Plainly the destinies of Austria and Germany are as unlike as are divergent their ambitions. Germany aspired to be a world power, a Weltmacht, and in pursuance of this dream she began to build up a colonial empire. Austria possesses no colonies. The plan of her statesmen (Aehrenthal) has been to establish a predominating Austrian influence in the Balkans, where Germany’s interests, to quote the well-known words of Bismarck, were not worth the bones of one Pomeranian grenadier. Germany is a homogeneous country or nearly so; Austria, on the contrary, is the most heterogeneous empire in Central Europe. Quite naturally the question suggests itself: what would arise on the splendid ruins on the Danube should the proverbial ill-luck overtake the Hapsburgs in the present war? With Galicia and Bukovina lost to Russia, with Transylvania annexed to Rumania, with Trentino and Trieste restored to Italy, and Bosnia and Herzegovina incorporated in Greater Serbia--provided the partition went no further--what would be left of the Hapsburg inheritance? Instead of a Greater Austria, that should have included conquered Serbia, it is not improbable that the Hapsburgs will return home from the Great War with a Small Austria--an Austria as it began in 1527, when the Austrians, Bohemians, and Hungarians formed a confederacy and elected a Hapsburg as their ruler. Rieger, a Bohemian statesman, once declared in the Vienna Parliament, that Austria will only live as long as the Slavs wish her to live and no longer. Rieger’s famous utterance has acquired a new meaning in view of the passing events in the Hapsburg Empire. THOMAS ČAPEK. References: The writer of this article is largely indebted for much of the material to Professor Ernest Denis’ most excellent work, _La Bohême depuis La Montagne-Blanche_ (lately translated from the French into Bohemian). Among others he has consulted the following Bohemian works: _Our Re-birth, Review of Bohemian National Life Within the Last Half Century_, by Jakub Malý; _Slavdom, Pictures of Its Past and Present_. (This is a standard work containing isolated articles by a number of representative authors.) _History of Our Times_, by Dr. Jan Krištůfek; _Political History of the Bohemian Nation from the Year 1861 to the Ascension of the Badeni Ministry in 1891_, by Adolf Srb; _Political Ideas of Francis Palacký_; _Political Utterances and Principles of Francis L. Rieger_; _A Great Bohemian: The Life, Work and Meaning of Francis Palacký, the Father of the Nation_, by Vácslav Řezníček; _Karel Havlíček: Aims and Hopes of Political Awakening_, by T. G. Masaryk. FOOTNOTES: