Page - 214 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

214 Adjusting to a Longer War parliament and by political parties. It was a different situation in Cisleithania. Count Stürgkh had refused upon the outbreak of war to recall parliament and he furthermore gave no thought to returning to parliamentary forms of political intercourse. He led a cabinet of civil servants, the constitution of which, beginning in 1915, consistently allowed different individuals to come to prominence, but whose legitimacy became no greater in this way. He ruled by imperial decree and the Austrian wartime government of Count Stürgkh thus offered, as Josef Redlich formulated it, ‘the strange image of the overall government of a state of 30 million inhabitants, which was as a government so to speak permanently “politically denaturised”’.506 The result of a legitimacy derived exclusively from the crown was that the Austrian ministers only felt obligated to the Emperor. Thus, in the Hungarian Reichstag (Impe- rial Diet) debates took place regarding war aims, whilst in Austria a comparative dis- cussion was omitted and there was nothing that might have indicated the views of the overall government, much less that an audible vote in favour of ending the war could have been cast. If a minister sought to declare himself not in agreement with the lead- ership of the Dual Monarchy during the war, his only choice was resignation ‘in order to evade personal responsibility and perhaps by means of such an action to ultimately influence public opinion’, as Redlich said.507 But resignations occurred only when the minister in question had anyway been under fire for some time and, above all, if the military leadership turned against him. Thus, nothing demonstrative was associated with the resignation ; it was instead regarded as long overdue. This reflected a very particular notion of the measures and forms of conduct nec- essary in wartime : Count Stürgkh and his ministry, but also the senior bureaucracy and the generals, regarded the suspension of basic rights and partially even of personal freedoms as a matter of course. And initially this view of things and the corresponding methods were by no means questioned. Only very few deputies of the Reichsrat (Im- perial Assembly) objected to the permanent deactivation of the parliament. They were initially content to be occasionally notified in person and to meet informally with the Prime Minister or with individual ministers. Stürgkh outlined in confidential letters to the deputy state governors of the Austrian half of the Empire the wartime tasks : ‘Considerations of administrative expediency, deference to the moods of the parties, allowance for current or future circumstances in politics ; all this has come to an end. There is now only one thing : the orientation of all forces in the state to the certain, swift and complete attainment of the war aims.’508 The press had adjusted itself to censorship. Domestic proceedings were barely touched and, if this happened on occasion, it was not commented on. Everyone had learnt to live with the emergency ordinances : the civil servants, the salaried employees, the labourers and peasants. It was in fact uncanny how quickly the war and the emergency situation caused by it became routine. People subordinated themselves to it.