Page:The New Europe, volume 1.pdf/417
THE AUSTRIAN KALEIDOSCOPE
Clam-Martinitz, is one of the leaders of the Bohemian feudal aristocracy, which, though more or less Germanised, has not lost all touch with the national life of the Czechs, and favours an accommodation between the two leading races of Austria. The most notable feature in the new Cabinet was the inclusion, as a Minister without portfolio, of Dr. Baernreither, who in the days preceding the introduction of universal suffrage was leader of the powerful party of Conservative landowners, and who has for a number of years past played a prominent and honourable part in those negotiations for a German-Czech compromise, which the Neue Freie Presse and other political and financial satellites of Berlin spared no effort to render abortive. Both men belong to the little group of statesmen who enjoyed the complete confidence of the late Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and stood for the revision of that Dual System which has hampered the development of the Monarchy and its motley nationalities for over a generation past. Dr. Baernreither in particular is known as a consistent advocate, in the days before the war, of a saner policy towards the Southern Slavs, of the abandonment of Magyar repression in Croatia, and of a conciliatory attitude towards Serbia; and it was he who attempted to mediate between Vienna and Agram after the scandals of the Friedjung forgeries and who published more than one pamphlet revealing an under- standing of Southern Slav aspirations.
First impressions of the change were strengthened when a few days later the joint Foreign Minister, Baron Burián, the nominee and faithful disciple of Count Tisza, was replaced by Count Ottokar Czernin, another intimate friend of the late Archduke. Czernin's record is markedly anti- Magyar, and his appointment as Austro-Hungarian Minister to Roumania after the treaty of Bucarest and the fiasco which it involved for Austrian diplomacy, was greeted at the time by furious outcries in the Hungarian official press. and even in the Hungarian Parliament. Indeed, the new Minister made no concealment of the mission with which the Archduke had entrusted him, to prepare an Austro- Roumanian entente by forcing Hungary to abandon her infamous policy of Magyarisation towards the Roumanians of Transylvania. It is true that his mission was entirely
unsuccessful, but this was due, not to the Minister, but to
401