Rumors are circulating through Austria that the Hapsburgs may be restored and a monster mass meeting of royalists was held in Vienna to which Chanceller Dollfuss gave his official blessing. Unfortunately, blessing his loving subjects will not be of much avail to little Dollfuss at this point; the royalist activities are not so indicative of Hapsburg as of Starhemberg strength. As might have been foreseen when Dollfusa surrendered to the Heimwher, his power is very shortly due to be curtailed and eventually to be abolished completely. Aside from the fact that the very organization of the Fascist party--which in Austria is animated by the same principles that move it elsewhere--necessarily shuts out any sort of party development, there is another and more potent factor making for the decline of Dollfuss. This is the emergence of Starhemberg as the dominant personal force in Austrian politics. His arrival in a preeminent position has obviously been carefully timed, for it was delayed until Dollfuss had been forced to shoulder much of the odium attaching to the suppression of Vienna Socialism and after foreign sentiment had been aroused against the excesses of the Nazis.

Starhemberg is a descendant of the Prince Starhemberg who defended Vienna against the Turks in 1683 and he consequently has a certain romantic appeal for the people; he is in every way a more attractive figure than the Chancellor, and that he is just as ambitious and more clever is becoming increasingly apparent. What his next move is going to be is, I think, fairly clearly adumbrated by the rumors which are being spread--and there is no doubt under whose auspices the spreading is being done. The main rumor has it that there may be a Hapsburg restoration; but circulating a bit more surreptitiously is another rumor, that in order to prepare Austria for the restoration, Prince Starhemberg may find it necessary to proclaim himself Regent as Admiral Horthy did in Hungary.

It may be that there is nothing in these vague whisperings; but it would seem evident from the slow steady rise of the Prince and from the tactics by which he accomplished this, that the Regency rumors are not only highly significant for the present but also indicative of the future. They are lent additional strength by the fact that this would probably be the ideal solution of the Austrian problem from every point of view but the German. Dollfuss, who is now neither fish nor fowl and who consequently has no power over the elements which he called in to save him would be displaced; a moderate form of Fascism headed by a man of aristocratic antecedents would be more satisfactory to all groups in Austria than any of the bloody alternatives which face them; last, the government which seemed to have the most chance of establishing some sort of political stability and could at the same time act as a strong bulwark against Hitlerism would have the united support of the powers and especially of Italy, which is even now making friendly overtures to the Prince. A Fascist Regency headed by Starhemberg satisfies all these conditions. It looks as though the Prince's hour has arrived; and everything seems to indicate that he will take advantage of it to the utmost. NEMO.