new century's contraptions. Franz Joseph's adjutants-never His Majesty-picked up the telephone. He never climbed into a motorcar unless forced by etiquette-say, in the company of an automobile addict like the Kaiser. But in Bad Ischl, on August 19, the day after his eighty-third birthday, he consented to view Mr. Thomas Edison's newest invention, the Kinetophone. This machine coordinated the wizardries of the film projector with those of the gramophone. At a special premiere in the Ischl Town Theater, the monarch and his lady took their seats in the first row. Frau Schratt heartily applauded the image of Enrico Caruso intoning do re mi fa sol. The Emperor's clapping was, well, polite. Still he sanctified new technology with his presence.
Forty-eight hours earlier he had made a move which, while also not necessarily enthusiastic, carried greater significance. He had dispatched a document with his seal to Bluehnbach Castle near Salzburg; this was one of Franz Ferdinand's hunting estates where the archduke was currently shooting stag. The sovereign's handwritten letter appointed his nephew Inspector General of all Imperial and Royal Armed Forces-the most powerful post given the Crown Prince so far. This ele vation, a surprise considering the queasy relationship between the two, was effective immediately-and immediately made public. It, too, was seen as an ancient ruler's concession to tomorrow.
When the Court Train took Franz Joseph from Ischl back to Vienna on September 3, the city had been given, as it were, an All-Highest license to welcome modern things.
This it proceeded to do, with a baroque bow, of course. On some of the broader thoroughfares leading to the center of town, for example, the mayor established special lanes for motorcars in a hurry. Behind chauffeurs driving along these 'fast strips' sat gentlemen registering, just as fast, the fall fashions of 1913. You could see them whiz by (at a velocity almost equaling the Crown Prince's Graf & Stift) in suits of the latest English 'country cut,' tweeds of informal blue gray. And though it wasn't cool enough as yet, the ladies went even further, anticipating winter's first harbingers from the Paris fashion houses: Directoire collars high in back to plunge rather heedlessly in front, crepe de chine dresses with ermine trimmings, huge 'fantasy necklaces' of amber, coral, or lapis lazuli.
Most of such forward-minded feminine elegance could not be risked in automobiles. Their speed undid the perfection of the coiffure, not to speak of the plumage on the hat. No, ladies preferred the more leisured showcase of the fiacre. This horsedrawn cab, banned for a while, now received renewed municipal blessing. Indeed, to encourage fiacres against the proliferation of the fume-spewing taxi, they were permitted to dispense with set tariffs and to arrive at fares by mutual agreement. The fiacre, said the Mayor's office, would 'return to the street scene a dear Viennese tradition.'
Similar concerns touched a committee preparing, months in advance, the Industrialists' Ball-bound to be a highlight of the 1914 carnival season. The committee announced that there would be music from two orchestras as well as from six gramophone discs to be specially recorded in Buenos Aires by Los Caballeros; it was a band famous for that new rage, the tango (whose risque modernity had just led Kaiser Wilhelm to forbid all German soldiers from even listening to it while in uniform). On the other hand-and all rumors to the contraryVienna's Industrialists' Ball would be opened by an eighteenth-century cotillion, according to custom. In the fall of 1913 the city seemed readier than ever to absorb onward thrusts of the future into its own timeless choreography.
The Habsburg government applied the technique to its increasingly huffy little Balkan opponent. Flushed with victory over Bulgaria, the Serbs had once more deepened their raids into Albanian territory. Belgrade argued that Vienna used Albania as a staging ground for agents who fostered sedition among Albanian ethnics within Serb borders. Vienna militants contended that these complaints were a blind for Serb expansionism growing more rampant daily.
In his Chief of Staff's office Baron Conrad paced, dictating letter after letter to the Emperor; each paragraph tried to impress on His Majesty the outrages Belgrade visited in Albania on Austria's stature. From Belvedere Palace the Crown Prince countered with a letter to Foreign Minister Count von Berchtold stating that 'all such Serb horror stories leave me cold.'
As always, the Emperor had to arbitrate. In the spirit of the fall of 1913, Franz Joseph's government decided to combine the latest of mailed fists with an old-fashioned diplomatic smile. The Minister of War, Baron von Krobatin, announced that four more dreadnoughts would be built at a cost of 106 million kronen each; the ships would boast every twentiethcentury advance in armor and cannon; together they would constitute the most formidable task force in the Adriatic. At almost the same time Count von Berchtold held his fall reception for accredited ambassadors at the Ballhausplatz where he remarked, between toasts of champagne, that the sole purpose of Austrian strength was peace-especially peace with Serbia.
If Serbia didn't believe in pleasantries amidst goblets, it did take seriously the looming of the dreadnoughts. Early in October the Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pasic visited Vienna. After an interview with Count von Berchtold, Panic's office issued a communique: he and the Austrian Excellency could not agree on the issue of Austrian interference in the southern Balkans, but he did promise that Serbia would not invade Albania and he hoped that his pledge would fortify the possibilities of amity between Serbia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Coming from the chief executive of a pugnacious upstart of a country, this was an almost chastened statement. Perhaps it also reflected a weakening of Serbia's international support that autumn. The saber that its protector could rattle was tarnished for the moment; the Tsar was beset by domestic trouble. Credit for that belonged, at least in part, to Lenin and therefore to Lenin's hidden hosts in Austrian CounterIntelligence. At the Bolshevik summer conference in Austrian Galicia-held at virtually the same time as Freud's PsychoAnalytical Congress in Munich and as contentious and important-Lenin had forced through a controversial resolution: It directed the Bolshevik parliamentary deputies to the St. Petersburg legislature to form a caucus separate from the more moderate Mensheviks with whom they had till then formed a common Social Democratic front. In word and action they were now free to push their own much more drastic program.
Very soon the move made itself felt through much of industrialized Russia. The Bolshevik-controlled Pravda in St. Petersburg mercilessly scourged 'Menshevik spinelessness' and Trotskyite 'nonfactionalism.' In the Duma, Bolshevik speakers called on workers to stop being slaves. Their fierceness unfettered, Lenin's men drew more attention from major trade unions. They also gained more influence. Scattered but steady strike activity spread in the factories, guided by Bolshevik headquarters in Austria. Here Lenin enjoyed freedom to operate and to politick in ways that made Habsburg smile. Occasionally Lenin smiled back. In his talks on the Nationalities Question he said more than once that Vienna handled the problem far better than St. Petersburg.
But in the second half of 1913 you didn't have to be a Bolshevik to consider Austria morally prettier than Russia. By autumn the damage from the Redl case was fading in Habsburg lands; at any rate it receded before the disgrace happening under Romanov. In October the Tsar's district attorney in Kiev prosecuted, with anti-Semitic zeal, a ritualmurder trial against a Jew named Mendel Beilis.
The spectacle reeked of medieval viciousness. Indignation ran through Europe, not least along the Danube. To support their brother so unjustly accused, Vienna's Jewish Community organized a huge meeting at the Musikvereinssaal. The famous (non-Jewish) physiologist Julius Wagner-Jauregg was among three Austrian scientists giving testimony in defense of Mendel Beilis's innocence. Internationally, on Beilis's behalf, a petition was addressed to the Tsar; notables signing it included Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Engelbert Humperdinck, Anatole France, Kathe Kollwitz, Selma Lagerlof, H. G. Wells, Frank Wedekind, as well as Viktor Adler, the Jewish leader of Austrian Socialism, and Hermann Bahr, the non-Jewish Austrian writer.
When the Russian court had to acquit Beilis in the first week of November, it was an Austrian variety-show producer who first offered him a personal-appearance contract worthy of his red-hot celebrity. Mr. Beilis begged off because of stress caused by the trial.
Meanwhile the first cold gusts helped yellow the leaves on oak and beech all over Vienna's parks. But whether or not it was the contrast to Tsarist barbarism, the Western Powers seemed to warm not only toward Austria but also toward its German ally. England's First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, made a very well- tempered speech at Manchester; he noted an improvement in relations between his country and the Reich and proposed a mutual reduction in the building of new battleships. America contributed a friendly sound from even higher up. A German publisher brought out a translation of President Woodrow Wilson's The State-Elements of Historical and Practical Politics. It marked a highlight of the fall publishing season, not least because of the preface specially written by the author for this edition. In it the American President praised the profundity of German thought, which had furnished not only his book but many other American works with inspiration.
At almost the same time, Wilson's Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, chose an odd forum for displaying willingness to associate himself with things Austrian. The Vienna press reported his appearance in a variety show in Maryland also featuring a Tyrolean yodeler. Mr. Bryan's role in the entertainment consisted of a spectacularly orotund oration that championed peace among the world's principal countries, most of which he
