Page - 435 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

Soldier Games ? 435 tion for the reason that in this way the to some extent visible tendencies of neglect and of youth criminality could be countered. There was admittedly one problem in Tyrol and Vorarlberg. There, the ‘Imperial Association of Patriotic Youth Organisations of Austria’ was rejected since it was regarded as a troublemaker that hindered the work with youths carried out by the Rifle Associations (Schützenverbände). In Upper Austria, a disturbance of the youth rifle associations, which were currently under development, was also feared. It was not entirely clear how the matter was shaping up in Bohemia, since the Gov- ernor Count Max Coudenhove reported exuberantly how enthusiastically the initiative of the Ministry of National Defence had been received, whilst it was reported to the Imperial and Royal War Ministry at the same time that there had been next to no vis- ible measures for the military education of the youth. The Imperial-Royal Ministry of National Defence, however, wanted for its part to exclude those youth organisations from participating in the military youth prepara- tions whose political reliability was in question. This restriction affected above all the youth organisations in those crown lands in which nationality conflicts were germi- nating. Thus, the Sokol, Orel and Lassalle gymnastics clubs in Moravia were first of all prohibited from taking part in the pre-military education and training. In Trieste (Triest), several youth associations were disbanded, and when there was nationalist resistance in the military command area of Kraków the command demanded ‘military school supervision for all schools in the multi-national crown lands’. This was, however, in vain.1043 The language of command in the pre-military training was supposed to be uniformly German, as in the Imperial-Royal Landwehr (Austrian standing army). It was then at- tempted, however, to counter Germanisation tendencies by also tolerating, for example, Czech as the language of command in Bohemia and Moravia and by eventually issuing brochures in which the commands and their explanations were provided in Czech and German. Thus, the youths marched, hiked, practised shooting and learned to orient them- selves in the open country ; they were silently mustered, fell in, were ‘roped in’ and dis- missed ; there were team games and gymnastics. Since participation in the pre-military training took place on a voluntary basis, the ‘soldier games’ were not a sweeping success. On the contrary, levels of participation stagnated, for which reason obligatory partic- ipation was demanded by the Imperial and Royal War Ministry. Even in this case, it remained no more than a demand. And the longer the war lasted, the more the setbacks predominated overall. This also gave the Army High Command cause to criticise the Austrian government, regardless of the circumstance that in Hungary not even this level of militarisation was reached. Evidently, however, the Army High Command had learnt to live with only being effective in the Austrian half of the Empire.