Page - 721 - in THE FIRST WORLD WAR - and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914 – 1918

Clam-Martinic Faces Defeat 721 tenant protection measure, which in many Austrian municipalities brought about a re- stricted right to give notice and the monitoring of increases in rental interest by rental agencies. The political regional authorities were also tasked with monitoring the rate of interest for mortgages in order to in turn protect property owners from the banks.1641 The necessity of this intervention and others led to very broad support for the war econ- omy authorisation act. Nonetheless, it took until 27 July 1917 for the act to be able to come into effect. Before then, it was discussed in the committee, voted on, passed on to the upper house of the Reichsrat, from which it was returned, was revised and finally definitively also passed with the votes of the German Social Democrats.1642 (The latter is a strange detail, when one considers the fact that the arbitrary application of the act in the First Austrian Republic and even the May Constitution of 1934 were based on this resolution, in the drafting of which the Social Democrats had also been involved. However, this act was originally intended to apply solely to war, and not to civil war.) Clam-Martinic also continued to follow his general course, which was in essence to drastically limit the emergency decrees, to return to the normal legislative basis and to drive forward the restitution of the army. On 16 June, the decree on the ‘extension of military force to the regions adjacent to the theatres of war’, which had been issued on the basis of the emergency decree clause, was annulled in the form in which it had been applicable until then. With this latest decree, the commanders were also transferred civilian administration duties.1643 Censorship was relaxed and rules regarding activities relating to meetings and associations were significantly liberalised. In order to find a way out of the crisis that had been created by the resignation of the Minister without Portfolio, Bobrzyński, and refusal of the Polish Club to support the work of the gov- ernment, Clam offered the Poles a cabinet reshuffle and two ministerial posts. Simulta- neously, the idea emerged of a government of national unity, in which every nationality was to be represented by one minister. Equally, the major parties were to provide one minister each for the government. This idea was certainly worth considering, since in times of crisis, many states make use of a government of national unity, and besides, it would have been foreseeable that decisions in the Council of Ministers would be easier to make than in the par- liament, where the general public repeatedly had to demand its demagogic rights. The first to refuse were the Austrian Social Democrats, from whose ranks Clam-Martinic had hoped to gain Karl Renner as a minister. In its response to the Prime Minister, the Social Democrat leadership stated that it was a matter of principle that ‘leads the Social Democrat Party to preclude participation in the government of a warmongering state’.1644 The next group to reject the proposal were the Czechs. The Poles hid behind the Czechs and informed the Prime Minister that they would only participate in a gov- ernment of national unity if all Slav parties were represented. The leader of the southern Slavs, Dr Korošec, who was even given an audience with the Emperor on the subject