"Rifles at the Ready!"

Back to Vienna from the League of Nations Assembly at Geneva came Austria's amiable Chancellor Ernst Streeruwitz last week, his manner worried.

"Although I endeavored to correct the impression of foreign diplomats that the condition of Austria was very grave and bordering on revolution," said he in a startling official interview, "I must admit that I did not altogether succeed."

The skepticism of League statesmen was understandable. Doubtless they had reminded Dr. Streeruwitz of last month's bloody clashes between Austria's two irregular armies, the reactionary Heimwehr and the socialist Schutzbund, both bands of political zealots eager to seize the state by a coup d'etat (TIME, Aug. 19 et seq.). Last week after observing a brief truce, Heimwehr and Schutzbund leaders were again roaring threats at each other.

"With such folk as the Socialists we can only talk with whips in our hands!" shouted General Hess, a onetime Imperial Austrian Corps Commander, haranguing 1,500 Heimwehr at Waidhofen. "Steady, men! Keep your rifles at the ready!" warned the Socialist organ Arbeiter-Zeitung. "Wait until the Heimwehr attack. Then let them taste steel!"

Basically the Heimwehr demanded as the only alternative to revolution, that the Austrian Constitution be amended to strengthen the authority of the Cabinet and curb the influence of the potent Socialist element in Vienna. Since a two-thirds majority in Parliament is needed to amend the Constitution and since Socialist Deputies number over one-third, their opposition has always blocked all such amendments. Last week the Heimwehr's truculent Reichspost-official mouthpiece of the strongest man in Austria, stern, bald, beak-nosed onetime Chancellor Ignaz Seipel-proposed a bullying solution of the Constitutional issue: Let Parliament be convened in some other city than Socialist Vienna. Heimwehr troops with pistol and bludgeon would then keep the Socialist Deputies from, attending. In their absence the desired amendment would easily pass. By way of pretense that this solution would be legal, the Reichspost quoted Article XXV of the Austrian Constitution: "Under exceptional conditions, Parliament may sit in any other part of Austria away from Vienna."

Blusteringly, Dr. Julius Deutsch, Socialist leader of the Schutzbund countered the Reichspost. "Let them try it," he cried. "Wherever Parliament is removed there will be enough democrats ready to defend the Constitution and democracy."

Worried by such Heimwehr-Schutzbund snarls, members of Chancellor Streeruwitz's cabinet finally announced that they would soon submit to Parliament proposals to change the Austrian Constitution in a way which might placate the reactionary Heimwehr yet be mild enough to win the grudging approval of the Socialist Schutzbund. Nettled by such temporizing, Heimwehr authorities in Vienna issued a sensational "Last Warning to Politicians"-a flat ultimatum to the Government of Chancellor Streeruwitz that a revolution will be staged within a fortnight unless he consents to the Heimwehr scheme of jamming through their Constitutional amendment.