Abstract

History and Warning

The article presents an overview of the book "The Dissolution of the Hapsburg Monarchy," by Oscar Jaszi. Dr. Jaszi must be accounted one of that rare band which was wise and courageous before the cataclysm of 1914, and whose members, before that time, protested against policies leading inevitably to disaster. In masterly fashion he sums up the causes of the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. For one thousand years the Hapsburgs had been trying to weld a real state out of a conglomeration of races and nationalities possessing various languages and religions and economic necessities. A number of circumstances aided them in their task, and had they taken advantage of their opportunities they might have created gradually, by a process of wise evolution, a federal state something like the Swiss Federation, but, of course, on a much greater scale.