Page - 712 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

712 Summer 1917 It was again the Czechs who most clearly gave expression to it. According to the deputy Kalina : ‘The Bohemian nation welcomes with boundless admiration and enthusiasm this great victory of the fraternal people, which has liberated the whole of Eastern Europe with one titanic blow.’1626 If in the days before 30 May 1917 an adherence to the Empire had still been noticeable, this threatened to be lost within the space of a few hours. A number of things that had been prepared without notable radicality for the opening speeches were devalued by the explanations and justifications issued by degrees as well as by the simultaneous verbal contributions.1627 Only hours before the meeting of the Reichsrat, the Saxon envoy in Vienna, Alfred von Nostitz, summarised the situation in Austria as follows : ‘The Germans [of Austria], who aim to alienate everyone that gets in their way, have made an enemy of all other nationalities. […] The passions of the Czechs are more aroused than ever, on the one hand because of events in Russia and on the other hand as a result of the intentions for an octroi, which have become known, even if they were not carried through, and the intended trials for high treason against their Bohemian leaders. The Poles, for their part, are upset because their special demands, which are by the way very dangerous for the Monarchy […], are not to be satisfied […] [and] furthermore due to the multiple blunders of the Austrian mil- itary administration in Galicia. The Ruthenians, on the other hand, feel abandoned by the government to the Poles, the Romanians and southern Slavs partially sympathise with foreign countries, and this applies all the more to the Italians. And this glowering sea is confronted by Count Clam-Martinic with his Cabinet. […] he [is] also not free of the amateurism that clings to more or less all the leading personalities of the new regime  – including His Most Supreme Highness himself.’1628 It was not in 1918 that the nations began to turn away from the Habsburg Monarchy, but already at the end of May 1917. Here it was not questions of equitable self-deter- mination that were important, as Viktor Adler also still wanted and let it be known, but merely questions of real power relations. The demands that were made were com- pletely irreconcilable with the preservation of the Empire. As the Petrograd Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council had formulated it : ‘We maintain that the time has come […] for the peoples to take the decision over war and peace in their own hands.’ This now also applied to Austria-Hungary.