AUSTRIA: Coup de Stooge

Austria’s 37-year-old Prince Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg, direct descendant of one of the twelve original families of the Holy Roman Empire of antiquity, and today Dictator Mussolini’s smooth-cheeked stooge in Austria, has his political ups & downs. One of his “downs” was to be expelled by Chancellor Schuschnigg last May from the Austrian Government in which he had been Vice-Chancellor. Last week he was still commander of the Heimwehr, chief private armed force in the country, and able to throw a spanner or two into governmental machinery. Provincial leaders of the Heimwehr, meeting to discuss their autumn program, had to decide whether to remain loyal to Starhemberg or transfer their allegiance to Starhemberg’s former right hand man, Major Emil Fey. They could not lightly forget that Starhemberg had fed & clothed the Heimwehr from his own pocket until his money had run out, had then continued to feed and clothe them with Mussolini’s money. After anxious debate the Heimwehr leaders finally voted for Starhemberg, then with one accord backed him in expelling Fey, who has been Chancellor Schuschnigg’s candidate to succeed Starhemberg. Locals of the Vienna Heimwehr, however, mutinously announced with a 17-to-4 vote that they still supported Fey, and the split in this private army widened rapidly. Cynical Austrians thought last week that Mussolini would now apportion his largesse in such fashion as to close the breach. Meanwhile Il Duce was more concerned with Austria’s public army than with her private army, encouraged the Viennese Government to flout the Treaty of St. Germain by last week calling 8,000 21-year-old youths to compulsory military service.