The unsatisfactory reply which Germany has just made to the Austrian note of a week ago demanding that the Reich cease its sub-rosa aid to the Fascist party in Austria has precipitated a serious situation in that country. Dollfuss finds himself in a highly precarious position, with the political unity of his country rapidly disintegrating before his eyes. With the Heimwehr reported to be riddled with Nazi sympathizers, the Socialist party alienated, and the peasants supporting him only on account of the Church, Dollfuss apparently feels that his domestic position has become so unstable that if he is to maintain his government against the ever increasing violence of Nazi propaganda, he must have more than the moral backing of the other powers. According to dispatches from Vienna he has decided to appeal to the League tomorrow and ask that Article XI, paragraph 2, be invoked against Germany. That the League itself would have much effect in halting the Nazis even Dollfuss does not believe; but by appealing to the League he hopes to use it as a means of rallying France, England, and Italy behind him.

Dollfuss' appeal has brought about a crisis the seriousness of which is not generally realized. If the Nazis are successful and a pro-German Fascist regime is set up in Austria it will signify more than merely a further spread of the Fascist doctrine; it will mean that the powers of Europe have lost the first real test of strength, with Hitler's Germany, and it will mean the beginning of the end for the status quo set up at Versailles. If Germany is allowed to absorb or control Austria the post-war system of Europe which was based on the treaties of 1919 will collapse and there will be a general realignment in international politics.

The issue at stake is thus of the first importance for all of the powers in its general form. For each particular country it is no less serious. France cannot allow such an extension of the Nazi power with Germany becoming increasingly menacing every day; for Czechoslovakia it would mean encirclement on all sides; to Italy it would mean that Trentino, where a quarter of a million Germans live, would be bordered by an aggressive nation of seventy million people, the avowed purpose of which is to include all its racial members within its national frontiers.

That some means of avoiding this must be invented there is no doubt. But how this is to be done without virtually taking away the political independence of Austria and making her a mere ward of the League presents an unusually thorny problem. Everything is on the side of the Nazis; it will not be surprising if they are able to brave all the rest of Europe, and set up a Fascist government in Vienna which in everything but name will be merely a sub-station of the main Brown House in Berlin. NEMO.