Alexandria Gazette

CASE OF CZERNIN.
Making Scapegoat of So Big a Man Thought by Diplomats to Indicate Most Critical Position in Austria.

Washington, April 16.—Czernin has been used as his Emperor's whipping boy. Such is the opinion of diplomats and officials in Washington. That the Emperor found it necessary to "make a goat" out of a personage so high is taken to indicate the seriousness of the Austrian political situation.

State Department officials are loth to comment upon Count Czernin's reported resignation, pending its official confirmation, but members of the diplomatic missions here assert that it proves Premier Clemenceau's bomb-shell has exploded deep beneath the surface of tangled Austrian internal affairs.

Czernin, it is noted, is a Bohemian. Through him the Vienna court held in check the turbulent subject nationalities which are struggling against the imperial government. While it is not expected that any vast political upheaval can take place in the dual monarchy as long as the army is officered and dominated by Germans, the morale of the people will be still further impaired by the desperate action of the Emperor.

Three opinions are advanced here now as to the immediate cause of the Austrian premier's overthrow. They are:

1. That he has been forced out by Berlin, where he has never been in high standing.

2. That he resigned himself out of pique because the emperor did not take him into his confidence in the writing of the Sixtus letter.

3. That he was familiar with the Sixtus letter; that it was written in accordance with the palliative policy Czernin has enunciated for both domestic and foreign consumption; and that the emperor now having abandoned this conciliatory stand, Czernin no longer finds it possible to pose as the friend of the moderates at the head of the Austrian governmental machinery.

Whatever the immediate cause of the break, all observers here agree that its most significant feature is the inability of the Austrian emperor and his prime minister to save their faces by continuing under appearance of amity at this critical time.