favour of a Czecho-Slovak and Yugoslav State, the speech of deputy Kalina
denying all responsibility of the Czechs for the war, and expressing Czech
sympathies with the Entente Powers, and the terrible story of persecutions
which the Czechs had to suffer from Austria during the war, told by deputy
Stribrny, formed a veritable "Mene Tekel," a death sentence pronounced by
the Austrian Slavs on their tyrants in Vienna and Budapest.

The revelation in the Reichsrat of the hopeless state of decay prevailing
in Austria-Hungary was, of course, due to the Russian Revolution. If it was
not for the Russian Revolution, the Austrian Emperor and Clam-Martinic
would perhaps have continued their reign of absolutism by way of imperial
decrees, and they would never have dreamt of convoking the Reichsrat.

However, the desperate economic and political situation forced Austria to
find some way out of her difficulties, and to plead for peace as she began
to realise that otherwise she was doomed. The change of order and the
situation in Russia and the uncertain attitude of some Allied statesmen
seemed favourable for the Austrian calculations respecting a separate
peace. But Austria could not possibly hope to deceive free Russia or the
Allies and lure them into concluding a premature peace if the reign of
terrorism and absolutism still prevailed in the Dual Monarchy. For this
reason Tisza, with his sinister reputation, was forced to go, and the
Reichsrat was convened. Austria based her plans on the ignorance of some
Allied politicians who really believed in the "new orientation" of the
Vienna Government because of the Bohemian _names_ (not sympathies) of
Clam-Martinic and Czernin. In the same way Austria wanted to make outsiders
believe that a change in the name of the Hungarian Premier meant a change
of system, and that the convocation of the Reichsrat meant a new era of
"democracy" in Austria.