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Franz Josef. Totally and most significantly different from the president who dreamed and wrought was Franz Josef, Emperor of Austria & King of Hungary.* To realize how incredible freedom and a republic seemed to his subjects one must remember that he himself knew no freedom. As Crown Prince he was, in childhood, compelled to drill daily, even in the pouring rain or in knee-deep snow. When he exhibited a nervous disposition servants were instructed to "cure" him by the heroic expedient of firing blank shots in his bedroom at night. He was and remained so ignorant of general and scientific matters that even late in life he was imposed upon by charlatans who claimed that they could change silver into gold. Such a background made him a sovereign who repressed his court as he had been repressed and caused him to turn his deafer ear towards proposals of political reform.
On the external and specifically regal side Franz Josef was more adequate. He learned the dialects of many of his subject peoples and went among them upon occasion wearing their regional costumes. He never yielded on a point of honor—notably, if a field commander was outnumbered he would order him not to retreat until an "honorable" number of his troops had been slain. Finally he conducted himself with the utmost punctilious decorum after the violent deaths of his brother, son and wife. The brother was the ill-starred and finally executed (1867) Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. The son was Crown Prince Rudolf who mysteriously committed suicide or was assassinated at the royal hunting lodge of Mayerling (1889). The wife was Empress Elizabeth of Austria whom an assassin attacked so deftly at Geneva that she was dead ere she realized that she had been stabbed through the heart (1898).
These tragedies weighed down Franz Josef but did not soften his personal spleen toward his nephew & residual heir, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The world found itself at war after Franz Ferdinand had been assassinated at Serajevo; but Franz Josef, spiteful in thought, word and deed, approved an order that the murdered Archduke should have only a "third class court funeral."
*THE MAKING OF A STATE—Thomas Garrigue Masaryk—Stokes ($6). *FRANCIS JOSEPH—Eugene Bagger—Putnam's ($5).