The New York herald., 1921-06-19
Austria and Her Future
Remain an Open Sore


The situation with respect to Austria is
different. Here, after ALL is an obvi 'us fall
ure tits fair to say II at no solution of the
Polo-German question was possible The
clash between these races is thousand
wears old: frontiers have advanced and re-
treated over centuries. No peace conference
could have found a solution which would
have been accepted by the Poles and the
Germans. The evil of the present arrange
ment is that it accentuates the old difhculties
by facing insoluble rivalries with cheap and
inveracous compromises. such as save poll
ticians but doom peace ultimately. But was
not the game situation true in the old Aus
trian Empire?
In any event. the fact is that the Paris
conference found Middle Europe in chaos.
Three states had sprung into being where
one had been before, and in addition vast
regions of the old Hapsburg Empire had
been occupied by Poles, by Rumanians and
by Jugo-Slavs Frontiers had been drawn
without regard to economic necessities or
systems Of Transportation. What had been
an economic unit. although an ethnic patch-
work had become economic nightmare,
with ethnic rvalries still surviving
TODAY Austria clamors for admission tc
Germany Hungary turns east west, north
and south, passionately demanding the re-
turn of her lost provinces. CZecho- Slovakia
to the sea and the outside world in alien
and hostile hands, threatened with partition
between Germany and Hungary doomed If
Austrian demands should lead in a future
remote or near to the extension of German
frontiers to Vienna and Gratz.
The simple fact is that the single really
stable ARRANGEMENT in all of the country
from Prague to Athens and from the Adriatc
to the Dniester would be an economic, If not
a political, union. Austria, Czecho- -Slovakia,
Hungary, Jugo- Slavia, Rumania, Greece and
Bulgaria each is an important detail in such
a federation. Failing this. nothing is more
certain than that ever increasing anarchy
and rivalry will hold out fresh promise to
German aspiration and lead directly to
renewal of German efforts to create that
Mitteleuropa which is the basis of all Ger
man political thought. The German cha1-
lenge to Britain has ended in disaster and
can hardly be reneweA German rivalry with
France is not necessarily permanent. unless
France mounts guard on the Vistula. but
German ambition on the Danube can be
abolished only IL she confronts some solid
barrier to the south.
But this political aspect is in any event
question for the future 1t is the econoniic
problem in Middle Europe which is immc
diate and constitutes the gravest barrier TO
prompt restoration Of economic stability.
Iseft 10 Itself, Austria is lmpOsSiDlei III Ilust
be annexed by Germany or find some fashion
of associating itself with the Hungarian and
Bohemian fractions of the old Austro-Hun-
garan Empire. IL must also find some ad-
justment Of its relations with Italy which
will insure it access to the through
Trieste or with Jugo-Slavia. which will en-
able IL to import through Fiume.
For two years political questions have
dominated all else in the discussion of the
European settlement The frontiers which
have been drawn have been drawn with re-
gard to lines of racial parting rather than
of communications The market and the
field have been separated. Cities have found
their waterworks and railway station
signed TO one nation and their business
quarters to another as happened in the case
of Teschen. Trunk lines of railways. links
i'm the chains which connect Calais with
Constantinope and Milan with Moscow have
been transformed into independent lines, be-
ginning and ending at new frontiers, and
passengers have been called upon to change
cars at each Of these innumerable boun-
dares. This spells paralysis for the move
ment of freight and something approx
mating prohibition for passenger traffic.