If one wishes to know the reasons for the decline and ultimate failure of the Austrian Republic in the space of some fifteen years, one cannot do better than read Miss Alary Macdonald's succinct, clear, well-informed and amply documented account. The documentation, especially in the form of lengthy quotations in German, is perhaps too full for the average reader; but the latter may be confidently recommended to restrict himself to the text, for the author's knowledge and control of her sources are beyond dispute. Not that there ever was any serious dispute about either the facts or the records: differences of opinion have been largely ideological, the tendency to see a bloodthirsty fascist in every opponent of the Vienna Socialists or. on the other hand, the fear of the red hand of Bolshevism in every expression of a democratic spirit. These were extremes, but a middle way was rendered difficult by excesses on both sides and the inevitably limited capacity of the not ignoble men who tried to take it.

The elements of dissolution at once showed themselves in 191K. Austrians who had formed the habit of living in an empire could not easily conceive the possibility of a single nation-state within their sadly shrunken frontiers; Vienna was an imperial, capital or nothing. Hence the attempt to create still smaller states out of the Lauder. or for such a province as Vorarlberg to seek union with Switzerland—the nearest neighbour, with a people speaking almost a common dialect and offering an economic prosperity such as even a united Austria could scarcely hope to create.