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Page 7
Austria has been having her share of excitement during the past week.
On the opening of the parliament in Vienna, a disgraceful scene was made
by the members of the lower house.
The session was to be opened by the Premier, Count Badeni. When he
entered the hall he was greeted with howls and hisses, and cries of
derision.
For certain reasons, which we will explain later, the Premier is at
present very unpopular with the parliament, and so the members greeted
him in this shameful manner, and finally one of the members, becoming
more excited than the others, advanced toward the Premier, and began
calling him names.
The result has been a duel between the member, Dr. Wolff, and the
Premier, and the occurrence has raised a storm throughout the country,
for that a Prime Minister should fight a duel with another member of the
Government is an unheard-of thing.
Austria is a very difficult nation to govern, and the position of
premier is by no means a bed of roses.
The reason of the difficulty is that Austria is composed of so many
different states which have very little in common with each other.
In all, there are three great divisions: the Austrians proper, who are
Germans in their leaning and language; the Hungarians, or Magyars, who
are a haughty, fierce people, speaking their own tongue, proud of their
traditions, and who look down on the more modern Austrians as upstarts.
Besides these there are the Bohemians or Czechs (cheks), who speak still
another language, and are a wild and quickly irritated people,
obstinate, and as a rule slow-witted.
It is but natural that one or other of these people should be constantly
offended at the course of the Government, and see in every new law an
attempt to rob them of their rights and privileges.
The great trouble at present is the variety of the languages spoken. An
attempt has been made by the Government to enforce the speaking of
German throughout Austria. A law was passed making German the language
in which all official business must be carried on; but to make it
perfectly fair for the Hungarians and Bohemians as well as for the
Austrians, the law provided that all officers of the Government who were
stationed in districts where Czech or Magyar was spoken must be able to
speak these tongues as well as German.
This law is intensely unpopular.
The Austrians want one language throughout the country, and are
indignant at having to learn the Czech and Magyar, which are both
frightfully difficult; some people laughingly declare that Czech is as
hard to learn as Chinese. The Bohemians and Hungarians, on the other
hand, do not wish their languages to die out, and they think that it
would be only right to allow them to use their own tongue for official
business throughout Bohemia and Hungary.
They have become so violently opposed to the law, that they have been
making a great effort to revive their language, and have established a
literature of their own, and are having the Czech language taught in
the schools. In Prague and many of the cities of Bohemia, no other
language is spoken.
Now Count Badeni, who has the difficult task of handling all these fiery
people, has got into disgrace all around.
The Austrians are angry with him because in a certain place, and for a
certain occasion, he allowed the Bohemians to use their own language for
official business. The Bohemians are angry with him for having forbidden
a certain public meeting; and others are again incensed against the
Prime Minister for having offended them in various, apparently
unimportant ways.
It was on account of his unpopularity and the various quarrels with him
that he was so badly treated by the members of the parliament, and was
finally so exasperated that he determined to fight a duel.
In Austria it is a criminal offence to fight a duel, and all the persons
engaged in an affair of the kind can be imprisoned for from one to five
years.
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