(See front cover)
From the lacy steeple of the Stephans-dom in the centre of the parish churches in the suburbs, all the bells of Vienna bonged out in Jubilee last week. A great glittering crowd had assembled in the sweeping crescent of the Heldenplatz before the former Imperial Palace. Hemmed in by glittering buttons and braid and feathers of the entire diplomatic corps, sat enthroned three scarlet-robed Cardinals and their Brother-in-God the Papal Legate from Rome. Bands played, a choir sang Schubert's Deutsche Messe and, grave with emotion, little Chancellor Dollfuss stepped forward and laid a wreath at the ornate bronze equestrian statue to Prince Eugene of Savoy, who helped defend Vienna in 1683.
The celebration, last of a series that has been going on all summer, was officially to celebrate the 250th anniversary of that victory. Everyone in the crowd, and all Europe, knew that it celebrated another, more immediate victory for the Dollfuss Government. While choir boys shrilled Schubert's mass, only a few blocks away a number of disgruntled young Nazis under police guard were on their hands & knees, picking up one by one paper swastikas that they had scattered in the streets. This was the first crow of triumph that the Dollfuss Government has permitted itself since its struggle against Hitlerism began.
The Siege-From the beginning of his administration, when Naziism held the sympathy of about 50% of the Austrian people, it has been the strategy of Chancellor Dollfuss to fight the lush promises of Adolf Hitler with a revival of Austrian patriotism. It was not an easy job. Austria has a colorful, scarcely a' glorious history. She never won a war without the assistance of powerful allies. The Habsburg Emperors gained at various times control of over half Europe by the practical but not very inspiring habit of marrying heiresses, but there was one time when Austria was truly great, when Vienna saved Europe. In 1683 the Turks under Sultan Mohammed IV made a last attempt to conquer Western Europe. An army of 400,000 men swept into Hungary and across the Danube to camp under the gates of Vienna. They never got inside. Vienna's defenses were in the hands of a peruked gallant, Count Rüdiger von Starhemberg, who had under him a man destined to be one of the world's great generals, Prince Eugene of Savoy. Again the victory was not truly Austria's. What sent the Turkish legions pell mell back across the plains of Hungary was the arrival of the galloping lancers of King John Sobieski of Poland. Whoever won it, it was a great victory. Western Europe was saved for Christianity. The Turks never returned, but they left behind them things to enrich the world: coffee to start the first café in Vienna, the first lilac bushes in the west.