far larger than her Austrian population would further have endangered
the Hohenzollern position had Austria been admitted to the new German
Empire, and had the consolidation of all Germans into one true state
been really and loyally attempted. Lastly, it would have been
impossible to destroy the historic claims to leadership of the
Imperial Hapsburgs, and that, more than anything else, was the rivalry
the Hohenzollerns dreaded. Once more had the Germans proved themselves
incapable of, and unwilling to submit to, the discipline of unity.
What part, then, was Austria, thus left out, to play in the
international activity of Prussia in the future? What part especially
was she to play when Prussia, at the head of Northern Germany, should
go out to impose the will of that Germany and of herself upon the rest
of the world? That is the next question we must answer before we can
hope to understand the causes of the present war in their entirety.


(4) AUSTRIA.

Austria, or, more strictly speaking, the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
means no more than the congeries of States governed each separately
and all in combination by the head of the House of Hapsburg-Lorraine.
Of these various States only one is German-speaking as a whole, and
that is the Austrian State proper, the "Eastern States" (for that is
what the word "Austria" originally meant) which Christendom erected
round the Roman and Christian frontier town of Vienna to withstand the
pressure of the heathen Slavs and Mongol Magyars surging against it
upon this frontier.

The complexity of the various sections which make up the realm of the
present Emperor Francis Joseph, the present head of the House of