POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS RESULTING FROM MY
TIME IN VIENNA POLITICAL thought in general was greater and more comprehensive in range in the old Danube Monarchy than in Germany itself during the same period—with the exception of Prussia, Hamburg and the North Sea Coast. By “Austria” I mean, for this purpose, that parts of the great Habsburg Empire, which, as a result of being settled by Germans, exhibited in every respect not only the historical forces in the formation of that State, but also in its population, those capable of supplying that creation, politically so arti¬ ficial, with its inner cultural life in the course of many centuries. As time advanced, the life and destiny of that State depended more and more on keeping alive this seed-cell of the Empire.
The fact that the collection of races, called “Austria”, was finally destroyed does not in the least imply political incompetence of the Germans of the old Ostmark, but it was the inevitable result of the impossibility of main¬ taining permanently a State of fifty millions, consisting of different races, with the help of ten millions, unless absolutely definite principles were established in good time.
The German-Austrian was always used to living within the bounds of a great Empire, and had never lost the feeling of the duties which this involved. In that State he alone, when looking beyond the frontiers of the narrower Crown land, thought of them as the frontiers of an Empire. Though, indeed, it was his fate to be separated from the common Fatherland, he ever sought to master the immense task and to keep for Germany what his ancestors had once wrested from the East in their age-long struggles. In heart and memory the best men never ceased to be in