At the suggestion of Admiral Horthy, the imperial fleet was presented
to the Jugoslav Government that had been formed at Agram. No opposition
was made to the Prague revolution. The imperial authorities made no
effort to prevent a revolt in Budapest.
When Austria asked for an armistice and signed the terms of the
Entente Powers on November 3, 1918, there really was no longer any
Austria. The Vienna Government was not in a position to accept the
responsibility for the whole country. Czechs, Poles, and Jugoslavs
were out of the empire and were dealing directly with the Allies.
Under the armistice terms Italy occupied the territories that all the
world knew had been definitely promised to her by the secret Treaty
of London in 1915. Several million of her German-speaking population
passed immediately under the control of the new Czech Government at
Prague, and several hundred thousand Tyrolese came within the zone of
military occupation of the Italian armies. Austria at the outbreak of
the war had a population of about 30,000,000, of whom not more than
10,500,000 were Germans; the Czechs and Slovaks were 6,700,000; the
Poles 5,000,000; the Ukrainians 3,700,000; and the Jugoslavs 3,000,000.
Thus, while Austrians were more numerous than any other element, they
comprised only a third of the population, and more than 3,000,000 of
that third were in Bohemia. These figures show how radically different
was the situation of Austria from that of Germany. Many of the leading
generals and statesmen and a very large number of the functionaries of
the Hapsburg Empire were from the non-Austrian and non-Magyar peoples.
Throughout the war the army had been composed, officers and men, of
the entire population, and the Austrians and Hungarians contributed
only about 50 per cent--perhaps less than that--to the fighting forces
that had invaded and imposed their will on Serbia and Rumania, had
successfully withstood Italy and Russia, and had contributed to
the success of Germany on the western front. The major part of the
Austro-Hungarian artillery was manufactured in Bohemia.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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