They Were Divided - Miklos Banffy [159]
This was what Berchtold had somehow to explain to the delegation from Hungary. His presentation of the disagreeable facts was masterly.
Firstly he emphasized that Austria-Hungary’s foreign policy was based on the need to preserve peace. He spoke of the ‘harmony’ which existed between the great powers, even including Russia – though he did admit that in the previous years there had been ‘some small differences of opinion’ which had later all been smoothed away. This had been a definite success for the Monarchy’s diplomacy.
He then spoke appreciatively of the Ottoman Empire. It had proved its continued power and vitality by the re-taking of Adrianople from the vanquished Bulgarians. That the Sultan had also lost two great provinces was, in one way, advantageous to Turkey for she was thereby relieved of some of her most unruly subjects …quite a happy result, in fact! It was, of course, true that when the war began Austria-Hungary’s principal aim had been the maintenance of the status quo, but, as Berchtold’s predecessor, Gyula Andrassy, had said as early as 1878, ‘We mustn’t prop up a crumbling house until the day it collapses’. So it was with the status quo. In this he took the same view as his great predecessor.
All this Berchtold told with great skill and authority. No one could have bettered his air of effortless superiority. His distinguished appearance, with high balding forehead, recalled a stylized figure from a magazine devoted to men’s fashions. He spoke as from a great distance, so de haut en bas that he left no doubt in his hearers’ minds that he belonged to the inner circle of the Vienna ‘Olympus’, that social group so exclusive that only a few of its members were not born to the purple.
Indeed his exposé was masterly.
He represented the independence of Albania as a triumph of Viennese diplomacy and, as evidence of this, he announced that Austria had already found a suitable king for that new and still untamed country. This was the Prince of Wied, who until recently had served in a Prussian guards regiment, the so-called Yellow Uhlans.
There was also another extraordinary success to be told: it was the cession of the island of Adakaleh to Hungary. This, he felt sure, would please the Hungarians as it had figured so largely in the classical Magyar novel The Golden Man.
With the account of these two great successes Berchtold brought his address to an end. The meeting was then terminated and all discussion postponed until the following day.
In this way the Austrian foreign minister had somehow extricated himself from a most awkward position, though this, ultimately, was not because of the brilliance of his exposition, nor because of little Adakaleh, but because the whole affair was at once overshadowed by the unwise comportment of the opposition members of the Hungarian delegation who provoked a scandal by raising the matter of Tisza’s use of the parliamentary guards in Budapest – this when discussion of all internal matters was forbidden to them. It had long been agreed that the delegation could discuss only foreign affairs, matters concerning the joint Austro-Hungarian army, and the general state of the economy. The intervention was all the more unexpected because it was those very members of the delegation who had so defiantly affirmed that internal matters were taboo, who now brought them up to the scandal of all those in the public rooms of the palais in the Bankgasse where Berchtold had given his address.
It was only after half the time allocated for the discussion had been wasted in this way that the delegation was able to turn to those foreign affairs which were, after all, the sole raison d’être of the meeting.
Now, finally, Berchtold found himself asked some very awkward questions. Was it true, someone asked, that Germany had abandoned the Dual Monarchy on the question of Austria’s claim to inspect and if necessary revise the terms of the Bucharest peace treaty? Why, asked another, had Berchtold not spoken in warmer