Streeruwitz

"United We Stand'' would not do as a motto for Austria. In fact, during the cabinet crisis of 36 days which ended last week, the four principal parties in the republic battled each other to a standstill so often that it seemed almost time to hang up the D. W. F. sign -"Divided We Fall." Almost every day War Minister Karl Vaugoin stormed that the republic ought to fall, repeatedly demanded proclamation of a dictatorship.

Finally last week the exhausted politicians arranged for parliament to elect as chancellor no one of their number, but a potent businessman, Dr. Ernst Streeruwitz, who in his youth was a smart cavalry officer of the Habsburg Imperial Guard. Such a choice will not long be stomached by the second largest Austrian party, the radical, devoutly Marxian "Social Democrats."

As a stopgap chancellor, however, he should do very well since he is a Roman Catholic and enjoys the support of the largest faction in the republic, the reactionary, Catholic "Christian Socialists" who abhor the late Karl Marx (see p. 53) as though he were Beelzebub.

The crisis now ended was precipitated by the resignation as chancellor of tall, bald, beak-nosed Monsignor Ignaz Seipel (TIME, April 15), whom the Pope is expected shortly to elevate to the post of cardinal, a holy office considered incompatible with the mundane status of a prime minister.