Evening star., 1934-07-26
ECONOMICS CAUSE
AUSTRIA PLIGHT
Despair Now Stalks Where
Joseph's Hussars
Once Danced.

what siis Austrian
where once Franz Josephs Htasars
danced 70 Strauss waItzes in the
worlds gRyest civilization despair
stalks.
Mems hands are turned against
each other A chancellor lies dead.
p!stSied In his chsncenery. The
world watches, fearing war.
what IS the resson7
Students. pondering that question.
have found much Of the answer In
economics
Head without BODY.
Austria Is a head without body.
War performed thst operatiou--and
4 ia proving no more successful In
the politico-econornic field than 1t ever
did in the biological.
Before the war Vienna was the
worlds most brilliant capltal-insou-
Giant sophisticated. savoring the tang
Of life with q smile. From it--though
Budapest was the capital Of Austria s
partner Hungary--went the royal or
ders bearing the Hapsburg double
eagle. Viennese bankers held sway
over the Austro- Hungarian financial
realm. The economic life OF the
Empire revolved around Vienna.
There were problems, of course.
The diversity OF races In the empire
taxed the ability Of the Hapshurgs to
"divide and rule" There we're some
10 say that even then the empire
was shaky
Twenty years ago yesterday Austro-
Hungary broke of relations with
Serbia. The war csme-and then the
peace that for Austria was perhaps
worse than war
The old empire boaSted more than
SO oof, 600 people and over $50 900
SQUARE miles of territory When the
surgery OF the peace treaties was mn
ished, Austria. separated from dis-
membered Hungary. had less than
1000 900 inhabitants and little more
than 10000 square miles.
Natural Resources Slender.
Much OF the land left her was
mountainous. forested. poor for farm
ing. Natural resources were compare
lively slender Around this pitiful
remnant suspicious neighbors began
erecting tariff walls,
And in the midst sat the once proud
capital, head without body. The
old empire, despite defects. had pro-
vided free trade and a market for
Fyinrunf~ x..nnufa n4,,rare Nnm the
hinterland was inadequate to absorb
her products or to feed her popula-
ton of nearly 10000
Economic rot set in. Austria, like
some noble deposed TO penury, began
living on an international dole, on
loans from the League of Nations or
creditor lands.
The depression-rocking the eco
nomic structure Of the world--redou-
bled Austria's woes. The collapse OF
the Kredit Anstalt. great bank of
Vienna, sent shudder through Eu-
rope and beyond
Misery begat political strife. For
a while after the war Socialists con-
trolled Austria. But the folk of the
countryside, with Catholic Christian
Socialist leanings would have none
OF them. The Marxists soon had to
be content with Vienna,
Workers Apartments Built.
There were built the famous work
ers apartments. which Chancellor
Dollfuss' artillery pounded when he
crushed the Socialist organizations in
blood few months ago.
Dollfuss. head of the Christian
Social government, assumed more and
more dictatorial powers as the Aus
trian Nazi movement, gaining vigor
with Hitlers rise in Germany, strove
TO unseat the west pocket" chancellor.
The Nazis. like countless pan-Ger-
mans in both the Reich and Austria,
have dreamed of uniting the two ma
tions The idea is anathema in
France, Germany's old foe.
Nor has Mussolini seen fit to en-
courage the Nazi desires. Some say
he looks askance at the pam German
Observation-Disclosures of Austria, the
Saar. Danzig and other territories
with German populations-and the
consequent change in the balance of
power In Europe through new politi-
cal alignments.
AT any rate. II Duce, instead of
backing the Nazis, supported Doll
fuss, the little man whose blood
poured out in Vienna yesterday,