Paris Peace Conf. 184.01102/322
Mr. Walter E. Bundy to Professor A. C. Coolidge22
Vienna, April 4, 1919.
Subject: Interview with Ernst Neuborn, editor of the Neues Wiener Tagblatt.
- 1.
- The Lifting of Blockade on German-Austria is taken here as a joke because the people know generally that they have no means of taking up international trade due to the cheapness of German-Austrian money. At the present rate of exchange it is impossible for them to buy. The only hope of help by the lifting of the blockade is that German-Austrian firms who before the war had credit abroad may be permitted to buy on terms of long credit, or until the time when German-Austrian exchange improves. Even with the possibility of means of purchase abroad the large concerns are reluctant to import as long as the political situation in Vienna is so uncertain and might take the course resorted to in Budapest.
- 2.
- The Vienna public fears and seems to expect the fall of the present government because of the growing strength of the radical Social and Communist party. The number of factories and other concerns joining the communist method of organizing a labor council in each factory or concern is very rapidly increasing. Many of the factories and concerns do this because they fear a political change such as came in Hungary, and if this change comes their establishments will not be seized because they have already organized their labor into labor-councils. The communistic movement in German-Austria is much better organized than it was in Hungary. In Vienna each establishment whose labor is organized into a labor-council chooses its representative to sit in the city labor-council (Stadtarbeiterrat). The same organization is effected in Graz and Linz. The rural districts also form similar organizations. Then the city labor-councils and the rural peasant-councils choose their representatives to sit in the national labor-council (Reichsarbeiterrat). This entire organization is being executed by Friedrich Adler (extreme left-wing Socialist) who is opposed to the present compromise-government only in method. Adler advocates change by revolution, but has assured the present government in Vienna, which advocates a gradual and slower change, that he will not step in its way. Adler is considered stronger than the present government because of the organization of labor-councils behind him and because the armed force of Vienna is chiefly in his hands.
- 3.
- It is to be noted that the Neues Wiener Tagblatt advocates the occupation of Vienna by Entente troops in order to prevent a repetition of the Budapest revolution. The communists are spreading the propaganda that the Entente is afraid to send troops to Vienna lest they too be infested with Bolshevism.
Walter E.
Bundy
- Transmitted to the Commission by Professor Coolidge under covering letter No. 196, April 7; received April 10.↩