Pfrimer Deflated

Last week Austrian businessmen seemed to have accomplished what the Austrian government and the Austrian press have been unable to do: put an end to the imminent threats of civil war between Austria's two pugnacious private armies, the reactionary Heimwehr and the Socialist Schutzbund (TIME, Aug. 19, et seq.). Fortnight ago when Heimwehr-Schutzbund feeling was at its tensest, members of the Association of Austrian Industrialists marched to the office of Chancellor Streeruwitz to point out that rioting between the two groups was damaging Austria's credit abroad, driving money-spending tourists from the country, ruining Austrian prosperity.

They did not stop with the Chancellor. The Industrialists visited prominent leaders of the Heimwehr and Schutzbund and talked long, hard, pointedly to them. So effective were these little conferences that last week blustering Dr. Pfrimer, loudest of the Heimwehr leaders, explained that when he had boasted in previous speeches of a "triumphant march on Vienna with rifles in hand" what he had really meant was merely "a spiritual march of Heimwehr ideals."

With the political situation eased by the deflation of Dr. Pfrimer, well-groomed, white-chinned Johann Schober, Vienna's paunchy Police President, carefully inspected his green-coated and his khaki-coated constabulary, took stock of the machine guns in his station houses. Then he issued a cryptic but reassuring message in the Wiener Sonnundmontagszeitung (Vienna Sundayandmondaynewspaper):

"I fully appreciate the gravity of the present situation. Nevertheless I think it is a mistake to conclude that civil war will result from the recent clashes. . . . The Government is strong enough to prevent what the people are fearing from occurring."