One doubts, therefore, whether the plan of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand—bold though the conception is—will prove to be a panacea. It strikes one as an artifice—a piece of diplomatic jugglery; and the forces which really determine the course of history are forces which mere juggling is powerless to control. The real rivalry of the Europe of to-day and to-morrow is the rivalry between Teuton and Slav; and that is a rivalry which has its origin, not merely in conflicting material interests, but in fundamental antipathies of character. As long as Teutons are anywhere ruling over Slavs, no policy of “live and let live” is feasible; and as the Slavs increase in numbers and in racial self-consciousness, the clash is bound to come. When it does come—when the unredeemed Slavs, assisted by the unredeemed Roumanians, insist upon their redemption—Austria will have played her part on the stage of European history, and the curtain may be rung down. That is one of the predictions with which we may leave our subject; but there is also another speculation which it would be difficult to avoid. What of that House of Habsburg which has so long been the personal incarnation of the Austrian Empire? Whither is it tending? On what will its ultimate destiny depend? Will the family problems prove to be more easily soluble than those of the Empire itself? Will it still be in the future, as it has been in the past, the unifying principle of a complex political system? One doubts it—one cannot help doubting it—for various reasons. The question before us—before Austria, rather—is the question of the importance which the world of the immediate future will attach to family pride and the exclusiveness of an imperial caste; and that is a question about which the world of to-day does not quite seem to have made up its mind. It has gained a little knowledge without losing an equal proportion of prejudice, and has reached a point at which it finds it equally difficult to live either with its superstitions or without them. It is moved—it cannot help being moved—by the formidable array of facts by which the Eugenists demonstrate that the path to degeneracy is paved with consanguineous marriages; but, at the same time, it cannot easily shake off its instinctive reluctance to accord imperial dignity to the offspring of a healthy young woman of what it regards as the “lower orders.” It is, the world feels, very embarrassing to have to choose between a degenerate and a person of inferior social status. That, nevertheless, is the choice which lies before Austria in the immediate future. Francis Ferdinand, as we have seen, has married beneath him; his marriage is “morganatic.” That is to say that, when he comes to the throne, the heir to the throne will not be his son, but his nephew. That nephew is a young man about whom comparatively little is known; but when Francis Ferdinand goes into the matter, he will do so with the following facts before him:—