by financial disasters, the Austrian govern ment perceiyed thati was futile to attempt to reconstruct the empire with out. the national aspirations of Hungary.