murderous frauds, yet these cringers cover up for them. For decades these unscrupulous Austrian ministers have lied to the Austrians and cheated them and yet these cringers cover up for them. It is a real miracle if, now and again, one of those criminal and fraudulent ministers is kicked out, Reger said, because he is accused of serious crimes committed for decades, yet a week later the whole affair is forgotten because the cringers have forgotten the affair. A twenty-schilling thief is prosecuted by our justice and locked up, but a defrauder of millions and billions, when of ministerial rank, is at best chased out with a huge pension and instantly forgotten, Reger said. It really is a miracle, Reger continued, that a minister has just been booted out again, but, mind you, no sooner was he sacked and kicked out and no sooner had the papers called him a billion-schilling swindler and a major criminal who should be put on trial than he will be forgotten in perpetuity by those selfsame papers and hence also by the entire public. Although the minister should be charged and put on trial and locked up, in accordance with his crime, if I may say so for life, he enjoys his fat pension in his villa on the Kahlenberg and no one dreams any longer of interfering with him. He lives, as the saying goes, on the fat of the land as a retired minister and when one day he dies he is even given a state funeral and a grave of honour at the Central Cemetery, Reger said, alongside his predeceased ministerial colleagues who were the same kind of criminals as he. Austrians are congenital coverers-up and forgetters where the atrocities and crimes of ministers and other governing figures are concerned, Reger said. Austrians spend all their lives cringing and covering up the worst atrocities and crimes in order to survive themselves, that is the truth, Reger said. The papers merely record and accuse and of course magnify, but they immediately annul everything opportunistically and forget opportunistically. The papers are the discoverers and the agitators and at the same time the coverers-up and the whitewashers and oppressors where political atrocities and crimes are concerned, Reger said. Just recall how the papers execrated the now retired minister and levelled the most serious charges against him and, as the saying goes, finished him and forced the Federal Chancellor to dismiss him, and no sooner had the Federal Chancellor dismissed this minister than the papers forget all about the minister and with him the atrocities and crimes which he in fact committed, Reger said. Austrian justice is a justice made compliant by the Austrian politicians, Reger said, anything else is a lie. The fact that this affair was hushed up not only by the government but also by the papers preys on my mind, Reger said. But if you are an Austrian things would have been preying on your mind for years, because over these past few years not a day has passed without a political scandal and political corruption has assumed a scale that would have been inconceivable a few years ago, Reger said. Whatever my mind may be occupied with, these political scandals are continually on my mind, disturbing it. Do what I like, these political scandals are on my mind, Reger said, whatever I am engaged in, these political scandals are on my mind, Reger said. Whenever we open our paper we have another political scandal, Reger said, every day a new scandal involving politicians of this state, by now mutilated beyond recognition, politicians who abused their office, who made common cause with crime. When you open your paper you think you are living in a state where political atrocities and political criminality have become a daily occurrence. Initially I told myself I would not let myself get worked up because this state today is thoroughly and utterly beyond discussion, but all of a sudden I find it quite impossible not to get worked up in this horrid and daily more horrendous state; when you open your paper in the morning you quite automatically get worked up about the atrocities and the crimes of our politicians. Quite automatically you gain the impression that all politicians are criminal types and are fundamentally criminal and a pack of swine, Reger said. In consequence I have lately broken myself of the habit of reading the paper in the morning, as had been my custom for decades, it is enough for me to open it in the afternoon. If a newspaper reader opens his paper first thing in the morning he makes himself sick first thing in the morning and for the rest of the day and even for the subsequent night, Reger said, because he is confronted with an ever bigger political scandal, with ever bigger political corruption, Reger said. The newspaper reader in this country has for years read nothing but scandal in his paper, on the first three pages the political scandal and on the following pages the rest; but whatever he does all he reads about is scandal because the Austrian papers now write about nothing but scandal and corruption, about nothing else. The Austrian papers have reached such a low level that this too is a scandal, Reger said, there are no lower or baser or more repugnant papers in the world than the Austrian papers, but these Austrian papers are of necessity so hideous and so base because Austrian society, above all Austrian political society, and this state are all so hideous and so base. Never before has there been such a hideous or base society in this country with such a hideous and base state, Reger said, but no one in this state and in this country regards this as a disgrace, no one really rebels against it, Reger said. Austrians have always accepted everything, no matter what it was, even though it was the worst atrocity and the greatest infamy, even if it was the most monstrous of all monstrosities, Reger said. Austrians are anything but revolutionaries because they are no fanatics of truth at all, Austrians have for centuries lived with lies and got used to it, Reger said, Austrians have for centuries been wedded to lies, to every lie, Reger said, but most deeply and most of all to the lies of the state. Austrians live their common and base Austrian lives with the lies of the state, without giving them another thought, Reger said, that is what is so repulsive about them. Your so-called charming Austrian is an insidious and opportunist setter of traps, Reger said, who always and everywhere sets his opportunist traps, the so-called charming Austrian is a master of the most infamous infamy, beneath his so-called charm he is the most infamous and shameless and ruthless person and for this very reason the most mendacious, Reger said. Although I have been a fanatical reader of newspapers all my life, Reger said, I now find it well-nigh unbearable to open a paper because they are only full of scandals. But then the papers reflect the society they report on, Reger said. You may search for a whole year and you will not find a single intelligent sentence in any of these filthy rags, Reger said. But why am I telling you all this when you are just as familiar with everything Austrian, Reger said. I woke up this morning and thought of the ministerial scandal and I cannot get that ministerial scandal out of my mind, that is the tragedy of my mind, Reger said, that I cannot get these scandals, and above all these political scandals, out of my mind, these scandals are eating ever more deeply into my mind, that is the tragedy. I tell myself that I must get all these scandals and atrocities out of my mind and yet these atrocities and scandals are eating ever more deeply into my mind. But of course I find it soothing to talk to you about all these things and more especially about these political atrocities and scandals, every morning I think how fortunate for me to have the Ambassador in order to be able to talk to you and of course not only about the scandals and the atrocities, because naturally there are other things as well, more cheerful ones, such as music, Reger said. So long as I still feel like talking about the Tempest Sonata or about the Art of the Fugue I am not giving up, Reger said. Music saves me time and again, the fact that music is still alive within me, and it still is as alive in me as on the day I was born, Reger said. To be saved anew by music every morning, from all the atrocities and hideousnesses, he said, that is it; to be made once more into a thinking and feeling individual by music, you understand, he said. Ah yes, Reger said, even if we curse it at times, even if at times it seems to us entirely superfluous and even if we have to say it is not worth anything, this art, yet when we look on these pictures here, these so-called old masters, though they have very often, and increasingly s6 over the years, seemed pointless and useless, nothing but helpless attempts to establish themselves artistically on the surface of the earth, it is nothing else but just this cursed and damned and often (to the point of vomiting) revolting and embarrassing art that saves such as ourselves, Reger said. The Austrian has always been a clever person, Reger said, and he is profoundly aware of being that. That is the cause of all his distastefulness, of his weakness of character, because more than from any other distastefulness the Austrian suffers from a weak character. But that also makes him a lot more interesting than all others, Reger said. The Austrian is actually the most interesting type of all European types, because he has everything of every other European type plus his own weakness of character on top. That is what is so fascinating about the Austrian, Reger said, that all the qualities of all the others are present in him from birth and his own weakness of character on top. If we spend all our lives in Austria we do not see the Austrian as he really is, but if, after a prolonged absence such as mine in London, we return to Austria we see him clearly and he cannot pretend to us. The Austrian is a genius at pretending, the greatest genius at play-acting altogether, Reger said, he pretends to be everything without ever being any of it in fact, that is his most prominent characteristic. The Austrian is popular throughout the world, at least he is to this day, and the whole world has, so to speak, always been fooled simply because he is