From his excursion to the Paris Peace Conference, handsome Foreign Minister Dr. Karl Gruber returned to Vienna with the undimmed conviction that he was Austria's brightest young statesman. About the first thing he encountered, back in Austria, was a band of irate Tyrolese in leather shorts, who called him a traitor and spat on him (because he had agreed to South Tyrol's so-called autonomy under Italian tutelage). Gruber knocked down one of his assailants, but the homecoming was spoiled.
The disagreeable episode was only the first of several. Gruber's own party colleagues were annoyed with him for taking too...