The State-structure of Austria-Hungary had, for more than half a century, been struggling towards a new formation. Its spiritual life, which had its roots in a multiplicity of racial communities, called for a form of development to which the old onefold State, created by outworn impulses, offered a continual obstacle. The incident with which the great catastrophe opened--the quarrel between Austria and Serbia--is a conclusive sign, that the political frontiers of the onefold State ought not, after a certain point of time, to have formed the cultural frontiers for the spiritual life of its various nationalities. Could the spiritual life have been on its own footing, independent of the political State and political boundaries, it would have had a chance to develope regardless of frontiers, in a manner befitting the true purpose of the several nationalities; and the struggle, which was deeply rooted in the spiritual life, need never have found vent in a political catastrophe. Deliberate development in this direction seemed an utter impossibility, sheer lunacy indeed, to all "statesman-like" thinkers in Austria-Hungary. Their habits of thought admitted of no other conception than that the boundaries of State must also be the boundaries of national community. They could not understand, how spiritual organisations could be formed, cutting across state frontiers, and comprising the school system and other branches of spiritual life. It was against all their habitual conceptions. And yet this "inconceivable" thing is what international life demands in the new age. A really practical thinker ought not to be held up by apparent impossibilities, and assume that the obstacles in the way of doing what is requisite are insurmountable. He must simply concentrate on surmounting them. But instead of turning their statesman-like thought along lines that would have been in unison with modern-age requirements, they devoted their whole energies to bolstering up the onefold form of State against the demands of the age by all manner of institutions. The State grew more and more unwieldy and impossible in its structure. And in the second decade of the twentieth century, it had reached a point when it could no longer keep itself together in its old form, and must either passively await dissolution, or else attempt to accomplish externally by force the internally impossible, and maintain itself by the power which a war-footing would give to it. In 1914 there remained for the Austro-Hungarian "statesmen" but one alternative:--Either they must direct their policy along the lines of life in a healthy social order, and make known their intention to the world,--a course which might have revived new confidence,--or else they were absolutely obliged to start a war, in order to keep the old structure from tumbling about their ears.--What happened in 1914 must be judged from these underlying causes; otherwise it is impossible to