The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order: 1905-1922

by Edmond Taylor

Perhaps the final victory of political warfare over diplomatic prudence and flexibility was the so-called Congress of Oppressed Nationalities of Austria-Hungary held in Rome in April 1918. It was attended by delegates of the Czech and Yugoslav national organizations and by representatives of the Polish and Rumanian Transylvanians (Transylvania, most of which was awarded to Rumania after the war, was a border area of mixed population belonging to Hungary). The Congress concluded with the announcement of a “common front” of oppressed peoples, dedicated to the abolition and dismemberment of the Dual Monarchy. Though not an official gathering, the Congress had been organized by the now-powerful anti-Habsburg lobby in the official political warfare services of the Allied governments, and its deliberations were heavily publicized by directive of their domestic propaganda services. (One of the journalists who helped convince public opinion in his country that the Balkanization of the whole Danubian Basin would somehow advance the cause of freedom and civilization, was a talented, splashy young Italian editor named Benito Mussolini, a former firebrand of revolutionary socialism whose conversion to the war to make the world safe for bourgeois democracy had been facilitated by lavish subsidies from the French secret service — an operation which in the light of subsequent history must count among the witch doctors’ more dubious triumphs.)