Pink Head into Red Hat

Eagerly U. S. editors once played up cables from Imperial Austria, hinted daringly the senile eccentricities of Kaiser Franz, frankly glorified U. S. maidens privileged to be presented at his Court, and got out screaming extras when the suspicious, hidebound old Emperor was finally tricked into taking his first automobile ride by Wilhelm II.

Today however Austria is only a republic, and therefore when the Cabinet at Vienna fell last week, most U. S. editors reacted as though a pin had dropped. Tucked away on the tenth page of the omnivorous New York Times was a very creditable account; but elsewhere in the U. S. the story was either omitted entirely,* or condensed into a sketchy account varying in length from three lines/- to 30.**

Evidently it is not news that the only Priest-Prime Minister in Europe has resigned; nor does it seem worth printing that his resignation is attributed in Vienna and Rome to a "suggestion" from Pope Pius XI. Undeserving of a line is the fact that there are in Austria two irregular armies, both anxious to try a bloody bout for Power. It is not even worth explaining that at the root of the political crisis there is a law--championed by the Communists and fought by the Catholics--which today enables the working people of Vienna to rent houses for next to nothing by paying their landlords at the pre-War rate in the pre-War currency of Imperial Austria, now worth less than half of its former value. It is not news that Catholic War Minister Karl Vaugoin openly advocates the proclamation of a Fascist Dictatorship, while Communist Otto Bauer, onetime Foreign Minister, is quite as eager to proclaim a Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Finally there is not space in which to note that Wall Street is inclined to sell distinctly short on Austria--as is shown by the fact that it has recently proved impossible for the Government at Vienna to borrow in Manhattan $100,000,000 urgently needed to revamp Austria's state railways, telegraphs, telephones.

Seipel Resigns. In the historic Foreign Office of Imperial Austria, called the Ballhausplatz, Chancellor Monsignor Ignaz Seipel, tall, beak-nosed, and pinkly bald, assembled his Cabinet last week and without warning announced his resignation.

"Austria's progress is blocked," he said, "by a political tension, for much of which the present Government is held responsible, although unjustly. Long-continued agitations and accumulated hatred, which so far as concerns my person would be bearable, have also without reason been cast on my priestly office and my Church.

"I therefore think it right, as I have been five years head of the government,/-/- to give the political parties a chance to find another way to assure our political future.

"The church is my chief concern."

"Accumulated Hatred." The Catholic party of Monsignor Seipel is known as "Christian-Socialist." The Austrian Communists and Marxian Socialists call themselves "Social Democrats." Two much smaller parties, which however hold the balance of power, are the Pan-Germans and Agrarians. From farmer youths of the Agrarian Party and from Christian-Socialist students are recruited the irregular "soldiers" of the Heimwehr, an army paid for by rich Austrian industrialists -- much as Mussolini's "black shirts" were at first subsidized by Italian tycoons.

Not without arms -- as were Italy's Socialists and Communists when Il Duce sprang his coup -- are the "Social Democrats" of Austria. They have their own irregular army, the Schutzbund, and they marched to the polls at the last election shouting, "To Hell with the Landlords -- pay no rent!"

In Parliament the coalition Government of Monsignor Seipel has held 94 seats (73 Catholic, 12 Pan-German, 9 Agrarian) against Communist cohorts of 71. Since there is no cloture rule, the Communists have managed during the past year to filibuster out of existence almost all bills submitted by the Government. Progress is indeed "blocked by accumulated hatred," and foreign investors are wary.

To make matters worse the Pan-Germans, though they have supported Monsignor Seipel up to a point, will not go the whole hog, and vigorously oppose the Catholics' scheme to employ nuns as teachers in the public schools and to set up a Catholic State University.

"Playing Possum?" President Wilhelm Miklas of Austria asked the Seipel Cabinet to carry on pro tempore, last week, until another could be formed, but he accepted the Prime Minister's resignation, and the Chairman of the Catholic Party, Herr Leopold Kunschak, scouted rumors that Monsignor Seipel was "playing possum"--that is waiting to be recalled officially to the Power which he still exercised by Presidential courtesy.

Mentioned as probable successors to the Priest-Prime Minister were Speaker Dr. Alfred Guerter of the Lower House, Governor Buresch of Lower Austria, and Minister of Trade Eduard Heinl, all laymen, all "middle of the road men," expected to pursue a more moderate, conciliatory policy than stiff-necked, uncompromising Monsignor Ignaz Seipel.

Red Hat. When a decent interval had elapsed after the resignation of the Prime Minister, correspondents in close touch with the Vatican were encouraged to state that it will not be long before His Holiness will cover the baldish pink head of Austria's Monsignor with the Red Hat of a Cardinal. "Such an event, of course," said one Vatican prelate, "would naturally be preceded by a period of abstention on the part of Monsignor Seipel from any political activity."

*Denver Post, Atlanta, Ga., Constitution. /-Boston Evening Transcript. **Cleveland Plain Dealer. /-/-Mgr. Seipel has twice been Chancellor: From May 1922 to November 1924 and since May 1927.