THE AUSTRIAN PARTITION 117Austrian Military Zone, Galicia was plagued by starving refugees, by
requisitioning, and by armies whose discipline was disintegrating. Its distress
exceeded that of the war-torn disaster areas of Belgium and Northern France.
At the end of the War, it was left stranded by the collapse of the Austro-
Hungarian authorities. Together with the dynasty whose interests it had been
designed to serve, it sank without trace.
In later years, Polish commentators tended to look back on Galicia with
indulgence and even affection. For them Galicia was the one place where Polish
culture and ideals had been kept alive, whilst the other partitions languished
under the hammers of Germanization and Russification. It was the 'Piedmont'
of the resurgent nation. Despite the fact that relatively few Galicians were
actively interested in the cause of Polish independence, it is undeniable that the
Galician experience played an important role in fitting the Poles for the inde-
pendent status which was thrust upon them at the end of the War.
But Galicia must also be regarded as the Piedmont of Ukrainian nationalism.
According to the last Austrian census of 1910, conducted in accordance with
linguistic criteria, the Ruthenians made up 40 per cent of the total population,
and in Eastern Galicia 59 per cent. In view of the fact that they possessed 2,460
primary schools and 61 gymnasia (as against 2,967 and 70 respectively in Polish
hands), it could be argued that pro rata they had outstripped the Poles in pro-
moting their national culture. In view of the poor prospects for separatist poli-
tics in Russia, they undoubtedly looked to Galicia as the base for all political
developments in the future. Yet in the political sphere they still occupied a sub-
ordinate position. In the Landowners' Curia in 1914, they held only one seat out
of 45; in the Commons' Curia, 48 out of 105; and among deputies to the
Austrian Parliament, only 25 out of 78. Poles might maintain that inferior
Ruthenian representation was due to the inferior state of development of the
Ukrainian community; the Ukrainians maintained that it was due to discrimi-
nation. All attempts to put Ukrainian language on an equal footing with Polish
and German, except in the courts, met with determined resistance. Attempts to
introduce it into the work of the University at Lemberg led to student riots. In
such a situation, Austrian officialdom was sorely tempted to cultivate Ukrainian
grievances as a convenient check on the stronger Polish movement. By so doing,
they inflamed the Polish-Ukrainian antagonism which broke into open warfare
as soon as the Habsburg regime collapsed.
Indubitably, in an age of national states, the Galician order must be viewed as
something of an anachronism. Yet in a century in which Nationalism has been
discredited no less than the Imperialism which it replaced, there are people still
alive today who recall 'the good old days' of the Dual Monarchy with genuine
nostalgia. There is at least one drawing-room in Cracow where the portrait of
Francis-Joseph still hangs in its place of honour. There are Ukrainians from
Lemberg (now Lviv', the chief city of the Western Ukraine in the USSR), who
wonder whether the changes of the last sixty years have all been for the better.
From time to time, one can still meet an octogenarian, who can whistle the tune