For more than twelve centuries Austria’s geographical position has made her the protectress of Europe from successive onslaughts of barbarian hordes pressing from the east. The German-speaking nucleus of the present Dual Monarchy was founded, at the end of the eighth century, by Charles the Great as a bulwark against the Avars. A little later the rôle of stemming the tide of Hungarian attacks also devolved upon it. Fighting incessantly and on the whole successfully against eastern invaders, the Austrians gradually extended their territory towards the Orient. The valley of the Danube provided them with settling-land and passage-way. War and marriages brought their share of added territory to the Hapsburg reigning family. By 1526 Moravia, Bohemia, Silesia and Hungary had been added to the Empire. Transylvania was conquered in the seventeenth century, Galicia and Bukovina in the eighteenth. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Austria was the leader among German-speaking states. Prussian shot and shell ousted her from this position at the battle of Sadowa in 1866. But the task undertaken over a thousand years ago is still being performed. Austrians today are engaged in another effort to check the westward Slavic flow. The country is ill-prepared to meet its hereditary foe. The sovereign existence of Austria-Hungary to this day can be regarded only as an exceedingly marvelous feat of political jugglery. Its weakness lies in the presence of strong contingents of dissimilar races in its population. Struggle between the component masses is as unending as it is passionate. To the lack of linguistic or racial affinity must be added the want of a liberal form of government in the strictly representative or federative sense. Representative government, in the absence of everything else, might have provided the required bond of political cohesion. Of the total population of Austria only 11,000,000, or 24 per cent, are Germans. These Teutons pay allegiance to the Hapsburg emperor along with 9,000,000 Hungarians, 3,000,000 Rumanians and about 1,000,000 Italians. The Slavic race, however, outnumbers every other element in the Empire. Its 21,000,000 members constitute 44 per cent of the subjects of Charles I. [Illustration: _The American Geographical Society of New York_ _Frontiers of Language and Nationality in Europe, 1917, Pl. III_ AUSTRIA-HUNGARY AND PARTS OF SOUTHEASTERN EUROPE SHOWING LANGUAGES]