AUSTRIA: United Support

When perky little Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss announced that he was going to reshape the Government of Austria, thus necessitating a new Constitution, the various leaders who had sunk their differences to help him fight Hitlerism in Austria rushed their several ways back to their assorted parties (TIME, Sept. 25). Heimwehr Leader Prince von Starhemberg shouted that unless the Chancellor’s projected “Christian Corporative State” turned out to be 100% Fascist he and his followers would refuse to support it. Agrarian Leader Franz Winkler, defender of democracy, cried, “We are not going to fight Naziism, merely to help Austro-Fascism into the saddle!” The famed “Dollfuss Front” seemed to be breaking up like the Yukon in April. At this juncture the vest-pocket Chancellor went to Church last week and prayed some more. The Ballhausplatz was jammed with cars all night. Lights blazed in the Chancellery windows till dawn. At 4 a. m. reporters and politicians learned Heaven’s latest advice to Engelbert Dollfuss.

The country was given a new Cabinet. Kindly old President Wilhelm Miklas gave little “Millimetternich” (Dollfuss) carte blanche to reform the Government, which was promptly reshuffled to the following lineup:

Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss

Foreign Affairs Engelbert Dollfuss

Defense Engelbert Dollfuss

Public Security Engelbert Dollfuss

Agriculture Engelbert Dollfuss

Vice Chancellor Major Emil Fey

Justice & Education Dr. Kurt Schuschnigg

Finance Dr. Karl Buresch

Beside the assumption of five portfolios by Millimetternich, the most important facts about the new Cabinet were the disappearance of Agrarian Leader Franz Winkler as Vice Chancellor; the shelving of old General Karl Vaugoin from the Ministry of Defense to the Directorship of the State Railways; and the shifting of the Heimwehr’s hard-hitting Major Fey from the Ministry of Public Security to the Vice Chancellorship. Agrarian Winkler was shelved for his growing opposition to the entire Dollfuss program. General Vaugoin (generally credited with rebuilding the Austrian army), for listening too sympathetically to offers of Socialist aid. If Austria must have a dictator, Engelbert Dollfuss was determined to be It.

In a sense the new set-up was a victory for Vice Chancellor Fey. Loving authority but hating responsibility, his tactics right along have been subtly to force Chancellor Dollfuss to do the things that Fey would do were he Chancellor. Austria’s grey-jacketed private army, the Heimwehr, is divided into three groups. One part, under former Governor Anton Rintelen of Styria, is so frankly pro-Nazi that the Governor was hastily made Ambassador to Italy a few weeks ago. The rest are divided in allegiance between Prince von Starhemberg (founder but now only nominally leader of the entire Heimwehr) and Major Fey, commander of the Vienna district. The growing power of Major Fey is one reason for Prince von Starhemberg’s ominous muttering against the Dollfuss Government in recent weeks. The entire Cabinet shift was a gamble on whether or not Chancellor Dollfuss’ personal popularity in Austria was as great as foreign correspondents would like to believe. Matters hung in a balance for 48 hours. Prince von Starhemberg issued dark threats of what he would do if the Government “did not live up to its promises”—said promises being apparently an out & out Fascist dictatorship on the Italian model. Unperturbed, little Millimetternich continued to pray, then sketched in tentative outline his plans for the new Constitution: The parliamentary system will be greatly modified, not wholly abolished. Above both chambers of Parliament will be placed a Council of State of some 20 members to be appointed by the President and smacking vaguely of Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Grand Council. In the new Upper Chamber will sit representatives of Austria’s economic and professional groups and provincial chambers. The present Austrian Lower Chamber will be reduced from 165 Deputies to 70 or 75, continuing to be elected by popular suffrage. As a shrewd blow at Naziism, whose strength is in Austria’s hot youths, the minimum voting age will be raised to 24 and fathers of families and employes who have held the same job for ten years or more will have double votes. When correspondents asked Chancellor Dollfuss whether he was not in effect setting up a dictatorship, Millimetternich cannily replied, “I authorize you to declare that it is quite misleading to call it a dictatorship. It is merely a step toward the goal I have already announced: a Christian German Corporative State under authoritarian leadership.” Since Benito Mussolini founded and heads the world’s No. 1 corporative state, Engelbert Dollfuss’ announcement sounded sufficiently Fascist to suit Prince von Starhemberg. “Comrades,” he manifested to the Heimwehr, “the Chancellor has heard your call. . . . The Heimwehr thank him and promise him their united support if he continues with the same energy toward the same goal.” Little Dollfuss, knowing that he must have the support of the Great Powers for his new Constitution before he dare present it formally to Austria, popped the draft text into his pocket last week, hopped for Geneva to lay his plans before the representatives of Britain, France and Italy attending the League of Nations’ 14th Assembly. If any further evidence was needed of the mounting power of Emil Fey, it came that day. Repeatedly in the past month good Christian Chancellor Dollfuss has said that no matter what the provocation from Austrian or German Nazis his Government would countenance no counter terrorism, would set up no concentration camps for political prisoners like the Nazi camps in Germany. No sooner was he off for Switzerland than Vice Chancellor Fey, now Acting Chancellor, ordered the first two such camps set up near Vienna, one at Wollersdorff, the other at Bruck an der Leitha. Nazis and “persons against whom well-grounded suspicion exists that they are preparing for or assisting in treasonable actions,” will not only be interned there, but must pay their own keep. Chancellor Dollfuss ignored Vice Chancellor Fey’s doings but bristled up in Geneva when Austria’s Habsburg pretender, handsome 20-year-old Archduke Otto, son of the late Austrian Emperor Karl, made a bid for restoration. In letters to three Austrian towns which conferred honorary citizenship on him last week (as have 144 towns previously) Otto declared, “With God’s help I will be in Austria on a day not far distant to lead my homeland with a strong hand, happy and sure of a great future.” Chancellor Dollfuss, to squelch any possible suspicion that his new Corporative State will be topped (like Italy’s) with a Crown, telephoned orders barring the letters from being made public.