Czernin on the League

In Holland to deliver lectures on " War and Revolution," Count Czernin, statesman of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, said: "As long as America and other nations, such as Germany and Russia, stay out of the League of Nations, that body means nothing at all. Without America the League has no future. First and foremost, America must become a member of the League, and, secondly, Germany and Russia. As it now stands it is not a league at all, but merely a trust of victorious states." Czernin was Foreign Minister during the last phase of the Habsburg rule over the Austro-Hungarian Empire --1916-1918. He is considered by the "big men" of Central Europe the brains of post-war Austria. It was largely owing to his initiative that trade agreements with Czechoslovakia were negotiated whereby Vienna will retain her industrial supremacy. Before the war the factories of Vienna were dependent largely upon raw materials from the region now under the sovereignty of the Czechs and the Slovaks. By the peace settlement, defined in the Treaty of St. Germain, Austria was left with machinery, but with practically no coal or raw materials; Czecho-Slovakia received the raw materials, but had hardly any factories with which to manufacture them. Czernin's perspicacity was, therefore, of great mutual benefit. Although an ardent royalist, supporting a party which favors a return to the old empire, he is working independently at the moment to facilitate the reconstruction of Austria.