Note (Back) — Chapter XXV

526. Racial Elements in the Empire.—The key to the politics of Austria is afforded by the racial composition of the Empire's population. In our own day there is a tendency, in consequence of the spread of socialism and of other radical programmes which leap across racial and provincial lines, toward the rise of Austrian parties which shall be essentially inter-racial in their constituencies. Yet at the elections of 1907—the first held under the new electoral law—of the twenty-six party affiliations which succeeded in obtaining at least one parliamentary seat all save possibly two comprised either homogeneous racial groups or factions of such groups. Fundamentally, the racial question in Austria has always been that of German versus non-German. The original Austria was preponderantly German; the wealthiest, the best educated, the most widespread of the racial elements in the Empire to-day is the German; and by the Germans it has regularly been assumed that Austria is, and ought to be, essentially a German country.[676] In this assumption the non-German populations of the Empire have at no time acquiesced; and while they have never been able to combine long or effectively against the dominating Germanic element, they have sought persistently, each in its own way, to compel a fuller recognition of their several interests and rights.