Cornwall M. The Undermining of Austria-Hungary: The Battle for Hearts and Minds

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184 The Undermining of Austria-Hungary

Steed's irritation, was still not prepared to give absolute precedence to policy

(b). Thus, when the War Cabinet met to discuss the issue on 5 March it agreed

to policy (b), but added the condition that `no promises should be made to the

subject races in Austria which we could not redeem: for example we must not

promise them complete independence if the best we could get was autonomy'.

Steed advised Northcliffe, who had attended the cabinet meeting, that this

restriction was not really an obstacle to progress. After all, the cabinet meeting

had otherwise approved the EPD's task, instructing Northcliffe to contact the

General Staff so that the British military in Italy could be used to distribute

propaganda over the Austrian lines.

From Steed's point of view, the EPD campaign against Austria-Hungary

inevitably meant an Allied rather than a British campaign. In terms of propa-

ganda policy

and practice, he realized that it would require close liaison with

the Italians but also the French and Americans. From early March, Crewe House

began to acquire a key coordinating role among the Allied propaganda organ-

izations. However,

it is clear that the real root of this coordination lay in

Italian hands. In December 1917, Gallenga Stuart, as Orlando's Under-Secretary

for Propaganda, had begun to sound out the British and French about closer

cooperation between their propaganda organizations; this was not a surprising

move since one of Gallenga's key tasks was to improve Italy's reputation among

the Allies and for this purpose he had himself made an investigative trip to

Britain the previous summer.

In early February, when Italy had begun to

canvass the idea of a Congress of Oppressed Nationalities, Gallenga journeyed

to Paris partly in order to pre-empt French efforts and convince the Austrian

migre

s that the congress should be staged in Rome. An equally important

reason for his visit, however, was to convene a first inter-Allied propaganda

conference.

It met

in Paris on 6±8 March under the chairmanship of the French foreign

minister. Italy's delegation was headed by Gallenga and Borgese (who was now

working for Gallenga's ministry); France's by Henri Franklin-Bouillon, chair

of the foreign committee of the French chamber, who was the chief French

politician to champion the oppressed nationalities; and Britain's by John

Buchan, whom Gallenga wanted to attend because of his experience with pro-

paganda.

After discussions on various aspects of coordination, the delegations

on the last day examined propaganda against the enemy, the British pointing

to Northcliffe's organization and its decision to target Austria-Hungary. Indeed,

Steed had already decided to convene a meeting of Allied representatives to

discuss this very subject, and Buchan was able to issue an invitation to those

present to proceed to London a week later. The idea may again have originated

first with Gallenga or Franklin-Bouillon, both of whom Northcliffe may have

met soon after his appointment. But the Italian and French delegations seem

also to have deferred naturally to Crewe House over this aspect of propaganda,

Italy's Campaign against Austria-Hungary 185

partly because of Steed's key role in the Torre±Trumbic

talks, and even more

perhaps because the EPD was the only organization specifically geared to such

work. Both the Italian and French propaganda organizations lacked such a

clear-cut character at this time.

The second conference, which met at Crewe House on 14 March, was some-

thing of

a sequel to the Paris gathering in that those present, including Gal-

lenga and

Franklin-Bouillon, reaffirmed their commitment to united action in

the field of enemy propaganda.

They decided to set up a small committee

representing Britain (Steed), France (Henri Moysset) and Italy (Borgese) which

would meet regularly in Paris `in order that we might ascertain exactly what

each country was doing and not duplicate the work of one another'. In fact, this

initial idea of Allied coordination was to prove still-born. More significant was

Gallenga's proposal, which the conference approved, that Steed should now

travel to Italy to help coordinate Allied propaganda against Austria-Hungary.

It seems clear that Gallenga here acted on his own initiative, ignorant of the

important move which had just been made by Orlando to coordinate Italy's

campaign under Ugo Ojetti. Steed's Allied mission would for this reason inevit-

ably cause

some friction with those like Ojetti who felt that the campaign had

already been placed in their own Italian hands. Even so, Gallenga's initiative

shows the sudden impact which Steed and the new EPD had made upon Italian

thinking from February 1918. The British painted a picture of a propaganda

offensive on a wider canvas than the Italians had hitherto envisaged. The

Italians felt bound to accept this Allied help even if they still thought of the

painting largely in Italian colours.

6.2 Steed's coordinating mission

Early on the morning of 19 March Steed left London on a military train bound

for Italy. His month-long mission, which he had himself envisaged in some

form even before Gallenga's specific proposal, had a dual purpose: to organize

propaganda at the front and to help arrange and participate in the Rome

Congress, the `first great act of inter-Allied propaganda'.

In both cases British

efforts would begin to dovetail with already established Italian initiatives. At

first, however, it was Allied disunity rather than unity which Steed encoun-

tered. With

Gallenga's approval he had chosen Seton-Watson to accompany

him to work in Rome while he was busy at the front, only to be told by

Northcliffe on the 18th that this was impossible. Sonnino had protested to

the British Foreign Office that Seton-Watson's presence in Italy would be

regarded as provocative due to his hostility to the Treaty of London. Sonnino

in fact was probably as irritated with Gallenga as with the British, for the Under-

Secretary had sanctioned Steed's mission without reference to the Consulta,

and his independent ministry, subject only to Orlando, was increasingly

186 The Undermining of Austria-Hungary

viewed by Sonnino as a threat to his control of Italian foreign policy. However,

Sonnino's move, the first of what Steed portrayed at the time and in his

memoirs as a series of mysterious intrigues to prevent `effective propaganda'

against Austria-Hungary, failed to have the desired effect. Thanks to North-

cliffe's influence Seton-Watson was able to follow Steed across the Channel on

23 March.

Steed meanwhile had arrived in Paris on the 20th accompanied by Guglielmo

Emanuel and by Lieutenant-Colonel Bernard Granville Baker. The latter had

been recommended as a military member of the mission by General Macdon-

agh, Director

of Military Intelligence. Baker had had considerable experience

of central and Eastern Europe before the war, for he had been educated partly at

the military academy at Dresden and then after service in Burma had secured

for most of the 1890s a commission in the 9th Royal Prussian Hussars. As a

cavalry officer he had enjoyed the convivial environment and admired the

German work ethic, but at the same time had felt at first hand the harsh

discipline and rigid hierarchy of the German army. He had proceeded in late

1914 to write a colourful but surprisingly balanced account of his experience as

`an infinitesimally small cog-wheel in the mechanism of the mightiest machine

of destruction that the world has yet produced', his conclusion being that

Prussianism had to be eradicated because of its pernicious influence upon the

German peoples.

Baker gave no sign in this work that he felt similarly about

the Habsburgs. By 1914 he had made several visits to Austria-Hungary and the

Balkans, on Intelligence missions for the War Office as well as on holiday, but

appears to have had nothing but praise for Emperor Franz Joseph and his

`constitutional government'. Only later perhaps would Baker conclude that

the `Teuton±Slav conflict', which he had portrayed as imminent in 1913, had

eventually been fought out in the Habsburg Empire with Prussianism slowly

gaining influence as the war progressed.

During the war he himself served

with distinction on the Western Front (being mentioned in despatches in May

1917), and after being invalided out because of wounds and trench fever, he

was chosen to join the EPD in early March 1918, attending the second Allied

propaganda conference. He was undoubtedly intrigued by this chance to

experiment with new weapons of warfare: in one of his books he had noted

that `the true soldier is interested in everything that pertains to his craft . . . the

psychology of the situation is a fierce desire to outshine the enemy in technical

skill'.

Baker would bring to his new role in Italy, as British representative in an

Allied propaganda campaign, a diligent commitment. But his specifically milit-

ary outlook

would also lead him at times to clash with those Italians whom he

viewed as inefficient or inattentive to Allied concerns.

Steed's mission

was unable to leave Paris until the evening of 23 March,

partly due to French suspicions about Baker's suitability (because of his German

links), and partly due to confusion in the French capital caused by the start of

Italy's Campaign against Austria-Hungary 187

Germany's spring offensive.

Steed used the delay to pay some important

visits. He met Colonel Zopff, head of French propaganda on the Western

Front, who arranged for a French engineer, Captain Naud, assisted by a Lieut-

enant Moreau,

to join the mission in order to demonstrate in Italy the rifle

grenades which they had invented specifically for leaflet distribution. The fact

that this was thought necessary indicates that the British and French were

ignorant of the devices which the Italian Intelligence officers were already

using. Steed also saw Franklin-Bouillon, Benes

and General Giardino, the Ital-

ian representative

at Versailles, who telegraphed ahead to the CS urging sup-

port for

the mission. He then attended a special meeting of Yugoslav, Czech,

Romanian and Polish e

migre

s at which a preliminary propaganda manifesto for

Austrian troops was drafted. Most important, however, was Steed's encounter

with Clemenceau at which the Prime Minister granted the mission official

French support of the kind it had already secured from the British govern-

mental and

military authorities. Under the impact of the German offensive as

well as Steed's forceful assurances that his task was to begin propaganda and

`forestall an Austrian offensive against Italy', Clemenceau gave his blessing, all

the more so as he himself believed that an Austrian attack was scheduled for

10 April.

This idea

was widely circulated among the Allies and had even been used by

Northcliffe to sell the EPD's campaign to the British government.

But it was

completely false. The AOK had only despatched orders for a new offensive in

late March, the transportation of forces from other fronts would begin on 8

April and the date of attack was initially set for 20 May. Yet on 24 March the

CS warned the British commander, Lord Cavan, that the enemy would prob-

ably attack

on 10 April.

The anxiety appears to have been caused partly by

false Intelligence or by its interpretation. The CS, which had been expecting a

major Austrian offensive for some months, was convinced that an attack was

imminent in tandem with Germany's attack in the West, and therefore they

readily misinterpreted Austrian troop movements in southern Tyrol. At the

same time it seems clear that Tullio Marchetti's network, particularly Mansueto

Zanon in Innsbruck, had on this occasion picked up inaccurate details about an

attack in mid-April.

But such rumours were also convenient at this time for

Diaz, who was anxious that the Allies should not further reduce their forces in

Italy in order to strengthen the Western Front. On 17 March, he had pleaded

with the British CIGS not to transfer any more divisions, giving as his alleged

reason the fact that `the Central Empires are preparing to make their principal

effort against Italy'. A few days later in Turin, Sir Henry Rawlinson noted in his

diary how he had `sat for two hours hearing Diaz['s] very exaggerated state-

ments of

the dangers of the situation on the Italian Front'.

The same argu-

ments were

grist to the mill of Steed and the propagandists since they

underlined the urgency of their mission; indeed, the information about an

188 The Undermining of Austria-Hungary

April offensive was to be viewed as authentic by the EPD long after April had

passed. Thus was born the myth, perpetuated by Crewe House, that Allied

propaganda in early April had forced the Austrians to postpone their offensive.

In reality this first `success' of the coordinated campaign at the front was based

on a false if understandable premise.

On reaching Milan on 25 March, Steed was advised by Luigi Albertini to gain

Orlando's express approval for the mission so as to prevent the CS putting up

any further resistance to the idea. The party therefore divided: Steed and

Emanuel travelling to Rome, while Baker, Naud and Moreau proceeded direct

to Padua where on the evening of the 26th they were met by Delme

-Radcliffe,

head of the British Military Mission. Radcliffe had been ordered by the War

Office to support Steed's mission and had probably met Northcliffe in London

earlier in the month; his first move on meeting his new guests was to send them

off to see Ercole Smaniotto, the head of 3rd army Intelligence at Mogliano.

Radcliffe was to prove an enthusiastic supporter of the propaganda offensive.

Already convinced that insidious enemy propaganda had played its part in the

rout at Caporetto, he observed on returning to the Italian Front in mid-March

that `the enemy is making some propaganda efforts and daily sends over leaflets

which are fired in shells from guns and howitzers or trench mortar-bombs and

dropped by aeroplanes'. It was at this time that Radcliffe discussed Italian

morale with Benito Mussolini, and shortly afterwards talked on the same sub-

ject to

Marchetti, Finzi and Smaniotto, meetings at which the idea of front

propaganda must also have been on the agenda.

Radcliffe seems to have been sincerely intrigued by the prospect of support-

ing the

oppressed nationalities. Like Granville Baker, he had been partly

brought up in Germany, had served in the colonies, and acquired a broader

perspective than many on the nature of the World War. In mid-1917, after the

Corfu Declaration, he had told Finzi that the Treaty of London would have to

be revised; a year later Lord Cavan observed that `his enthusiasm and belief in

the Czech and Jugoslav propaganda business is extraordinary'.

At the same

time Radcliffe was undoubtedly attracted by the idea of playing a central role

in any Allied organization on the Italian Front. Since his appointment as head

of the Mission in May 1915, he had built up a formidable array of contacts,

including King Victor Emmanuel himself, to the extent that one newcomer to

the theatre in 1918 commented: `Delme

-Radcliffe is quite a personality, he

speaks Italian, is well-known to [the King and Diaz], is energetic and has brains.

Consequently they look to him in all military matters.'

The negative side to

this was that Radcliffe (whose father-in-law was the royal surgeon Sir Frederick

Treves) had an exaggerated idea of his own sphere of influence and made many

enemies quickly. One member of the Yugoslav Committee, while gratified at

Radcliffe's interest in propaganda, learnt on arriving in Padua that `he is not a

serious man and nobody can endure him'.

The Times correspondent in Rome

Italy's Campaign against Austria-Hungary 189

went much further, commenting in August 1917 that Radcliffe's unpopularity

was thoroughly deserved since he was `entirely lacking in manners', `actively

rude' and had `the most arrogant manner possible with officers of inferior rank':

Wherever he

has been he has acquired an abiding unpopularity. I know that

many soldiers of position at home and elsewhere are thankful that he has

been `shunted' to Italy . . . He goes beyond his duty as our representative and

suggests that he is really God Almighty and Sir Douglas Haig rolled into one

tremendous personality. He is a man of tremendous energy and boundless

energy but of markedly limited intelligence. He is an arriviste and has not

known how to disguise it.

The War Office, however, gave more weight to Radcliffe's contacts and experi-

ence than

his evident vanity and self-importance. Thus he remained at his post

and from March 1918 was to be a valuable asset to Steed's mission and those

involved in the propaganda campaign.

While in

Rome Steed could be satisfied from talks at the Consulta that

Sonnino and his colleagues were becoming more flexible. Through Gallenga,

Steed gained access to Orlando who, together with Francesco Nitti (Minister of

the Treasury and significant because of his close links to Diaz), gave letters of

recommendation for Steed's role as coordinator of an Allied propaganda organ-

ization at

the front. Orlando's support for Steed's `good and useful work'

signified his conversion to Gallenga's idea of accelerating the amount of Allied

cooperation in the field of propaganda instead of simply coordinating Italian

efforts at the front. A week earlier when he had appointed Ugo Ojetti as `Royal

Commissioner for propaganda to the enemy', the latter idea had been foremost

in Orlando's mind through the encouragement of Albertini. Since then Ojetti

had been waiting impatiently in Rome, frustrated at Orlando's neglect of him

in favour of Steed whom Ojetti considered a usurper. An additional irritant for

Ojetti was Gallenga, who on returning from London and Paris proceeded to

claim for himself overall control of Italian propaganda against the enemy,

proposing that Ojetti should act as a liaison officer with the CS but as a

subordinate within Gallenga's ministry. Ojetti's consequent disgust at the

`eunuchs' in the government, who were allowing Allied interference in the

control of Italian propaganda, resulted in his writing to Orlando at the end of

the month declining the post which he had been offered.

His experiences

during March go far to explain Ojetti's sensitivity and `Italian-centred' outlook

when he later took charge of the Allied propaganda campaign. His appoint-

ment had

been a specifically Italian initiative which then seemed to have been

superseded through British interference.

When Steed

arrived in Padua on 29 March, Delme

-Radcliffe immediately

introduced him to the Italian Intelligence heads.

`Some of them', Steed

190 The Undermining of Austria-Hungary

acknowledged in his private report for Crewe House, `had already done good

work on the lines now contemplated, but it had hitherto lacked coordination

and the support of the Italian and Allied Governments and Higher Commands.'

While this point was correct, Steed omitted it from his memoirs where he

presents a highly dramatic account of his own role as coordinator of the

campaign: it is a version which requires adjustment. The key coordination

meeting was chaired by General Badoglio at Abano on the 30th, and attended,

among others, by Radcliffe, the members of Steed's mission and the six Intelli-

gence heads

who were accustomed anyway to meet every Saturday at the CS.

Cesare Finzi's own short and equally partisan account of the discussion places

Steed's role in a new light. When Steed explained the general purpose of his

mission, Finzi could not contain his impatience at the fact that the Allied

leaders still seemed to be `infants' in their use of propaganda `while we are

already adults'. He spoke passionately for an hour about Italy's use of the

weapon since 1916, to which Steed apparently answered: `thank you for the

courteous lesson ± I note with pleasure that you are already ahead of us'.

Steed's mission, however, now acted as a catalyst upon the mood prevailing

at the CS. Badoglio in particular was anxious to intensify propaganda, partly

with an eye on what he viewed as an imminent enemy offensive. He therefore

proposed an increase in the manufacture of Italian propaganda rockets (from

500 to 4000 per day) and, pending the reorganization of a printing works at

Venice which had been requisitioned by the military, he ordered that the

printing works of the various armies should proceed `at full pressure' to produce

propaganda material. The Intelligence officers were told to submit within 24

hours draft leaflets in the languages of the troops opposite their respective

fronts. As for the content of these manifestos, Steed was able to present as an

example the draft proclamation which had been written a week earlier by the

migre

s in Paris. But Finzi and Marchetti took the initiative as well. They came

forward with the suggestion that Austrian troop organization could be dis-

rupted in

a month if the Allied governments authorized proclamations of

independence by the various national e

migre

committees. Such an idea was,

as we have seen, fully in accord with the two key Intelligence officers' thinking

since the New Year; there is no reason to believe that they needed any prompt-

ing by

Steed, or that they were acting contrary to what they perceived as the

Italian government's inclinations.

After all, while Sonnino's views were well-

known, Orlando himself had visited the war zone in early March and clarified

for the Intelligence officers his own conversion to nationality politics. For Finzi

and Marchetti, the idea of proclamations of independence was simply an extra

tool with which to paralyze the enemy; they had not shied away from issuing

such manifestos for some months without governmental approval. For Steed,

their suggestion had greater potential: it was another means by which he could

press the Allied governments to make a stronger policy commitment to the

Italy's Campaign against Austria-Hungary 191

oppressed nationalities, with the argument attached that only then would they

reap the full benefit of the propaganda campaign. In particular, Steed saw it as a

way to overturn the restriction which had been placed on Northcliffe by the

British Cabinet on 5 March. He therefore urged the Intelligence officers to

proceed and draw up suitable manifestos, while he himself would seek to lift

the British restriction. Steed here was working with a broader, political agenda

in mind than Finzi or Marchetti whose primary concern was simply how best to

undermine the enemy.

The discussions

on 30 March significantly advanced preparations for what

was intended as an inter-Allied propaganda campaign. They owed much of their

success to the common enthusiasm of those present. Even Delme

-Radcliffe,

who lunched that day with Finzi and Smaniotto, decided himself to compose

a manifesto for enemy troops.

As for the Intelligence officers, if at first they

were sceptical about Steed's mission, they seem to have quickly acknowledged

his role as a belated Allied coordinator. Equally, their initial scepticism about

Captain Naud's rifle grenades (which had a limited range)

seems to have soft-

ened in

the face of arguments about the weapons' greater reliability compared

to rockets: the conference agreed to order 20 000 such grenades immediately

and a further 300 000 from the French Ministry of Armaments for future use on

the Italian Front. Finzi's own optimism about the turn of events after Steed's

visit is most clearly revealed in a letter which he wrote on 1 April to Ljudevit

Pivko, then engaged in propaganda work at Stoccareddo:

I have

a lot of good news to communicate to you.

1. England has

agreed to my thesis: Austria will be dismembered. From today

onwards you can tell the Czechs, Yugoslavs, Romanians, Poles, (a) that we

will consider subjects of those nationalities as free citizens and friends of the

Entente; (b) that prisoners of those nationalities in Italy will be freed; (c) that

recruitment for a Czech army will be permitted.

2. It is

very probable that the Czech and Yugoslav revolutionary committees

will be invited to proclaim the independence of their peoples. The Entente

governments will recognize their independence.

3. On 8

April there will take place in Rome a conference of representatives of

all the oppressed nations. It would be desirable if you too participated.

Pivko's volunteers might be forgiven for thinking that Finzi's message was an

April fool's hoax, for surely things had not moved so fast in Italy? In fact, the

letter indicates the degree to which Finzi was now enthused to make the fullest

use of the nationality principle in front propaganda, even if on this occasion he

was (as usual) pre-empting the Allies' degree of commitment as well as taking

many of Steed's assurances at face value. But as he wrote later, he was convinced

by this time that propaganda could have the same impact on the Austrian

192 The Undermining of Austria-Hungary

forces as shell bombardment, `shaking the moral forces of this Empire which,

despite so many apparent cracks, seemed set on such bases of granite that no

hurricane could shake it'.

Soon after the coordinating meeting, Steed went to visit the headquarters of

the British and French forces which were both grouped under the new Italian

6th army. He found Lord Cavan at Lonedo, installed in an old and half-dis-

mantled Italian cha

teau,

and they discussed the propaganda weapon. Cavan

expressed an interest ± he had invited Steed to visit ± since, as he noted on one

occasion:

There is

nothing the soldier loves more than to be consulted in a matter of

cunning. It is inherent in the British race to try and be a little bit more clever

than the other fellow. A man would rather tell you that he got 10 to 1 about

a horse that started as a 4 to 1 chance ± although beaten ± than that he

backed a 6 to 4 on winner.

At the

same time Cavan's outlook was thoroughly traditional. On the Italian

Front, since his arrival after Caporetto, he had begun to value what he per-

ceived as

the `sportsmanlike conduct', the `chivalrous warfare', conducted by

friend and foe; and in this spirit he tended to believe, like many of his contem-

poraries on

both sides, that propaganda was an `unfair' activity. Since on his

own admission he was a simple `soldier and fox-hunter' who was ignorant of

politics, he would never quite understand Delme

-Radcliffe's enthusiasm for

propaganda but preferred always to trust in traditional weapons of warfare.

Nor was he enlightened about the character of the Austrian enemy. According

to Steed, who tried to explain to him the enemy `tribes' by reference to tribes

on the Indian north-west frontier, Cavan even spoke about `Yugoslovaks' and

`Czechoslavs'; indeed, his ignorance continued long after the war when he still

thought of the Habsburg army as `composed of four nations'.

Steed could feel

happier when he spoke to Cavan's chief Intelligence officer (the Irish Canadian

C.H. Mitchell), who

had of necessity been liaising closely with Finzi and meet-

ing the

kind of problems which had long been encountered by Italian Intelli-

gence when

monitoring the Austrian forces.

It is

clear, however, that Steed himself was rather naõ

ve when assessing the

enemy army. For example, he presupposed that it would be entirely possible to

target certain enemy troops with manifestos in their own particular language.

On 1 April he returned to Abano and found out to his delight from Italian

Intelligence that certain divisions opposing the British and French were chiefly

Slovene, Romanian or Croat. This information was not strictly correct.

Nor,

because of the increasingly mixed composition of all Austrian divisions and

regiments since early 1917, would it ever be possible, as Steed suggested, to

target the nationalities with any great accuracy. When material was distributed

Italy's Campaign against Austria-Hungary 193

from the air, mistakes were bound to be frequent and unavoidable, with many

leaflets missing their target altogether.

Nevertheless, the idea that there were

easy targets, susceptible to skilful propaganda, was quickly exploited by Steed.

On 2 April, when he telegraphed Northcliffe with the request for Allied

approval of proclamations of independence, he could mention this fact as

well as the British and French military's eagerness to begin propaganda with

`high explosive methods'. Since Germany's offensive was in full swing on the

Western Front, both London and Paris were now prepared to agree to the types

of propaganda manifestos which had been suggested originally by the Italian

Intelligence officers. By the time that Steed went to Rome a few days later, he

received British and French consent to the rather vague idea that they approved

of such proclamations. Sonnino was also prepared to adhere to such a vague

formula, though he balked still at using the word `recognition' in the mani-

festos because

of its Yugoslav implications. As usual these political scruples

would be largely ignored by the military propagandists at the front. Steed

might now instruct the CS to begin immediate distribution of the new leaflets,

but the political permission which he had secured was largely academic. It

never limited the propagandists' arguments; it simply stamped a firmer Allied

seal of approval upon a campaign which employed the nationality principle.

By 8 April, 15 million new manifestos, printed on the various army presses,

were ready for distribution. They had been composed at the Intelligence offices,

with the aid of Slav volunteers such as Stane Vidmar and his men at Tugurio

who had been informed that 1200 aeroplanes would scatter them over the

enemy. Many of the short texts continued with familiar but topical themes

of despair: the food crisis of the Central Powers, their failure to impose peace

upon Bolshevik Russia, and the disaster of Germany's latest offensive in the

West when 40 German divisions had been annihilated in six days, necessitating

(allegedly) the despatch of Austro-Hungarian troops to the Western Front.

Alongside this gloomy picture there was growing emphasis upon government

repression and nationalist agitation within the Empire itself, themes which

would be commonplace in the following months. The leaflets suggested (with

no evidence) that rebellion had erupted in the Czech lands, while in the south

of the Monarchy the authorities were struggling vainly to suppress nationalism

and had (an accurate statement) placed three towns in the Lika region under

siege.

More concretely, they could quote on the one hand a speech made in

the Austrian Reichsrat by a Dalmatian politician, Ante Tresic

-Pavic

, about the

brutalities suffered by the Croat population; and on the other, the famous and

rather timely speech of Count Czernin on 2 April who had declared those

peoples who demanded national rights to be `enemies of Austria-Hungary'

and had termed `the Czech patriot Masaryk a despicable wretch!'.

Such information was now in sharp contrast to the message contained in the

most important of the new leaflets, those which confidently proclaimed Italy's