# The New Europe (The Slav Standpoint)/Chapter 3

III.—THE EASTERN QUESTION.
A.
14. The program of the Allies is primarily a program for the reorganisation of Eastern Europe.
25. All European States were disturbed by the social question, but that did not lead to serious international complications, whereas, the national struggles troubled and upset the whole of international relations. In the West the only acute national questions were the problems of the Danes in Schleswig, and that of Alsace-Lorraine. The Irish question is not a national question (not in the sense in which, for instance, the Polish or the Czecho-Slovak questions are national). The dispute between the Walloons and the Flemings in Belgium has never been acute, as this war has demonstrated, for the Flemings defended Belgium against Germany with a determination equal to that of the Walloons, and their representatives opposed separation from the Walloons; but in the East there have existed quite a number of acute national disputes, more serious than any of those in the West; the question of the Poles, Czecho-Slovaks and Jugoslavs (Serbo-Croatians, Slovenes), the Ukrainian question in Galicia and Hungary, the Rumanian, the Italian, Macedonian, Albanian and Greek questions. In Russia the most acute national problems were the Polish and Finnish; but since the war, national aspirations have been strengthened in Lithuania, among the Letts and Esthonians, and in the Caucasus and the East. Quite a unique question is the Jewish question (in all lands).
This state of things was known before the war to those who paid some deeper attention to political questions, the evidence of it being found in the many publications of all these national issues. The Great Powers, some being directly interested, and others from diplomatic connivance minimised these struggles, and declared them to be “internal affairs.” The war, however, compelled official Europe to take heed of the true condition, namely, that the zone from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic, the Aegean and Black Seas, which includes Prussia, Austria-Hungary, the Balkans and Western Russia, is a territory of unsettled national problems and struggles. The war is a bloody object-lesson for the world, teaching that the principal problem of the war and of the future peace is the political reconstruction of Eastern Europe on a national basis. The program indicated in the note of the Allies addressed to President Wilson, his own program, and all other programs, naturally refer to the situation in the East of Europe, the zone of the small nations, and to Russia. The now current phrase, “Reconstruction,” means reconstruction in the East. For England, France and Italy reconstruction means something quite different from what it means for the future Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, Rumania, etc. In the East there must be a readjustment of political boundaries, new States and governments are to be organised, the greater part of Europe is to be politically reshaped.
26. We maintain that every national question is a complicate special problem. Therefore it would require a detailed historical exposition and analysis of the national condition of Germany-Prussia, Austria-Hungary, Balkan-Turkey and Russia to make clear the rich contents of the various national problems, and to explain why the national questions are most acute in these States. Here I can only set down the main facts and the leading principles.
It has already been noted that Germany, and especially Prussia, germanised a large part of the Slavs. From the Elbe and Saale the Germans pressed constantly toward the Slav East, until they succeeded in dismembering Poland, for it was the Prussian king, Frederick the Great, ​who instigated the partition of that country. Bismarck formulated the leading aims of Prussian-German politics when he declared the Province of Posen (the part of Poland held by Germany) to be incomparably more important for the Germans than Alsace-Lorraine; The policy of Berlin and the voice of influential German publicists and politicians prove that the push towards the East is still considered by Germany as her traditional aim.
The Hapsburgs, who ruled long over Germany, carried out German policies, and threatened equally the Slav East and South; they oppressed the Czechs and Slovaks, annexed a large part of Poland, pressed against the Jugoslavs, Rumanians and Italians. The Germans, like the Mongolian Magyars, effected a reconciliation with the traditional enemy of Christianity, Turkey, against the Slavs. In this war prussianised Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey formed a league against Europe—an anti-national, undemocratic, dynastic, aggressive league.
The acuteness of the nationality question in Prussia, Austria-Hungary, Turkey (the Balkans)—and the same has been true, to a large extent, of Russia also—lies in this, that these States oppress nations and national minorities that are self-conscious and enlightened, nations that formerly enjoyed political independence, or nations, parts of which now constitute independent States. Alsace-Lorraine, even while it was connected with the old empire, was, in reality, an independent country, and received from France French culture; the Danish minority in Schleswig has likewise been independent, and its degree of cultural development is as high as that of the Germans. Poland, too, has been independent; it was divided in a treacherous manner, and oppressed, although a considerable part of the nation, as far as culture is concerned, was highly developed. The Czechs and Slovaks had likewise been independent; the Czechs de jure still are independent, and their culture is in no manner inferior to that of the Germans; neither are the Slovaks at a lower degree of cultural development than the Magyars, who oppress them. The same is true of the Serbians and Croatians; Serbia and Montenegro are independent, and the Jugoslavs, held down by Austria and Hungary, naturally look to them for the realisation of their ideal; Croatia has maintained a certain degree of independence, and for that reason feels Magyar oppression the more. The situation of the Rumanians and the Italians is similar.
The nations of the Balkans have only in recent years freed themselves from the barbarous yoke of the Turks, and have not yet quieted down. Turkey still holds a part of the Greeks in subjection, and interferes, to the detriment of the Balkans. In the national questions of the Balkans the cultural and political influence of Byzantium still plays a considerable part.
If we compare with these national questions the national questions of the West, we perceive a great difference. In the first place, the West has very few national disputes, the only pressing question in the West being Alsace-Lorraine; but in the East there are at least nine acute questions. In the West disputes turn on relatively smaller minorities (140,000 Danes, 210,000 French), whereas, in the East entire nations of a considerable size are at stake (Poles, 20 million; Czecho-Slovaks, 10 million; Jugoslavs, 10 million; Rumanians, 10 million, etc.).
As far as the dispute between Germany and France is concerned, it is not altogether national. Between the two nations and States the dispute has raged for centuries about a comparatively insignificant territory, and less than two million people. The dispute all turned along on the question of power, not of nationality, which latter was the case between the Germans and the smaller Slav States; the aggressive German colonisation is aimed against the East. Therefore we may say once more, that in the West there really were no national disputes, and that the West, in general, as has been explained, differs politically and nationally from the East, and especially from that peculiar central zone of smaller nations between the Germans and the Russians.
​The war arose from a dispute over little Serbia—the Austro-Hungarian Great Power, 51 million people against 4½, declared that its existence was endangered. To-day the war is waged between great and very great States, but the racial composition of the large Eastern States turns the question of power into the question of the small nations.
15. The Dismemberment of Austria-Hungary as the Principal Aim of the War: “The Idea of the Austrian State.”
27. Austria-Hungary, composed of nine nations, is altogether an artificial State; as a leader of the Austrian Germans (von Plenner, jr.) once expressed it, it is a State composed of fairly large and civilised nations, held in subjection by the dynasty and the German Magyar minority. If the principle that nations are entitled to self-determination is meant in earnest, Austria-Hungary is politically and morally condemned; since the latter part of the eighteenth century all Austro-Hungarian nations have been striving to attain freedom and independence. Austria is a mediæval survival. As against modern democracy and nationality Austria represents the old dynastic State; Dr. Seidler, the Austrian Prime Minister, in rejecting the right of nations to self-determination, expressed only what had been expressed in 1848 by the Austrian bishops and what has been put in practice by Vienna at all times. Of course, the dynasty had to lean on some nationality (German-Magyar), but it used its nations against one another (Divide et Impera). Against its nations Austria sets the dynasty by the grace of God and the army, against democracy it sets its aristocracy, an aristocracy peculiarly selfish and narrow-minded, as has been said, a kind of an East Indian exploiting company. The Habsburgs, who have been for centuries German Emperors, appropriated to their use the mediæval imperialistic idea, and still employ it, even though they have given up formally the German Imperial crown. They were devoted servants of the Church, misusing religion for their family interests. The Habsburgs accomplished the anti-Reformation with the help of dragoons and Jesuits: Geistesmörder was the name given to the régime of Metternich and Bach by one of the greatest German-Austrian poets. The Pope himself admitted recently that he worked for the preservation of the last great Catholic State. Clericalism in practice directs Habsburg imperialism, which lately was aimed at the Greek Orthodox Churches of Russia and of the Balkans. (This traditional task of Austria was well pointed out in a pamphlet written by the German theologian, Erhart.) The whole régime of Francis Joseph had its policy based on this clerical imperialism; Francis Ferdinand with his “Gross-Oesterreich” differed only on the point of tactics, which his adherents declared to be firm determination.
Palacký, who, in 1846, was the first man to set up for Austria the program of a free federation of nations, attempted, as late as 1865, to discover “the Idea of the Austrian State”; it was to be an Austria just to its nations. This is the Austria that Palacký had in mind when he declared in 1848 that Austria would have to be created over again if it did not exist. But the introduction of Dualism in 1867 taught Palacký that one could not expect justice from Austria. Czech statesmen of more recent days have long tried to look upon Austria as Palacký did in 1865, but Austria went on its fateful road. The Triple Alliance and the occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina made of it a submissive German vanguard in the East; its moral baseness was revealed by the diplomatic intrigues during Aehrenthal’s chancellorship and by the Zagreb (Agram) and Friedjung trials. The last Balkan Wars and finally this war, were merely the culmination of Austro-German politics. Mazzini, after the war of 1866, made a correct diagnosis of Austria when he said that the downfall of Turkey would be followed by the downfall of Austria—both these political anomalies have stood together and are falling together.
That Austria is something abnormal is admitted even by these German statesmen who are now busy figuring how to keep Austria alive: Renner, ​Pernersdorfer, Bahr, Mueller, and others—who admit that Austria, if it is to exist longer, must be transformed. Vain attempts—all these German plans aim to maintain the German-Magyar hegemony, even though they would like to reach their goal in a more clever and decent manner.
Austria is, in all its substance, its history, geography, and ethnography, a denial of the modern State and nationality. From its very foundation it had no raison d’être of its own, being an outpost of Germany and serving that empire; it is a mere annex to Germany even to-day. By its mediæval dynastic theocratism it is the denial of democracy and nationality. Some Pangermans quite properly condemn the national amorphism and lack of character of Vienna (to quote Mueller as a recent example).
28. Count Czernin emphasises the peculiar vitality and strength of Austria-Hungary. We have already made it plain that Austria is not a natural federation of nations, but that it is kept alive through Jesuitism and blood and iron; the Pope himself, a friend of Austria, called the late Emperor for his terrorism during the war “the blood-thirsty sovereign.” Gladstone’s condemnation of Austria is wholly justified. But the fact is, that in the present war Austria gave no proof of its vitality; it was twice defeated by Russia; it was defeated even by the small despised Serbia, and only Germany saved it from downfall. The war demonstrated the complete inefficiency, entire degeneration of the leading archdukes and aristocrats, and the same qualities are exhibited by the new emperor and his chancellors who cannot say a single manly word, but only repeat phrases with the usual stupid cleverness. Emperor Charles is under the influence of the Clericals; without experience, without political ideas, without a will for modern policy, he naturally leans upon the ancient and sole idea of his dynasty. In the affair of his letter to Prince Sixtus, Emperor Charles showed anew the substance of Austria’s policies—lying.
The true state of things has manifested itself in this war. The Czecho-Slovaks, Jugoslavs, Ukrainians, Italians, Rumanians, and very soon the Poles also, refused obedience and took a stand against Austria—60,000 executions and the assistance of Germany upheld the Habsburgs for a while. Even the Magyars are against Austria, and among the Germans the Pangermans have been the greatest radicals in demanding the annexation of Austria to Germany. Pangermans reconciled themselves during the war to Austria, but their only reason is, that Austria carries out unconditionally the task assigned to her by Bismarck and Lagarde, as one of the leaders (deputy Iro) says plainly. Europe and America have the choice between a degenerate dynasty and the liberty of nine nations, for even the Germans and Magyars will reach a higher degree of political morality if they are compelled to give up the exploitation of other nations and their subserviency to a reactionary dynasty. Austria has been on the downgrade for a long time; step by step it had to surrender parts of its territory (Swiss, Belgian, Italian); Prussia thrust it out of Germany, and the final internal dissolution began with the introduction ​of dualism. The dissolution of Austria is a natural and necessary historical process.
29. The Pangerman politicians of Austria plan to strengthen Austria by making it smaller. To give up Trentino to Italy, to surrender, if necessary, Bukovina, a part, or even the whole, of Galicia, would not, according to their scheme, make Austria weaker; it would cease to be in opposition to Italy, Poland would be under Austrian and German influence, and a territorial indemnity would be found for ceded territory in the Balkans and in Russia (Ukraina!). The restoration of the small, weakened Serbia would not, for some time, be in the way of the plan to unify the Jugoslavs under Austria, and in that way to occupy the Balkans. These plans are purely Pangermanist. The Pangermans, even Schoenerer himself, have long ago demanded the separation of Galicia and Dalmatia—which would give the Germans a secure majority in the parliament against the Czechs, who are the greatest and the most powerful obstacle to the Pangerman plans.
30. Many imagine that Austria was driven into the war by Germany against its will, and that after the war it will be opposed to Germany. That is a misreading of history; Austria from its inception served the German ideal; the German publicists of Austria (for instance, the above quoted Mueller) understand that very well—a little freedom conceded to the Slavs will not hinder Germanization through ideas. Germanization is possible even by means of the Slav tongues; and the rivalry with Prussia, as we have shown, actually strengthened in Prussia and in Austria the German ideal, until Bismarck finally found the definite formula for the organisation of Pangerman aggression.
In addition to that, the Magyars have delivered themselves to Germany hand and foot, as is constantly declared not merely by Tisza but also by Andrássy, Karolyi, and all the others. Vienna and Budapest will not be anti-German. Neither are the speculations based on the differences of church and religion well founded. Germany occupied Austria politically, the Catholics in Germany will occupy her ecclesiastically; they well know that Austrian Catholicism is a mire—it was termed so expressly by the Catholic organ of Cologne—but the Jesuits of Cologne and Rome do not mind it; on the contrary, that will make Vienna the more subservient and the Centrum in Germany will get the political leadership of the Austrian weaklings. The Prussia of Frederick and Bismarck is no whit better, as far as Jesuitism goes, than the Centrum at Vienna. The policy of Austria, aiming only to preserve the dynastic prestige, is always contented with appearances; Berlin very cleverly complies with Vienna’s wishes and does not worry if the Habsburgs maintain the appearance of independence and even primacy. It does not, for instance, matter to Berlin that Vienna proceeds in a different manner in the Polish question; Berlin does not care that Austrian agents, especially in America and England, intimate that Austria is opposed to Berlin, that it was dragged into the war, that it has had enough of war, etc.; in reality Austria is not opposed to Berlin, but accepts all that Berlin considers necessary. And if Vienna sometimes really goes its own way, even that does not bother Berlin in the end—Berlin and Vienna are like the Siamese twins. Their co-operation in the main direction is best illustrated by this war: the war was provoked by Austria and its false anti-Serbian and anti-Slav policy; Germany used the opportunity to give her ally carte blanche, and in this way, being well prepared and desirous of war, she tried to conceal her complicity under the guise of faithfulness to her ally.
32. Some friends of Austria in the West use also the argument, that we are fighting Germany and its Prussian militarism, and that Germany, therefore, must not be strengthened by being permitted to annex the German provinces of Austria. This is a problem in arithmetic: is 7 greater than 50? Heretofore Germany had at its disposal the whole of Austria—51 million people; through the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary it would get only the German part of it—only 7 or 8 million people. (The German minorities in the Czech lands, in Hungary and elsewhere, would not become a part of Germany.) It is, of course, up to the Habsburgs, whether they will maintain their independence; most likely they will choose to follow the example of the Byzantine emperors; they may remain emperors even after they have lost their territorial empire. That would not matter to Berlin; on the contrary, Berlin would not have to pay any attention and its cries of panem et circenses, and it would no longer be disturbed by the claims of a rival capital. Austria is the strong, yet also the weak, spot of the German body. Without Austria and its non-German nations Germany would be compelled to live like all the other nations—by its own strength. The dismemberment of Austria will be the greatest blow to Prussianized Germany. This should be clear to every one, particularly since the military and political downfall of Russia. A strong Russia was a powerful military and political support to the Western nations. With its military and economic strength weakened, Russia could easily become the prey of Germany, unless Austria-Hungary is dismembered. By the dismemberment of Austria, Russia will be best protected, having lost its principal enemy, and having ceased to share common boundaries with Germany.
33. It is necessary to say a few words about the Magyars and their State.
To-day the Magyars—especially in the West—still thrive politically on the revolution of 1848 and on Kossuth, although even then the Magyars oppressed the other nations of Hungary. This was well perceived by Cavour in his characterisation of the Magyars, when he said that they fought for their own liberty but would not allow liberty to others. The Magyars lack a deeper culture. The Magyar people are in no respect superior to the Slovaks; quite the contrary is evident from the fact that the Magyar language has appropriated from the Slovak quite a number of terms pertaining to agriculture, administration and general culture.
The Magyars are an aristocratic nation, where a numerous nobility and landed gentry making common cause with the capitalistic interest maintain themselves in power through violence. This exploiting Junker class keeps the foreign countries in ignorance as to the true state of affairs. Ignorance of the Magyar language and the impossibility of any ​real control on the part of the West enable the Magyars to practise oligarchy, absolutism, and a Magyarizing imperialism.
They clothe this absolutism with a pretended respectability by terming it “the idea of the Hungarian State”; in this the Magyars are at one with the German Junkers, upholding the idea of the Prussian State. Even the founder of the Hungarian State, St. Stephen, declared that a state like Hungary would be imperfect if resting only on one nation. The political views of nations which practice oppression are everywhere and always the same; among the Prussians, Austrians, Magyars, and Turks, there is indeed harmony in spirit.
The Magyars turn all their energies against the Slovaks, Ruthenians, Jugoslavs and Rumanians; their anti-Slavic baiting, which always found willing champions, especially in the Viennese press, is largely responsible for this war.
16. Prussian Germany: The Culture of External Order and Militaristic Materialism.
34. Prussia, as we have pointed out, has much in common with Austria in its origin, in the eastern aims of its policy and of tactics, even though there are considerable differences of temperament and character between the Germans of Prussia (Northern Germans) and those of Austria, who are, to a considerable extent, under the influence of the other nations of Austria-Hungary and who also differ racially.
Prussia to-day is more nationally unified; to maintain by all means national unity is the principal point of the Pangerman program, and the weakness of Austria and Russia, due to their national diversity, is pointed out. For that reason the Pangermans demand forcible Germanization, colonization, and wholesale emigration of non-German elements. Prussia is, after Austria and Russia, the most nationally mixed country; thus ethnography bears testimony to the fact that Prussia was built up by violence. The Prussians themselves are a Germanized nation, related to the Lithuanians; there are also many Germanized Slavs in present Prussia; according to Bismarck, it is a crossing of a female race (Slavs) and a male race (Prussian-German).
From the Pangerman plans, from political maxims enunciated by men like Bismarck, and now from the whole war and peace manœuvres of Germany and Austria, it is evident that the object of the German aggression is the East (“Drang nach Osten”). The first and principal point of the German eastern policy is to hold Austria-Hungary; Austria is to Germany a bridge, as the title of a Pangerman pamphlet has it—the bridge to the Balkans and Turkey, and therefore to Asia and Africa. Germany in union with Austria presses into Russia; the nominal freedom of the Baltic provinces, of Russian Poland and the Ukraine, is a temporary expedient. Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, and the West in general, have, as the world situation stands to-day, a much smaller importance for the Germans, if they succeed in winning the East; if they rule the East they will easily settle the bill against France and England, and later even against the United States.
35. In the course of the war the French, English and Americans, have realised the true condition of affairs. The Italians have for a long time been against Austria, and for that reason they take such an emphatic stand against Prussian militarism.
Prussian militarism leads us to the analysis of the whole Prussian question. In Germany this question is looked upon as meaning that the Prussian diet must be made more democratic, and the existence of political differences between Eastern and Western Germany (Prussian Junkers) is admitted; but there is a wider and deeper Prussian problem—the problem formulated by Pangermanism and its philosophers, Lagarde, von Hartmann, and others, the problem of the difference between the ​Prussian and southern German spirit, the problem of the right of Prussia to lead Germany, and actually to Prussianize Germany. The difference is brought out in the motto: “Goethe or Bismarck?” The answer usually given is that there exists a difference, but that it is insignificant, and that as far as any exists, it tends to increase the contents of German culture; but right now during the war some Austrian and Prussian Germans search their conscience, and reach the conclusion that Prussian Germandom has a clear title to stand alongside of Austrian Germandom, and emphasis is laid on the organic synthesis of the two directions of the German national spirit.
One does not like to pass a summary judgment upon such a complicated subject without a lengthy reasoning. While pointing to my former statements I will give here with all proper reserve my opinion, an opinion which, it seems to me, is well founded. I will not go into racial problems, namely, how far the Prussians of to-day possess the qualities of the original Prussians, whom German historians themselves declared to be a brave and cruel race. Neither is it practicable to investigate how much Slav blood there is in the Prussians and Germans. This analysis would make it necessary to go into the question of how far the Southern (and Western) Germans are racially mixed, for these also are not purely German (Celtic, Slav, Mongolian, and other admixtures). Here it must suffice to speak of the Prussian political program. I then reject the Prussian worship of the State, and specifically the Prussian monarchism; I reject the idea of the Prussian kingship, according to which the dynasty is looked upon as a divine revelation. I reject the Prussian denial of parliamentarism, its apotheosis of war, the worship of militarism and militaristic bureaucratism. This Prussianism is deeply rooted; Sombart is the spokesman of thousands of educated Germans, both when he sees the substance of German thought in the faculty of finding union with the divinity even here on earth and when he sees in militarism the most perfect union of Weimar with Potsdam (“he is the Faust, Zarathustra and Beethoven in the trenches”). Sombart’s divinity, of course, is the fetish of his pedantic historical materialism.
Bismarck shows what Prussianism is politically; his life really consisted in safeguarding the Prussian monarchism against revolution, against socialism and democracy, and a part of this Bismarck is in every German, even in Messrs. Scheidemann and David; these very socialists who have become reconciled even to monarchism, indicate the degree to which Germans have become accustomed to Prussian militarism and monarchism; but the tragedy of Bismarck’s life and his policy lies in this, that in the end he rebelled against William in opposition to his own idea; Bismarck knew and saw what weak and vain representatives of his idea he defended; he unveiled the monarchical Isis. . . . In this fatal contradiction (Bismarck played with Lassalle, but Lassalle also played with Bismarck) Bismarck systematized the Prussian political Jesuitism; he, the foe of Austrian Jesuitism and its narrowness. Those who analyse deeper psychologically, cannot be deceived by Bismarck’s tactics, using against the old-style diplomacy the bluff of robust half-truth. Bismarck defended a lost position, and he understood that it was lost, and yet he practised conscientiously the policy of “blood and iron,” from which, as we know from Busch, he never derived any joy or satisfaction; and this Bismarck, and men like Treitschke, carried out the synthesis of Weimar with Potsdam; Treitschke declared morality to be the endowment of small men undertaking small things, whereas the State must carry out great things. This internal contradiction of Bismarck is involved in the very conception and substance of the Prussian State; a State by God’s grace whose dynasts are supposed to be the prophets of God, is in all its substance conservative, legitimist; but imperialistic aggressiveness compelled the Prussian king by irony and trickery to absorb his neighbouring dynasts, who also ruled by God’s grace (Prussia arose by the absorption of more than a hundred dynasties) and drove him to come to terms with socialism and revolution.
36. The Germans advance the claim to primacy by pointing to their philosophy and science, and emphasize the utilization of science in all administrative and military affairs, in political economy and commerce. German science, it is true, is efficient, but it is not free, it is a part of the official system. German universities are intellectual barracks. German philosophy is deep, but much of its depth forced, artificially produced by the lack of liberty; it is but the modernization of scholastics—the whole political aim set out in advance is proved and applied by all sorts of ex post arguments. German philosophy, as far as it is not based on specialized science, is nothing but Sunday sermons for the academic youth, the future officials of the church and state. Look at the German literature in the field of jurisprudence, especially in the science of state and politics, and see how much brainwork is employed there for the advance of theocratic absolutism, what special legal categories are devised for a peculiar monarchical right, of a special monarchical “office,” etc., while the matter really is very simple—judged from a higher degree of enlightenment and education. Monarchist absolutism is simply immoral. Even during this war German jurists and philosophers argue for the superiority of the Prussian-German state and its administration over the English and Western systems in general. There is nothing so absurd but that the German professors cannot cleverly defend it. I am sorry that even such a man as Toennies stoops to this; according to him the West has gone in theory beyond the mediæval theocratism, and therefore it looks upon the State from a utilitarian point of view, for this is what democracy means to him; evidently the Prussians can stand theocratic tsarism, and so it is no accident that Treitschke gave his recognition to Russian tsarism, and that the Hohenzollerns and Bismarck have been so long and so intimately devoted to old Russia. Now they are in alliance with Turkish theocratism and are its defenders.
37. German scholastics is at its best in theology, namely, in the so-called modern theology; in the Prussian theocratic system the State has the largest share, and therefore its theology is nothing but politics in ecclesiastical and religious guise. Ludwig Feuerbach and his criticism of theology is in substance a criticism of Prussianism.
German scholastics arose in the same way as Jesuitism in the Catholic Church. Besides the Hohenzollerns must have a regard to the Centrum and the Catholics, and in their rivalry with Austria they employed the methods of Viennese Jesuitism. Prussia-Germany absorbed Austria, but incidentally it swallowed a portion of Austrianism and now it absorbs and swallows even Mohammedanism. Prussia betrayed the Reformation: Prussia is secular Jesuitism—in its endeavour to maintain mediæval theocratism at all cost it follows the same methods as the Society of Jesus. In this respect Prussia spiritually leads Austria, and this is its great crime; Pangerman publicists know Austria quite well; men like Treitschke, Lagarde, Lange, and others, know that Austria is a political misfit and a mediæval mummy. The first generation of Pangermans was in favour of the disruption of Austria, but Bismarck and Lagarde with him established the tactics to employ Austria for their own purposes. There are ​still men who see through Bismarckism, but they are few; only recently the Socialist minority are beginning to think more for themselves. Bismarck himself was under no misconception of the real situation—hence his attempt at the cultural fight against the Centrum and Rome; but Bismarck surrendered because he valued the Church and religion for their usefulness as a political weapon. How contemptuously he looked upon the Old Catholics! This flower of German Catholicism and Catholic theology meant nothing to him, because it did not have behind it the masses. Prussian monarchism to-day can only be a form of demagogy.
Jesuitism forms also the substance of Prussian militarism: brutal bravery united to trickiness—systematic violence employing lies, for lying is but a form of violence.
If war, as Prussian military expert said, is merely a different form of politics, then surely German militarism does not produce men of the type of Achilles but of Ulysses. Hence the absence of a truly great commander like Napoleon. All the Hindenburgs and their like are good, painstaking, and conscientious generals, but they do not possess the slighest spark of genius. It cannot be otherwise; the Germans have no great ideas, only the craftiness of a greedy aggressiveness. German diplomacy and its underground work in all countries is the natural ally of Prussian militarism.
38. All German culture, if one may venture into such a large generalisation, is external. Germany’s strength and weakness lies in its outward orderliness; organisation everywhere, organisation of organisations, superorganisation; but the ultimate aim, dominion over all nations, is morally wrong. Prussian order, scientifically thought out, is a force, and the Germans, therefore, look upon themselves as “Herrenvolk”; but a little more or less culture, and especially of this superficial culture, gives them no right to dominate nations which develop in their own way. Various nations are at various stages of development; it is nowhere decreed that all nations must be equally educated at the same time, it is enough if they honestly work for their moral and intellectual improvement. Europe should be unified and unitary, but that does not mean that it should be uniform. On the contrary, development aims at variation, at individualisation. The Germans, in spite of all their science, proved even in this war, how short-sighted they can be. Though they were well prepared for war—in fact, they alone were prepared—they did not see how the war would develop. They under-estimated Russia, over-estimated Austria, failed to understand England and America, and were totally deceived as to France, which they declared to be degenerate. Altogether, the Germans have in this war, and even in their victories, proved themselves small. We acknowledge that we are indebted for much to German literature, science and philosophy, to German technique. But we also derived much education from the French, English, the Italians, Russians, and Scandinavians. The cultivation of reason is only a part of true culture—here we could refer also to German psychology and philosophy, but the official German science and the philosophy of the universities serve exclusively the cult of reason, and thereby of materialistic Prussianism and of military and economic materialism. We reject, in the name of humanity and true culture, the materialism and mechanism of Prussian militarism. One is reminded of the words of Herzen about Djingis-Khan with telegraphs, steamers, and railroads, with Carnot and Monge in his staff, with Mignet-Congreve rifles, under the leadership of Baty; the tactics of Moltke, the ​diplomacy of Bismarck and his successors down to Bismarck and William compel us to be critical of the Germans and their culture; for that matter Moltke himself well knew that the European nations could not be fond of the Germans.
17. The Reorganisation of Eastern Europe and Russia.
39. The difference between the West and Russia, as far as nationality and politics are concerned, has already been pointed out; in the West there are many nations and States; Russia has many nations, but forms one State. On a territory not larger though more densely populated, the West is a political organisation of numerous and highly cultured old nations; it represents politically, economically and culturally a more intensive organisation, a more intensive employment of all cultural forces, whereas Russia is still at the stage of extensiveness. The West is an organisation of autonomous national and State units, Russia has been a centralistic, absolutist organisation. It was by the lack of decentralisation that tsarism fell. For that reason also the revolution immediately proclaimed the autonomist war-cry of self-determination of nations, and the radical factions interpret the right of self-determination as the right to political separation; this program was bound to come up in a country so highly centralised by sheer force. In the West—what a variety of independent languages, nations and States; in tsarist Russia, though with a population of half that of the West—what a monotony of administration; and yet even the West is not sufficiently decentralised. Russia does not lack natural and historical variety of cultural forces, but tsarism was unable to stir up and organise these forces; that was the cause of its breakdown and disappearance. For that reason the revolution is still so negative, so lacking in constructive force. Tsarism did not prepare the Russians for administrative work.
From the national point of view Russia is a peculiar formation composed of many nations; a German author from one of the Baltic provinces published recently in Paris, under the name of Inorodec, a treatise on Russia, in which he enumerates 111 nationalities composing Russia, European and Asiatic. His purpose, like that of all Pangermanists, is to bring out the composite character of Russia and use it in the defence of the composite character of Austria-Hungary and Prussia; but between Russia on the one hand and Austria-Hungary and Prussia on the other there is a great difference, as far as the question of nationality goes.
The great majority of the peoples of Russia are uneducated and without national conscience; the Russians themselves have not developed to the point of national consciousness; the masses of the people have their religious viewpoint, and the intelligentsia, as far as it is Socialistic, does not feel nationally. The watchword of self-determination of nations is applied by the Russians to their various parts; hence the birth of so many republics, or rather communes; and, therefore, the solution of national and language questions in Russia is different from the European solution.
Out of this great number of nations very few, and those only in small part extend across the frontiers into other States, especially into the European States. In fact, only the civilized nations in the West of Russia do so (the Poles, Rumanians, a part of the Lithuanians and Letts); the overwhelming majority of the Russian nations are united within the boundaries of the Empire; and it must be noted that the nations of Russia are on the whole small, fragmentary, and, in addition to that, uneducated.
Russia for centuries pushed to the West, directly against that zone of small nations into which the Germans pushed in an easterly direction; in that zone, Russia, Prussia, and Austria met and struggled for domination over these small nations. At the same time Russia grew toward the East; that was the result of the pressure from the Asiatics and of Russia’s ​weakness as against the West. In contrast with the Western nations, which pushed without exception toward East and South, Russia colonised first the North, and only later turned toward the East and South both in Europe and Asia.
The most acute national question has been the Polish, but this is not a question of nationality only, but also of politics and culture in general (Catholicism and Western culture). The same is true of the Finnish (Protestantism and racial difference). The Germans in Russia do not possess a continuous territory, they are colonists; their colonies, especially in the Baltic districts, date from the period of the knights of military orders. There are no German provinces in Russia; but there are Polish provinces in Prussia. If William, after the conclusion of the peace with Trotsky and Lenine, declared solemnly that the Baltic Germans might thereafter publicly call themselves Germans, that only proves that not even the war has cured the man of his talkativeness. The Baltic provinces are not German but Lithuanian, Lettish and Esthonian, and a considerable part, perhaps the majority, of the German barons and burghers did not share the opinions of Schiemann and Rohrbach, but were reconciled to Russia, especially the official Russia, which allowed them to exploit the non-German population and the country very effectively. The non-German population of the Baltic provinces has frequently protested, through its spokesmen, against the German occupation and the design to settle German dynasts there.
40. In the Ukrainian problem we must carefully distinguish the question of language and nationality from the political question. The point lies in this: Are the Ukrainians a separate nation or a Russian tribe? Is the Ukrainian language a separate language or a Russian dialect? Even the philologists (Slavic) are divided on this question. Following the analogy of other nations, however, we may say that the Ukrainians, even granting that their tongue is merely a dialect of the Russian—and that is my opinion—may separate themselves from the Russians on other grounds as well—on grounds economic, social and political. Political independence does not depend on language alone, as the independent German States best prove. What applies to the West can be applied to the East. Of course, Western history shows that the individuality of dialects became subordinate to the cultural advantages derived from the union with the larger and more cultured nations; in France, for instance, Provençal differs from literary French more than the Ukrainian differs from the Russian. Even the German Plattdeutsch and other dialects show a greater difference from the literary language than there exists between the Ukrainian and Russian. It is true, of course, that the French and German literature and culture are richer than the Russian, and France and Germany have not proceeded against their dialectic individualities as foolishly as the Russian Tsarism.
Politically, the Ukraine herself, in the Third “Universal,” acknowledged the Central Russian State, and declared herself to be a part of the Russian federation; it is natural that the politically unripe body of the Ukraine felt the need of leaning on Russia. Only later (the Fourth “Universal”) the Ukrainian Rada declared the Ukraine to be an independent State not connected with Russia; in that, of course, it had the backing of the Germans and the Austrians. The Pangermans in Germany and Austria did not forget the Ukraine, encouraging the Ukrainians to play an anti-Russian part.
Austria employed the Ruthenians of Galicia (and Bukovina), not only against Russia but also against the Poles, and she looked upon ​the Ukraine as a fertile soil for her clerical imperialism. (Szeptycki’s memorandum.)
41. Not only the Ukraine but Poland and the other small nations in the East need the support of a strong Russia; otherwise they easily, while apparently independent, could come under the deciding economic and even political control of Germany. It will be a matter of great importance how far these nations in the East will manage to agree among themselves (the relations between the Ukrainians and the Poles, between the Poles and the Lithuanians, and between the Lithuanians and the Letts).
The relation of Germany to Russia is the relation of Prussia to tsarism; we have already stated that Prussian theocratism had been at one with Russian theocratism. Austria joined Prussia and Russia (the Holy Alliance,—the influence of Metternich’s system in Russia and Prussia—the protection given to the Habsburgs in 1848–49 by Nicholas I.—the Alliance of the three Emperors), but the old antagonism of Rome and Byzantium and the Jesuitic policy of Vienna in the Balkans brought about the crisis, and, in the end, the prospect of booty (territory) changed the Russophile policy of Bismarck and Treitschke.
The Pangermans, partly under the influence of Baltic politicians (Schiemann, Rohrbach, and others) drove official Prussia against Russia; the adherents of the Bismarckian tradition proved to be the weaker. Emperor William himself, together with Bethman-Hollweg, at the beginning of the war, accused Russia of being the principal cause of it, and denounced her imperialistic Panslavism—an extremely onesided and incorrect explanation.
Germany’s relations to Russia have been changed by the new orientation of world politics, as they were extended into Asia and Africa. Here Germany came into conflict not only with Russia but also with England and France, the principal Asiatic Powers. That brought about the understanding of Russia with England. The new German world politics is substantially the consequence of the old German Drang nach Osten; William continued the Turkish policy of Frederick the Great but under new conditions. As long as the Germans pushed merely against the zone of small nations, and as long as the relations of Prussia to Austria were not definitely settled, Germany (Prussia) and Russia could be friends, the interest of both being purely continental, which fact made an agreement possible. Germany had in Russia a near and advantageous market for her energetic industry. As soon as Germany, after 1866, came to an understanding with Austria, and as both Berlin and Vienna became more active in the Balkans and Turkey, and when Germany embarked on colonial politics, and thereby made Africa as well as Asia the direct object of her plans, then France and England were brought nearer to Russia. Russia now took on a different significance for Germany; the weakening of Russia and the annexation of the Russian South-West (fertile soil—coal—Black Sea), became the new German policy, and the policy of the present war. The annexation of Western Russian Governments, the juggling with the Baltic Provinces, with Poland and the Ukraine, all that is the result of aiming at the organisation of a German Central Europe and domination in Asia and Africa. Berlin-Bagdad was broadened to Berlin-Warsaw-Kiev-Odessa. The East, Russia, and the zone of small nations, would mean far more to Germany than parts of the West (Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, or parts of France). Controlling the East, Germany would be enabled to conquer the West. Europe and humanity need an independent and strong Russia.
Russia cannot for some time make herself felt as a military force; Napoleon’s prophecy of a Cossack Europe has not been fulfilled; Europe is marching toward liberty and humanity. Russia, striving to be a republic and a democracy, will help Europe a great deal, and does help, although the excessive negativeness of her revolution weakens this ​influence on Europe more than the short-sighted Bolsheviks imagine. In the meantime Russia needs the help of the Allies.
Russia gained influence in Europe through Pushkin, Tolstoy, Turgeniev, Dostoyevsky, Gorky; Russia will also have a great political influence, if she carries out the revolution consistently, the revolution of heads and hearts. With Russian Tsarism will fall the tsarism of Vienna and Berlin, a more dangerous species of tsarism because it uses science and developed capitalism. The tsarism of the Romanoffs was without culture and brutal, and for that very reason less noxious. The tsarism of the Russian masses and revolutionaries is worse; they rid themselves of the Tsar, but they have not yet ridden themselves of tsarism.
18. What about a Criticism of the Allies?
42. Someone will raise the objection that I am criticising the Germans and Austrians and have not a word to say about the Allies.
In doing so I would be formally justified; the Germans, not the Allies, offer themselves as teachers, leaders, the saviours of nations and mankind, and therefore it is our duty to scrutinize them carefully, especially when they force their culture upon us by way of their heavy artillery. The German is a peculiar mixture of a schoolmaster and a bully; he will give you a soul-gladdening sermon and then hit you with his fist in the eye or he may do it the other way round.
I would have enough to say concerning the French, English, Americans, Russians, etc., and could find plenty to criticise; I proved that by my work on Russia and by my critical activity at home. I have never been a national chauvinist; I have not even been a nationalist; I have stated frequently that nationality appealed to me from the social and moral side—the oppression of nations is a sin against humanity.
The sense of my arguments is not, and cannot be, that we should approve without reserve either of the French, or of the English, or of any other Western culture. The question at issue could be only as to a synthesis of all the elements and the component parts of culture worked out by all nations. That in fact is done by philosophers and specialists of all nations, and that is done, too, by many men, practically, who have the opportunity of becoming acquainted with various nations. Internationalism is not only the easy communication with foreign nations, but its cultural synthesis.
In this synthesis will also be included the German part, and it will not be a minute part; but as far as the political element of this synthesis is concerned, we cannot accept German Prussianism and Austrianism; we have to turn our faces to the example of the French, American, and English democracies: the general principles, not all the particulars, must come from the West.
We are told that one nation, one State, must be the leading, the principal State. Granted; but it must be primus inter pares, not above the others; the organisation of Europe must be democratic, not aristocratic. The mediæval idea of the aristocratic, theocratic imperialism is superseded by the philosophical, ecclesiastical, political and social revolution of the modern age.
The modern age? We are really in a period of transition, and all of us suffer from the defects, the halfway stage of this transition; the new era will come, and let us hope that this war, which compelled all mankind to revise its history and its efforts, will induce all nations to labour in an enlightened manner for themselves and for all mankind. History, as far as we know it and learn from it, has existed for only a few thousand years; what is that in comparison with the infinite number of centuries of life which the astronomers promise to our planet? Humanity is, indeed, at the beginning of its development; the philosophers of history in all nations declare that the epoch following the Great Revolution, political and philosophical, to be the beginning of an entirely new era; this war ​and its horrors will shake our consciences and make us accept this conviction.
In spite of the fact that the historical development follows a definite law, the freedom of such decision is not taken away from us; lawful determinism is not passive fatalism. Velentem ducunt fata, nolentem trahunt. . . .
43. Even when one is scientifically conscientious, it is too much to expect that a philosophical attempt toward the understanding of the war will be free of the personal element, of personal sympathies and antipathies.
Since my young days I have tried to become acquainted with the accomplishments of all nations. Besides the foundation given me by my own nation, I learned to know not merely the classical world but also the principal national cultures of the present day; being brought up also in German schools, I learned diligently and much from men of genius like Lessing, Goethe, and others. At the same time I penetrated into the French and Anglo-Saxon world—the French and English philosophies (next to the classical, principally Plato’s) were my teachers; only later did I understand the German philosophy, expecially Kant’s.
As to the Slav world, I owe much to the Russians and Poles, also to the Jugoslavs. The Italians also, and the Scandinavians, enriched my store of knowledge and widened my horizon.
All my life I was an assiduous, passionate reader and a conscious observer of contemporaneous world happenings. If I had to say which culture I considered to be the highest I would answer, the English and American; at any rate, my stay in England during the war, and a very critical observation of English life convinced me that the English, as a whole, come nearest to the ideals of humanity. The same impression was made upon me by American life. I do not say that the Anglo-Saxon civilization is to me the dearest—that is another question; I see and appreciate the faults of the Slavs, but I love the Slav’s faults and virtues. I was always attracted by France and her spirit, even though I criticized and condemned much, as I condemn our own national faults and defects.
The German spirit I always respected, but seldom have I felt at home with it. It does not inspire me. Prussia especially I cannot love; but I strive to be fair to her. If I really hate anything, it is Austrianism—or rather Viennism, that decadent aristocratism, chasing after tips, gratuities, that false, mean Habsburgism, that nationally nondescript and yet chauvinistic medley of people, known as Vienna. I do not like Prussianism, but still I prefer it, with its robust militarism and hungry harshness of the parvenue, to the thin-blooded, pleasure-seeking spirit of Vienna. Even Tsar William, with his amateurish talking and with his pretended conniving with Providence, unwittingly did more for democracy than the taciturn, “blood-thirsty sovereign,” who believed himself, and was regarded by others, to be the most perfect aristocrat of the world—a man mean to the very core.
I have hope that of my German friends a part, at least, will agree with me.
19. The Significance of the Czecho-Slovak State for the Liberation of Europe.
44. In the Pangerman literature much attention is paid to the Czech question; and the Pangerman politicians are totally hostile to the Czechs and Slovaks, as the views of all of them, from Lagarde to Winterstetten, prove. Mommsen formulated the Pangerman aims when he harangued his countrymen to break the Czech’s hard skulls. We Czechs watched, therefore, carefully the development of German politics, and especially the Pangerman plan of Central Europe, and when the decisive moment came we took a stand against it.
The geographical location of Bohemia and Slovakia in the very centre of Europe gives to our nation a significant position; Bismarck said that ​“the master of Bohemia is the master of Europe”—the Pangerman politicians often quote this statement of Bismarck. Bohemia, with Slovakia, interferes with the Berlin–Bagdad plan; the shortest road from Berlin to Constantinople, to Salonika and Trieste leads through Prague or through Bohumin (Oderberg); to Vienna and Budapest, also, the shortest connection from Berlin is by way of Prague and Bohumin—Bohemia and Slovakia block the direct connection between Prussia and Austria and the Magyars.
The Czechs constitute the westernmost wedge driven into the German body; they constitute the furthest West in the zone of the small nations; they are the western outpost of the non-German nations in the East. The Czecho-Slovaks are not a Slav remnant like the Lusatians, for they have held their own against German aggression toward the East for more than a thousand years; the Czechs have opposed the Germans from the seventh century, from the original foundation of their State, up to the present day. The Slavs of the Elbe and Saal basins and of the Baltic shores have been Germanised or exterminated, the Czechs maintained their individuality. To be sure, they are surrounded by the Germans on three sides; toward the South they border on the Magyars, only in the East they border on the Poles and the Ukrainians: a very difficult position in a world of national struggles, resembling the position of the Germans, of which the Pangermans so loudly complain.
45a. The Czecho-Slovak nation has from its very beginning, manifested considerable strength in opposing Germany and Austria; the first Czech State (Samo in the seventh century) reached as far south as the territory of the Slovenes; and a great Moravian Empire also reached as far south as the Serbocroat lands. Later, the Czech State, as we have remarked, actually passed through a period of something like imperialism.
Bohemia did not unite with Austria and Hungary until 1526, in a personal union; from the seventh to the sixteenth century, for a full thousand years, it constituted an independent State. The union with Austria and Hungary was brought about by the Turkish danger; all three States had a common dynasty, otherwise remaining independent; but it is well to emphasise that Hungary, in 1526, was over-run by the Turks, only Slovakia remaining free, and being included in the union; Hungary had to be reconquered from the Turks by the united efforts of Bohemia, Slovakia and Austria, which was done after a struggle of nearly two hundred years.
The account of the development of the Bohemian-Austrian-Hungarian union is very interesting and instructive, if we study how the mighty position of the dynasty, judged by mediæval standards and reflecting the glory of the Roman Empire, led to absolutist centralisation and Germanising unification; it has already been pointed out that it is not correct to look upon Austria as an illustration of the principle that small nations and States must necessarily federate. The principle of federation was betrayed by Austria.
Legally, Bohemia is still an independent State. The union with Austria and Hungary, in 1526, gave it only a common sovereign; the Habsburgs centralised and partially Germanised Bohemia and Hungary only via facti, the legal foundation not being affected. The Habsburgs, as Bohemian kings, strengthened absolutism according to the Spanish example in the administrative sphere, but they did not dare to change the legal basis of the compact concluded between the kingdom and the dynasty. (The estates were at that time the representatives of the nation, and remained such until 1848.) The Bohemian State became absolutist, but remained a separate, independent State. The Habsburgs lent themselves as a tool to the counter-reformation, the Hussite movement was suppressed with the assistance of all Europe, the revolution of Protestant Bohemia in 1918 was overcome, and the emperor, with his German councillors, endeavoured in every way to weaken the Bohemian lands. In particular, they carried through an unique economic revolution; 30,000 families ​(among them, Comenius) were exiled from the country, and four-fifths of the soil was confiscated and given in reward to military adventurers and noblemen, who gathered from all Europe, like vultures, and divided the Bohemian booty. A large part of the Bohemian property was taken by the Emperor himself. The people were made Catholic with the help of the dragoons and Jesuits; but the national consciousness was not extinguished; the spirit of opposition was not broken—the peasants of Moravia fought against the imperial army as late as 1775.
Maria Theresa and Joseph II. were the first rulers who dared to establish governmental departments, but it was Joseph who provoked, also, a strong national movement and political opposition in Bohemia (and also in Hungary). After the proclamation of the Austrian Empire (1804), giving expression to absolutist unification, the opposition in Bohemia grew, until, finally, the revolution of 1848 compelled Ferdinand (April 4, 1848) to declare a partial restoration of the Bohemian constitution and independence. Bach’s absolutism introduced centralisation once more. At the beginning of the constitutional era, made necessary by the defeat of 1859, Emperor Francis Joseph vacillated between centralisation and federalisation, but leaned more and more toward centralisation; in 1861 he promised the Czechs, with whom the Germans of Bohemia were at that time at one, that he would be crowned King of Bohemia; in the same year he promised a Slovak delegation freedom and support against the Magyars.
But the promises were never fulfilled. The defeat of 1866 compelled the dynasty to grant concessions, but those concessions that would weaken absolutism the least; the emperor reached an agreement in 1867 with Hungary, or, rather, with the Magyars, by which he granted hegemony to the Germans in Austria and to the Magyars in Hungary. The Czechs opened a radical constitutional opposition by their well-known passive resistance, boycotting the Central Parliament. Emperor Francis Joseph took a personal share in this struggle, and attempted to crush the opposition by force and by the grossest violation of law, but in vain. And so he made an attempt to reach an agreement with the Czechs. He twice issued a rescript to the Bohemian Diet (1870–1871), in which he promised that he would assume the Bohemian Crown, and in which he recognised the historical rights of the Bohemian State, but the Magyars and Prussians, as was recently re-confirmed by the Hungarian Premier, Eszterhazy, prevented the consummation of the agreement. Again the Czech nation fought against Vienna, until, in 1879, the fight ended in a compromise, which guaranteed the Czechs certain cultural and national concessions (for instance, the University), but the struggle for the rights of the Bohemian State was not settled. The Czechs did not recognise the centralistic constitution of Austria, and took part in the work of the central parliament only under the reservation of their State rights.
Such is the state of things even to-day. Austria having been transformed into the dual State of Austria-Hungary, represents the organised violence of the German minority in Austria and the Magyar minority in Hungary. From the legal point of view, dualism is disloyalty, and actually a conspiracy of the dynasty with the Germans and Magyars against the Czechs; Austria came into existence by the union of not merely Austria and Hungary but of the two States with the Bohemian State. As a matter of fact, the Czechs are just as fully entitled to independence as the Magyars; or, rather, more so, for when Bohemia united with Austria, in 1526, Hungary, as noted above, was overrun by the Turks, only Slovakia being free.
​Bohemia was even then, and is to-day, the “pearl of Austria”; the military and financial burden has rested on the Bohemian lands; Czechs, Slovaks, and Austrians had to liberate, with their blood and treasure, the rest of Hungary, which only in the second half of the nineteenth century became stronger and more influential economically. The economic strength of Austria depended wholly upon Bohemia.
The centralistic constitution in Austria and the dual system have never received the sanction of the Czech nation, about these two points turns the fight of Bohemia against the Habsburgs and Austria; on the basis of their right which has recently been recognised three times by Emperor Francis Joseph, the Czechs are an independent nation and State. Austro-Magyar violence does not create a state of law, and limitations do not run against the rights of a nation so long as the nation continues to fight for those rights.
45. (b) In this war the Czecho-Slovaks, as an independent nation, acted independently—they did not follow the perjured emperor, but took their stand on the side of the Allies.
The Czech nation elected the Habsburgs to its throne, the Czech nation has the full right to withdraw its allegiance to them, when they have proved faithless to the nation. They proved faithless when Francis Joseph acted against his solemn promises to the detriment of Bohemia’s rights; therefore the nation since 1848 has been fighting the crown and those provinces and nations (Germans, Magyars) which combined with the crown against it. The Czech nation did not approve the rôle which the Habsburgs played more and more openly since 1866 as the retainers and servants of Berlin; the Czechs expressed in a solemn manner their attitude toward the threatening Prussianism in 1870 when they, alone of all the nations, officially protested in the Prague Diet against the separation of Alsace-Lorraine from France.
In the Vienna Parliament the Czechs defended not merely their own rights, but also the rights of other nations, Slavs and Latins; during the Balkan war they openly supported the Jugoslavs against Vienna and Budapest. They continued in this national and democratic policy when Francis Joseph declared war on Serbia and, as a result of it, on Russia; the entire nation condemned this war. The Czech soldiers manifested this opposition by refusing obedience, by deserting and by joining the Allied armies. This movement, and it is necessary to emphasise this fact, was spontaneous and truly popular, the Czech soldier-voters refused obedience to the Habsburgs. In all Allied and neutral countries numerous Czech and Slovak colonies with equal spontaneity proclaimed the rights of the Czech nation to independence and organised military legions; all these colonies, far exceeding in number a million people, became an organised body under the leadership of the National Council with headquarters in Paris. This National Council, being well in contact with the nation and its leading statesmen and having the approval of the whole nation, proclaimed, in the declaration of 14th November 1915, the Habsburgs deposed from their royal office and announced their determination to fight against them. Francis Joseph answered by a bloody reign of terror.
In Bohemia the whole nation by its actions approved the policy of the National Council abroad and solemnly declared on several occasions through its representatives that it demanded full independence and the severance of all ties with Austria-Hungary.
In the meantime prisoners of war increased the original legions into considerable armies in France, Italy and Russia; on all battlefields Czechs and Slovaks distinguished themselves by bravery and military discipline which was enhanced by the democratic constitution of this, their first, army. The march from the Ukraine across Siberia became an epic of this war.
The Allies recognised fully the importance of the Czecho-Slovak armies, and of the whole nation, for their cause; the French, Italian, British, ​American, Japanese and other Governments recognised the army as part of the Allied Armies and the Czecho-Slovak National Council abroad as the Provisional Government of the independent Czecho-Slovak nation.
A consequence of this recognition and its practical confirmation is the relief expedition of the United States and the Allies to Siberia. By these acts the Allies have given the Czecho-Slovak question the importance of an international question; the ravings of German and Magyar journalists and official declarations of the Austro-Hungarian and German Governments against this recognition merely emphasised the international importance of the Czecho-Slovak question.
The press in Austria-Hungary and Germany at first suppressed all news of the Czecho-Slovak movement; only occasionally, for the purpose of intimidating the population, official reports of executions and confiscations of property were published, but in the end the Czecho-Slovak Army and its deeds could no longer be ignored. The Viennese Government, upon the occasion of the Allies’ recognition of the National Council and the Army, issued a statement (August 17th, 1918) that the National Council was a committee of private individuals without a mandate from the nation; the statement says further that the Czecho-Slovak Army cannot be recognised as one of the Allied Armies in the sense of international law, because there is no Czecho-Slovak nation (to wit, an internationally recognised nation); besides, the Vienna Government claims that it is a matter of common knowledge that a very small part of the army consists of Czechs and Slovaks. Therefore, in spite of the recognition by the Allies the Austrian Government would treat the Czecho-Slovak soldiers as traitors.
This declaration of the Viennese Government is purely Austrian—mendacious and false. The National Council is not a committee of private individuals, and the Vienna protest itself proves that, for such an official declaration would not be issued against a committee of private individuals. In reality the National Council is the organ of the entire Czecho-Slovak people, and it worked and proceeded in accordance with the plans and desires of the national leaders at home, who in numerous declarations adopted and approved the policy of the National Council abroad. The National Council is the political organ of the entire Czecho-Slovak nation. That the Czech lands are legally independent in an international sense is proved by history and by the oaths of fealty of the Austrian rulers as crowned kings of Bohemia; Francis Joseph on four occasions recognised in a solemn manner the historical rights of the Bohemian State.
It is a lie that the Czecho-Slovak Army is composed of very few Czechs and Slovaks. We understand that Vienna would like to have the world believe that Russians and other allied contingents are in this army, but in reality the whole army consists of Czechs and Slovaks, and this army (in France, Italy, and Russia) numbers considerably more than 100,000 men. This means that all Czecho-Slovak soldiers who enjoyed the freedom of decision have proved themselves opponents of Austria-Hungary; and if that part which is under German and Magyar pressure, would have enjoyed a similar freedom, then the entire nation would have ranged itself openly on the side of the Allies. When the Czecho-Slovak army in the Ukraine fought the invading Austrians the Emperor sent his plenipotentiary to negotiate with them and to induce them to return, promising full amnesty.
The threat that captured men will be treated as traitors does not scare the Czecho-Slovak army; it issued a proclamation that for every life taken a life will be exacted from German and Magyar prisoners, and ​that for every execution the Habsburgs and Hohenzollerns will be made personally responsible.
After Vienna, Berlin also made an official statement. The Minister of Colonies, Solf (according to a report dated August 22nd), spoke in a contemptible manner of the Czecho-Slovak Army as a band of robbers without a country; yet after the defeat of the Germans at Bakmach the German general asked this band for an armistice, and in 1866 the Prussian army, when it invaded Bohemia in the war against Austria, officially recognised the rights of the Czech nation to independence and promised to help obtain it. The Czechs at that time considered the Prussians to be more dangerous than Austria; from which time the Czechs and Slovaks became convinced that the Habsburgs were mere servants of Prussia, and therefore renounced allegiance to them. By the same right by which the Habsburgs were elected kings of Bohemia they ceased to be kings—the nation elected them, the nation now dismissed them. Count Czernin in the above-mentioned memorandum properly admitted that the Czech nation was of all the Austrian nations least devoted to the dynasty.
46. This makes it plain that the Czechs will not be satisfied with the concession of national autonomy within an Austrian federation; the Czechs have a historical right to the independence of the Czech lands (Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia); they insist on the right to the independence of the State created by them. In addition to that, they have an historical and natural right to the addition of the Slovakia, so brutally oppressed by the Magyars. (The Magyars have a proverb: “Tot nem ember”—the Slovak is not a man.) Slovakia, formerly the centre of the Great Moravian Empire, was torn away by the Magyars in the tenth century, and was later for a short time connected again politically with its kinsman and was for a time independent. Culturally the Slovaks remained constantly in close relation with the Czechs. The Magyars depend culturally on the Slovaks. The union of the Czechs and Slovaks is therefore a legitimate demand. The demand was made not only by the Czechs, but also by the Slovaks. The Slovaks will employ their own dialect in the schools and in the public administration; there can be no language question, because every Slovak, even without an education, understands Czech and every Czech understands Slovak. The Slovaks gave the Czechs in the period of their national renaissance a number of great authors (Kollar, Šafařik), and educated others (Palacký, and, in a measure, also Dobrovsky). The Magyars, though weaker culturally than the Slovaks, attempt to magyarize the latter systematically and brutally; this magyarization was not the natural result of a cultural preponderance, but was artificially maintained merely by the administration, which resorted to violence and corruption, exploiting economic advantages. It is known that the Slovak, and so also the Rumanian, elections to the Parliament end in pitched battles, in which non-Magyar electors are simply shot down—that is the reason why the Hungarian Parliament is Magyar, though the majority of the population is non-Magyar.
47. The Pangermans make the most of the cultural level of the German nation as an argument for its right to world domination; if culture is a necessary condition of political independence, then the Czechs and Slovaks deserve independence fully.
​Independent Bohemia early achieved considerable progress in schools and in education; the Bohemian State was organised firmly at an early date and its administration in the hands of trained officials was excellent. Therefore, Bohemia managed to hold its own against Germany. Agriculture and industry were highly developed. Culturally the Czechs have won renown through their Reformation, they being the first nation to resist the mediæval theocracy supported by the German-Roman Empire. From the Prague University, the first university in Central Europe, there came forth John Hus, who by his martyr’s death inspired the whole nation to resist the mediæval theocracy of Rome. With Hus the entire Czech nation opened thus a new era.
In the Hussite period the Czechs distinguished themselves not as warriors only (“every Czech a captain”); alongside of John Zizka, the founder of modern military strategy, we have Hus, Chelcicky and Comenius, the teacher and educator of nations. The Czech national church, the Unity of the Brethren, according to the common judgment of history, was an attempt to put into practice the ideals of the purest Christianity. The Czech Taborites (the radical Hussites) made an attempt to practise Christian communism.
Rome and the Habsburgs, this time backed by all Europe, crushed the Bohemian Reformation; Bohemia, weakened by many wars forced upon her, united with Austria and Hungary, but this union, aimed at the Turkish menace, was employed by the Habsburgs for the suppression of the Czech Reformation. The anti-Catholic revolution of 1618 ended at the White Mountain in Jesuit darkness; but traditions of former power and independence and the progressive ideas of the eighteenth century and especially of the French Revolution, inspired the Czech nation to a new spiritual and national life; the end of the eighteenth century marks the beginning of the renaissance of the Czechs and Slovaks as an organic part of the renaissance of all the nations of Europe. In spite of the constant struggle against the perjured dynasty, the Czech nation is to-day, culturally and economically, one of the most progressive nations. It has thus proved its virility, its energy and ability to hold its own against the pressure of imperialistic Germany and Austria; this high degree of culture, as we have emphasised before, being attained by the Czechs through their own strength, without assistance from the dynasty and from Austria.
In so far, therefore, as culture is an argument for political independence (the administration of the State, especially the democratic administration, being facilitated by the enlightenment of the people), the Czechs and Slovaks can employ this argument with full justification, for they are not less cultured than their oppressors, the Germans and Magyars.
48.—(a) The Czecho-Slovak State will have an area four times as large as that of Belgium, and its population would number about 13 millions, of which the German, Magyar and Polish minorities would number over two millions.
Though we advocate the principle of nationality, we wish to retain our minorities. That seems a paradox, but it is on the very principle of nationality that we wish to retain them. Bohemia is a unique example of a nationally mixed country. Between the Italians and Germans, for instance, the ethnographical frontier is simple and sharply defined. Not so in Bohemia; in a great many places (mines, etc.), and in all the cities, there are considerable Czech or German minorities. The Germans object that the Czech minorities in North Bohemia, etc., are “only” working men—people who live on German bread; but this anti-social argument is obviously false, and it is inconsistent with the process of the industrialisation of Bohemia, which, of course, needs factory “hands”; moreover, it was the Germans themselves who invited the Czechs to come, preferring the Czech working man to the German.
​The question of national minorities is of capital significance not only in Bohemia but in almost all countries, almost all States being nationally mixed. Even if the new Europe cannot be remodelled on a strictly nationalist basis, the national rights of the minorities must be assured. This will be done in Bohemia. The Bohemians have always claimed equal, not superior, rights. Owing to her central position, it will be to Bohemia’s interest to grant full rights to the Germans and the two smaller nationalities. Common-sense will demand it.
So far as the German minority is concerned, the eminent Bohemian leader, Dr. J. Grégr, proposed a rectification of the political frontier; parts of Bohemia where there are only a few Czechs might be ceded to German Austria. In that way the German minority could be reduced considerably; but it must be remembered that there are large Czech minorities in Lower Austria and Vienna (half a million); there are also Czechs in Prussian Silesia, in the territories of Glatz and Ratibor, and a large Serb minority in Lusatia. The Pangermans cannot, therefore, justly complain of the fate of the minority in Bohemia. The just rule for the national redistribution in Europe consists in the fair application of the principle of the majority. “Which is the more just—that 10 million Czechs should be under foreign rule, or that 2 1/2 million non-Czechs should be under Czech rule?”
If the Germans insist on the argument that their culture invests them with the right of ruling the less cultured nations, the fact must be emphasised that the Czechs are not less cultured than the Germans.
There is one means, of a more financial nature, which might help to rearrange national minorities. The German and Austrian politicians, especially the Pangermans, have very often proposed thet the various States should undertake a systematic intermigration of national minorities. I see that in England Mr. Buxton recommends this means for the Balkans. It may be doubted whether this expedient would be very effective, if equal national rights were granted. The Magyars tried some years ago to repatriate the small Magyar minority of the Bukovina; the undertaking was a complete failure, for the repatriated colonists soon left Hungary and went back; but after the war many countries will need men—farmers, artisans and other professional classes, and, therefore, a systematic transplanting of minorities might be attempted.
The Poles are found in Silesia (about 230,000); with good will on both sides—and that is necessary in the presence of a common enemy—it is possible to find a suitable frontier; the Polish minority could be reduced, especially if the Czech district of Ratibor, in Prussian Silesia, were returned to Bohemia.
The Magyar minority in Slovakia is balanced by the Slovak minority that will remain on Magyar territory.
Some Czech and Jugoslav statesmen point to the possibility of uniting Slovakia with Jugoslav territory; that part of Hungary stretching along the Austrian frontier belonged at one time to Slovakia; to-day it is German and partly Magyar, but it contains Slovenian and Croatian minorities; this territory, joined in the north to Slovakland and in the south to Jugoslavia, would connect the Northern and Southern Slavs. This zone would be about 200 km. long. This plan supposes complete victory of the Allies, and there is no doubt that the Germans and Magyars would not agree to such a plan willingly; but if there is a truly democratic reconstruction of Europe, then the Northern and Southern Slavs will be secure even without this connection.
48.—(b) Recently a new plan has been devised by the Ukrainians living in Hungary; their representatives in the United States wish that their nation would join the Czecho-Slovak State as an autonomous federated part. The proposition must, of course, be ratified by the people in ​Hungary. These Ugro-Russians, as they call themselves, have been very much oppressed by the Magyars; they number about half a million.
48. (c) Economically and financially Bohemia is acknowledged to be the “pearl of Austria,” and she will in the future be as rich as she is now; she will, in fact, be richer, because she will not have to support the economically weaker provinces of Austria.
Bohemia was, from the beginning of the union with Hungary and Austria, the political backbone of Austria; the Alpine countries were poor, Trieste and the sca were of little importance, Hungary had no economic significance at all. Bohemia exported grain and manufactured goods; it was only in the second half of the nineteenth century that Hungary became the granary of Austria and partly of Bohemia, which, until then, like the rest of Austria, imported the grain and flour she required from America.
At present the population of the Bohemian countries is, in round numbers, half agricultural, half industrial. In Bohemia proper 35 per cent. are employed in agriculture, the rest in industry, commerce and the so-called liberal occupations. In Moravia and Silesia 50 per cent. live on agriculture, in Slovakia a much higher percentage still.
In the years 1906–1914 the average production of grain was (in round figures), in Bohemia 54 1/2 million cwt., in Moravia 24 million, in Silesia 4 million.
After making due allowance for grain used for sowing purposes and for grain wasted, this works out an average of over 810 lbs. a year per head in Bohemia; in Moravia the average is 890 lbs. per head. The Bohemian lands altogether give an average of 815 lbs. per head for a population of little less than 10 millions, while in the rest of Austria it is hardly 541 per head. It should be remarked that half of this grain can be used for milling, giving flour and foodstuffs of excellent quality, which, together with the yearly produce in potatoes, peas, lentils, vegetables and excellent fruits, is more than sufficient to feed the whole population. In 1914 the harvest was so good that it gave an average of 839 lbs. per head. It should be remembered that the cultivation in Bohemia has not reached the same stage of development as that of Denmark or Belgium; there are great possibilities ahead if the rate of development evinced during the last ten years is maintained.
During the years 1906–1910 Bohemia and Moravia contributed almost 46 per cent. of the total grain produced in Austria, 41 per cent. of the potatoes, 44 per cent. of the clover and fodder, and 93 per cent. of the beet sugar. The Austrian sugar industry is almost entirely confined to the Bohemian lands. The statistics of the production of fruit, vegetables, cereals, etc., are equally indicative of Bohemia’s importance; and this in spite of the fact that these lands represent only 26·4 per cent. of the soil of Austria and 35 1/2 per cent. of her inhabitants. Cattle breeding in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia has recently been largely improved; the provision of milk and meat is more abundant than in other Austrian countries (excepting Vienna, which in many respects has the favoured position of the capital).
To the total amount of brown coal produced in Austria (26 1/4 million tons) Bohemia alone contributes 83 per cent., and to the 15·8 million tons of black coal 86·66 per cent. These results place Bohemia among the richest States in the world, and along with England and the United States and Germany, for she produces about 26 1/2 cwt. of black and almost 51 cwt. of brown coal for every one of her 10 million inhabitants.
​Of the iron ore turned out by Austria (27 million cwt.) about a third is produced in Bohemia. Though the country itself is not very rich in iron ore, yet in consequence of the great production of coal, the ironworks in Bohemia are very extensive, forming over 60 per cent. of the entire industry in Austria. As these two branches of natural wealth and industry are the most important of all, the Bohemian lands are invaluable to Austria.
In the other industries as well, the importance of Bohemia is equally paramount. She monopolises 93 per cent. of the entire sugar industry, and about 46 per cent. of the breweries. Hops are grown only in the Bohemian lands, whence they are exported. The engineering industry also has its seat chiefly in Bohemia, as do the textile (cotton and wool), glass, paper and leather industries, stonecutting and grinding, graphite quarrying, chemistry and electro-technology.
In consequence of this industrial activity, Bohemia returns the highest profits for railways, the post and telegraphs. Her network of railways is the thickest, and she alone, out of the whole of Austria, can boast of private railways run for the benefit of particular factories. This feature is especially characteristic of the north of Bohemia. The Bohemian postal system yields 52 per cent. of the total profits.
In banking and exchange the Bohemian lands used to be dependent upon Vienna, but they have been emancipated since 1895, and during these 20 years the capital of the Bohemian banks has increased sevenfold, having risen from 4 millions to 33 million crowns; and it must be remembered that the chief source of the banking capital of Vienna is the trade with the Bohemian lands. The development of the Bohemian trade has, during the last few years, been exceedingly rapid.
The Slovak territory in the north of Hungary is different. It is mostly agricultural, as yet comparatively undeveloped, and as the country is very hilly and the methods of cultivation obsolete, it is much poorer than the other Bohemian lands. The southern part, being less hilly, is fertile enough, producing, indeed, very good wheat and wine; and as the hilly north has much natural wealth in the form of iron ore, great forests, etc., which are, as yet, unexploited, the country could be industrialised to great advantage. It could supply the other Bohemian lands with commodities of which they are short, such as iron ore, copper, gold and tin; and, finally, the country is good for sheep and cattle raising. This territory is very similar to Silesia, the larger part of which is now industrial, and could be turned to the same use.
Nor must we forget the wealth of the compounds of uranium and radium, mined at Joachimsthal, nor the baths of Karlsbad, Fransenbad and Marienbad, Teplitz, Podebrady, Msené, Luhacovice and Pistany. The Bohemian lands are, in this respect, one of the richest in the world. In short, except for salt, mercury and naphtha, the Bohemian lands have an abundance of everything necessary for cultural development, so that, as an independent country, they would be quite self-sufficing, and would, moreover, be able to export not only their agricultural but a great part of their industrial products as well.
From the point of view of modern political economy, Bohemia may be said to be an ideal country; she has great possibilities of realising that harmony between agriculture and industry, that economic self-sufficiency which, by many theorists, enables the forming of small autonomous States. (Cf. the chapter on Free Trade in Gide’s “ Political Economy.”)
In emergencies such as war the Bohemian lands would also be able to hold their own, both agriculturally as well as industrially.
The natural and industrial riches of the Bohemian lands, making possible a very heavy system of taxation, have always formed the financial foundation of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. The population of the Bohemian lands is much denser, and the whole standard of life is much higher, than that of the other lands of Austria.
​The following table illustrates the Bohemian contribution on the basis of direct taxation to the Austrian finances:—
| The Bohemian lands pay— | The Bohemian lands pay— | Other Provinces (excepting Lower Austria) pay— |
| | Per cent. | Per cent. |
| House property taxes - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - | 49 3/4 | 50 3/4 |
| Tax on earnings - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - | 61 1/4 | 38 3/4 |
| Income tax - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - | 56·7 | 43·3 |
| The total of all direct taxes | 57 | 43 |
The Bohemian lands and the other Austrian lands (not counting Lower Austria and Vienna) have 25·04 million inhabitants, in the proportion of 40·5 and 59·5 per cent. respectively. Lower Austria is placed separately, because it contains Vienna as the capital, and is thereby privileged; it is also the real centre of the Bohemian industry and export trade. Many Czech undertakings have their central offices and rights of domicile there, because the scale of taxation and the municipal rates of Vienna are lower than in Bohemia.
That explains why the rateability of Bohemia tends to drop, while that of Vienna and Lower Austria tends to rise. If we could include those figures in the statistics, and if we entered, in the archives of the Bohemian lands, the precise rateability of those Bohemian undertakings that are domiciled in Vienna, the difference would be still more in our favour; but even as it is, the rateability of the Bohemian lands is 11·90 crowns per head, whereas, in the rest of the Austrian lands it is only six crowns.
Still more significant are the statistics of indirect taxation in Austria (taxes on beer, sugar, spirits, salt, paraffin, tobacco and excise taxes, etc.); with the exception of spirits, the consumption of all those articles is far greater in the Bohemian lands.
The Bohemian lands, are, indeed, the “pearl of Austria,” not only from the point of view of agricultural and industrial production, but also, and as an inevitable result thereof, from the financial standpoint. In the other lands of the Monarchy, the State expenses are greater than the income received from them in return, and this deficiency is made good by the Bohemian countries. In view of the foregoing facts, few people will entertain any doubts as to Bohemia’s chances of being self-supporting and progressive.
Bohemia has no seaboard (except in one of Shakespeare’s plays), and that, no doubt, is a great drawback as compared, for instance, with little Denmark and the other sea-bordered countries; but Bohemia does not stand alone in that respect; she is no worse off than Serbia, Hungary, Switzerland. The example of Switzerland shows that not only political independence can be preserved, but also that modern means of communication enable even a landlocked country to maintain a flourishing industry. Switzerland has not even any coal and iron, and yet she has succeeded in becoming an industrial country. Bohemia, on the other hand, is very rich in coal, and will, therefore, be able to run the necessary railways; but she will have at her disposal Trieste, which, it may be presumed, will be a free port; and she will also have the Serbo-Croatian ports and Polish Danzig, should her relations with Germany prevent the use of Hamburg. The distance from Prague to Hamburg is the same as that to Trieste; Danzig is a little further, as is also Fiume. There is a possibility of creating a cheap waterway by a Moravia–Oder–Vistula channel, of which there already exists the beginning.
The sea undoubtedly also furnishes comparatively strong strategical frontiers, yet the development of modern navies and aeroplanes easily counterbalances that advantage, as has been experienced in this war. Belgium, Denmark, Norway, for instance, can make little use of the sea.
Bohemia would take her share of the Austrian public debt contracted before the war, but she will decline to participate in the debt resulting from ​the war. The financial situation of Austria-Hungary is very precarious; the war has cost the country an enormous amount of money, and the Austro-Hungarian bank has been degraded into an institute for false coining.
Independent Bohemia would have to begin her own administration with a considerable financial burden; and the leading political men of Bohemia are well aware of their serious task, and of the necessity for a solid, thoroughly balanced financial administration. It may be mentioned that after the war the financial exhaustion of all the nations will necessitate the most stringent financial administration; but it may be said, without exaggeration, that Bohemia will have excellent administrators in all departments of public and private service, who will be quite fit for the work of remodelling the State.
In this outline it is impossible to discuss all the social and economic problems of Bohemia. But it is of general interest to point out the peculiar position of the Bohemian landed proprietors (aristocracy), which is very similar to that of the famous East Elbian Junkers. As in East Prussia the Germans confiscated the soil of the Slavs, so did Austria and her aristocratic accomplices in Bohemia after the battle of the White Mountain. It was as a result of these and former robberies that, in Bohemia, landed estates were created of a size equal to some of the small German States. These proprietors, for the most part, are Austrian in sentiment, and would, perhaps, form a dangerous element. Bohemia, might, in that case, follow the methods of land purchase and parcelling adopted in Ireland, as, indeed, all the Liberal parties demanded before the war.
The Czecho-Slovak State will undoubtedly be a republic.
This very war revealed sufficiently the reactionary and dangerous character of continental monarchism; the Czecho-Slovak nation is ripe for a republic. In the course of centuries we became accustomed to living without kings of our own; the Habsburgs were to us always foreigners; the aristocracy also became estranged from the nation and attached itself closely to the foreign dynasty. The aristocracy in Bosnia-Herzegovina became Turkish and in Bohemia Habsburg.
The independence of the Czecho-Slovak State is a demand of political justice, by its geographical location in the centre of Europe and by its century-long struggle against the German “Push toward the East,” the Czech and Slovak nation is the anti-German vanguard of all the nations in Eastern Europe. Should the Czech-Slovak nation remain in the sway of the Germans and Asiatic peoples allied with Germans, Magyars and Turks, and should it actually fall, Pangerman Central Europe and its further political consequences will be realised. The Czecho-Slovak question is a world question and is the problem of this very war; free Bohemia, or reactionary Austria, the free Czecho-Slovak nation or the degenerate Habsburgs—that is the choice for Europe and America, for the thinking Europe and America.
Her geographical position in the centre of Europe, and her historical antoganism to oppressive Germanism and Pangermanism secures to Bohemia that great political significance recognised since by the Allies; and it is in the interest of the Allies to liberate Bohemia if Prussian militarism and German lust to domination are to be crushed and the Pangerman plan of Berlin–Cairo and Berlin–Bagdad are to be frustrated. The Allies’ plan, like that of the enemy, is a far-reaching programme. The war and its consequences is the greatest event in human history. ​The Napoleonic wars, the Thirty Years’ War, the Crusades—all these were child’s play compared with this war. Realist politicians and statesmen must grasp the inner meaning of German and European history; they must comprehend the direction in which history is pointing, and what Europe’s aims and objects can and must be.
I do not maintain that the liberation of Bohemia is the most vital question of the war; but I can say without exaggeration that the aims proclaimed by the Allies cannot be attained without the liberation of Bohemia. Her future will be the touchstone of the Allies’ strength, seriousness and statesmanship.
20. The Czecho-Slovak State, United Poland, and Jugoslavia.
49. The restoration of the Czecho-Slovak State is only a part of the task which Europe, or rather the Allies, will have to undertake in reorganising eastern Europe; together with the Czecho-Slovak State there must arise an independent united Poland and an independent united Jugoslavia. Of all the acute national questions in the zone of small nations these are most acute and they are questions that are closely connected internally.
Between the Polish and Czecho-Slovak nations there is a strong national and cultural kinship. Under the same or similar conditions given by their geographical situation, the Poles and Czechs developed for a long time along parallel lines. Being neighbours they have been in contact from the very beginning; even in the oldest days their relations were friendly; sometimes they were unfriendly, but the relations were always there. The two nations even had kings in common. Cultural and literary (even language) reciprocity was strong at the beginning of the modern era.
The Poles occupy the same position with reference to Prussia that the Czechs occupy with reference to Austria. Prussia (Frederick the Great) is the real author of the plan to divide Poland. The unification and restoration of Poland will be the most impressive defeat of Prussian militarism which has been directing the Pangerman pressure towards the east. Bismarck rightly said that Posnania was more important to Germany than Alsace-Lorraine. We see with what energy Prussia opposes a “Greater Poland,” as the German publicists expressed it. From Berlin to Bagdad the road crosses Bohemia and Slovakia, but it may also lead across Poland; Berlin–Prague–Belgrade–Constantinople–Bagdad, and also Berlin–Warsaw–Odessa–Bagdad.
Austria made concessions to the Poles in Galicia and by its anti-Russian policies it gained the sympathy of the Poles in Russia and elsewhere; in spite of that Austria is an enemy of the Poles and a more dangerous enemy than the Poles have heretofore admitted. Austria maintained a very demoralising system in Galicia; it used the Ruthenians against the Poles, the Poles against the Ruthenians, but it did not oppose the policy of extermination urged by Pangermanism (Von Hartmann: exterminate!) and practised in Prussia. Russia, it is true, also acted brutally towards the. Poles, but it was not as dangerous as cultural Prussia. Mickiewicz, in his famous “Improvisation,” stated very correctly the qualities of the three executioners of Poland.
The Pangerman alliance of Prussia-Austria makes the interests of the Czecho-Slovaks and Poles identical. Without a free Poland there will be no free Bohemia—without a free Bohemia there will be no free Poland. This reciprocity and parallelism of political development may be traced throughout the entire history of the two States; I will call attention only to the connection of Grünwald with the contemporaneous national uprising of Bohemia; at that time, in the fifteenth century, the Hussite movement and the strengthening of Poland held up for a long time the march of the Germans to the east. The consequences of the White Mountain were felt even in Poland—between the respective events of 1620 and 1771 there ​is a clear connection; the weakening of Bohemia by Austria reached its climax under Maria Theresa and made the partition of Poland easier.
In the Austrian Parliament the Czechs and Poles frequently worked together; the accord was not complete, but this war must open the eyes of the leaders of both nations; the common danger of the present and the future must unite both nations in a common and well-defined policy.
50. The connection between the important Jugoslav question and the Czecho-Slovak and Polish questions is formed in the common danger caused by the Pangerman plan of Central Europe, which makes for the preservation of not only Austria-Hungary but also of Turkey. The Jugoslavs are in the South what the Czecho-Slovaks and Poles are in the North—the vanguard against German and Magyar aggression. The Slovaks no longer have any common frontiers with the Jugoslavs, but centuries ago they were immediate neighbours, until the incursion of the Magyars into the former Panonia separated the two nations; now Slovak islands extend all the way to the Serbian border, while Croatian colonies previously mentioned reach across German and Magyar territory along the Austro-Hungarian frontier as far north as Moravia, and besides, there are Czech colonies in Croatia. In spite of the fact that Czechs and Slovaks are no longer neighbours of the Jugoslavs, their political, literary, and cultural reciprocity, and more recently also their economic reciprocity, is very close. The common parliament gave opportunity for political co-operation.
The Jugoslavs have grasped fully the fact that an independent Czecho-Slovak State is for them also a vital question; for the Germans and Magyars press against them from the North to secure the domination of the Balkans and the Adriatic. This situation explains why Italy joined the Allies and why the Italians and Jugoslavs are driven toward a political understanding in spite of the disputes about Trieste and the Italian minority in Istria and Dalmatia. The Jugoslavs deserve the sympathies of democratic Europe. The Serbians in Serbia and Montenegro showed in their fight against the Turks for the defence of liberty a wonderful perseverance and ability; their cultural efforts are energetic and their endeavour to obliterate the traces of centuries-long Turkish pressure is sincere and effective. The Serbian nation, and that is true of the Croatians and Slovenes as well, is gifted and very able. The Slovenes excel in industry and idealism, little fearing German preponderance. Up to now the Jugoslavs more than any other nation suffered from being separated into many parts; they were partitioned among five States (Serbia, Montenegro, Austria, Hungary, Turkey, and a small fraction in Italy), and in these States into a dozen administrative provinces. Ecclesiastically, too, the nation is not united, there are Orthodox parts (Serbia), Catholic (Croatians and Slovenes, but there are Catholic Serbians in Ragusa) and Mohammedan (national consciousness—Serbia—is awakening only in recent days), but consciousness of nationality and a desire for unification does not suffer thereby.
The anti-Slav and anti-Serbian politicians of Vienna and Budapest used these differences (“Divide et impera”?); Aehrenthal’s scandalous diplomacy, that would not stop short of falsifying documents, revealed to the whole world the moral level of Austria. The unification and liberation of the entire Jugoslav nation is surely one of the principal demands of a future free Europe; Austria provoked this war by her anti-Serbian and ​anti-Russian hatred, and that itself is a sufficient argument for reducing Austria to her German Alpine provinces.
21. A Slav Barrier against Pangermanism.
51. Liberated and united Poland, liberated and united Bohemia with Slovakia, liberated and united Jugoslavia, so the Pangermans complain, will be a barrier against the Germans; the Poles directly against Prussia, the Czechs and Slovaks against the Prussians, Austrians and Magyars, the Jugoslavs against the Austrians and Magyars. In a certain sense this is correct—a common and inveterate enemy, pushing with all his might against these nations, naturally and necessarily unites them, but this barrier has a clearly defensive character. These three Slav States will not be buffer States; this concept will have no meaning in a democratic non-militaristic Europe, where all nations will be good loyal neighbours. This barrier is given by history and by the position of these nations in the zone of small nations; these three Slav nations, hardened by the age-long fight with the Germans and Magyars, are destined in the coming new democratic era to be the natural barrier against German aggression toward the East—and the Germans will be compelled to limit themselves to German territory.
But the Rumanians and Italians also have realised the threatening danger and have therefore joined the Slavs, even though there have been national quarrels among them; one, therefore, must not speak of a Slav barrier, the barrier being Slav and Latin, the two races forming a natural defensive league of nations against German aggression.
The Latins and Slavs will further be joined by the Lithuanians, Letts and Esthonians. The chain of free nations, opposed to Pangermanism, extending from the Baltic to France, is given by history and geography: Esthonians, Letts, Lithuanians, Poles, Czechs with Slovaks, Rumanians Serbians with Croatians and Slovenes, Italians, and Italians and French in Switzerland. Perhaps even the Magyars will learn wisdom from this war and will realise that the Slavs and Latins will not be hostile to them if they will only limit themselves to their own people. By this natural organisation of the zone of small nations the western nations, Italy, France and England, will also have a smaller burden to carry; there will be no fear of German aggression to the West, as soon as Eastern Europe is organised politically along natural lines and as soon as Austria-Hungary the Balkans and Turkey will be taken away from Germany.
22. Pangermanism and Panslavism.—Germanism and Latinism.
52. Many Germans, and perhaps even Slavs, interpret the war as the conflict between the Slavs and Germans; Kaiser Wilhelm and Bethmann-Hollweg started the agitation for war by instigating hatred against Russia and Panslavism.
That is a onesided and incorrect interpretation of the war. Pan-germanism attacked the Slavs in Serbia and Russia, but that is only a part of its programme, a step to further aggression against England and France, not only in Europe but especially in Asia and Africa. That England, in spite of its inadequate preparation, decided so promptly to enter the war and to enter it on the side of the Allies is no accident. The war is, as was pointed out, a world war in the full meaning of the term, it is not merely a fight between Germans and Slavs. For that matter ​many Germans themselves declare to-day that not Russia but England is their principal rival and foe.
Pangermanism and Panslavism differ substantially. That the various Slav nations feel with one another is natural, for they are close to each other in language and ideas; it is equally natural that small nations expected assistance against the Germans, Magyars and Turks from Russia; but there has never been an elaborate, aggressively organised Panslavism, or rather Panrussianism, of the type of Pangermanism. We would not reproach the Germans, if they sympathised with the Teutons and preached and worked for Pangermanism in the sense of unifying the Teuton race; but the Germans interpret and practise Pangermanism in a directly contrary sense, namely, of having non-German and non-Teuton nations serve the Germans.
Panslavism, preached by Slav philosophers, historians and statesmen, was, as a rule, satisfied with literary and cultural reciprocity; and if we Czechs have been particularly charged with Panslavism in the sense of Panrussianism, then I must state here the fact that while we have always been decided Russophiles, our greatest political leaders, Palacký and Havliček, took a most determined stand against Panslavism under the tsarist absolutism. Tsarism itself rejected Panslavism for reasons of legitimacy (Tsar Nicholas I.) and for ecclesiastical reasons (it was opposed to Catholics and Liberal Westerners). There is no comparison between political Pangermanism and Panslavism—the latter limited itself, in all its principal exponents, to Slav nations.
France also is Russophile, and England, too, turned to Russia and the Slavs, although it had long been opposed to Russia and paid little attention to the other Slavs; and why are the Japanese aiding Russia, their enemy of yesterday? Why is the majority of the neutrals on the side of the Allies, among then even Teuton peoples (Danes, Norwegians, Flemings, and lately even the Dutch)? Is that Panslavism?
The Pangermans raised nationalism to an almost mystical chauvinism and they impressed upon their nation, intoxicated by frequent military victories, the idea of an elect Herrenvolk; against this German danger, heightened by a clever and almost scientific exploitation of the centralised strength of Germany and Austria-Hungary, not only the Slavs but all the other nations made common cause. Their aim, therefore, is not and cannot be only national; it is democratic, being national only in so far as nationality is democratic and social.
For the same reason it is not proper to speak of the struggle of Germanism with Latinism in the West; all nations, and even parts of the same nation, have been until now in opposition and hostility toward each other.
In general it is not sufficient to explain the history and the development of the single nations by the antagonism between neighbours; all nations develop not merely through opposition to their neighbours but also by their own internal forces, and this positive development must also be understood, as it gives to the various nations their individual character. History as the world’s court does not pass judgment merely on mutual fights, but also on the internal quality of nations; history that does not go beyond wars between nations, hardly gets beyond quantity, material force and its temporary success.
* ↑ In this respect the program of the German Socialists, Renner and Bauer, shows no essential difference from the Pangerman program. Renner accepts Naumann’s Central Europe and national autonomy, as he and Bauer explain it, merely as a concession for the purpose of preserving Austria-Hungary and her German character.
* ↑ Emperor Charles wrote for the benefit of the President of the French Republic, in the evident hope that the French would not see through the trickiness of himself and his advisers; his real plan was expressed in another letter, addressed to Ferdinand of Rumania; here he emphasised the idea that kings must now hold together to defend monarchism against the democratic movements.These principles agree literally with the aims which Emperor William pursued, just as Bismarck and Count Czernin, the friend and adviser of Charles, made William’s principles his own. I gave a report of a memorandum of Count Czernin, written for Francis Ferdinand, in which he emphasises the importance of William’s plans to maintain monarchism by a close union of the monarchs; in that memorandum emphasis also is laid upon the German character of Austria-Hungary and its friendship with Germany. (See the article in Plekhanov’s Edinstvo of June 9, 1917; reprinted in the Christian Science Monitor.)
* ↑ I formulated this judgment of Austrian Catholicism years ago in a lecture given in Boston (1907). I repeat: the dynasty and the State is maintained by these powers, and is without that religious vitality which Catholicism has in those countries where, as in America, for instance, it stands on its own feet. It is an interesting fact in general that Catholicism is strong in Protestant and liberal countries; it is dead where it is the beatus possidens. The severe judgment of the German Catholic journal is fully justified; Austrian Catholicism is characterised, for instance, by the fact that its chief dignitaries are aristocrats, and it is understood that the Emperor selects only such persons as suit him. “No; God is not an Austrian” (Byron).
* ↑ William is responsible for the brutal exhortation to the Germans to employ the example of the Huns in their treatment of the Chinese. The Germans purposely try to terrorise the opposing armies and populations; the Russians also committed some inhuman deeds in Western Prussia, but the Russians do not pretend to be the most cultured nation; their army does not excel in discipline, and, moreover, they were retreating. The Germans committed barbarities quite consciously and systematically; and therefore, in view of their discipline, the responsibility rests on their leaders. Had the leaders given humane commands the soldiers would have observed them; and the Germans, it must be borne in mind, committed their barbarities while victoriously advancing.
* ↑ For example, “The permanent Russian danger may be abolished in any case only by the formation of an Ukrainian State, and thereby our doubts regarding the Polish question will be solved.”—Prof. Jaffe, 1917.“Whoever wants to overcome Russia must carry the fight to the Ukraine; whoever wants to destroy Russia, or to injure it severely, must take away from her the Ukraine.”—Garierre, 1917.
* ↑ In a letter to Helfi, editor of the Magyar paper, Magyar Ujsag, dated November 8, 1871, Louis Kossuth made the following statement:“Between the legal titles which form the foundation of the right of the dynasty to the throne in Hungary and Bohemia there is not merely an analogy but a complete identity. That is true of their origin and time, method, conditions and principles, as well as their literal wording. The Bohemian land is not a patrimonium, no so-called hereditary land, no mere appendage of Austria, but a land which may appeal to diplomatic negociations and mutual agreements. It is a State, just like Hungary.”
* ↑ It should be noted that, since this manuscript has been completed, a bloodless revolution has taken place in Prague on October 29th, and the National Assembly, summoned to Prague on November 14th, elected unanimously the President of the Czecho-Slovak Republic, confirmed Dr. Beneš in Paris as Minister for Foreign Affairs, and General Štefanik as Minister of War, and formed a definite Cabinet with Dr. Kramář as Premier at the head.
* ↑ The Slovak language is an archaic dialect of the Czech; the difference is only in the archaic forms and in a few additional words. The Slovak language has the same accent as the Czech and the accent is the distinguishing mark of Slav tongues. Polish, Russian and Jugoslav languages have each a different accent. Slovak was introduced as a literary language at the end of the eighteenth century, at the time of the national renaissance of the Czechs and Slovaks; the popular spoken language appealed to the people more than the written Chekh, which remained the language of the Slovak Lutheran Church. Among the Czech and Slovak literary men there arose a sharp dispute about the use of the Slovak, some Slovaks themselves, for instance, Kollar and Safarik, being opposed to it; to-day, these disputes have practically ceased, there being no language question for the younger generation on either side. The unity of the nation and State is in no way menaced by the use of Slovak.
* ↑ Even according to official statistics, there are fewer illiterates among the Czechs than among the Germans.
* ↑ There is a party among the Hungarian and Galician Ukrainians who call themselves Carpatho-Russians; they also proposed to the Czecho-Slovak National Council the union with the Czecho-Slovak State.
* ↑ It should be noted that the finances of Austria rest upon Bohemia-Moravia-Silesia, Lower Austria with Vienna, Northern Styria, and, in recent years, on a part of Western Galicia.
* ↑ The real Bohemian lands constitute 26·4 per cent. of Austria, and provide 35 1/2 per cent. of the whole population. In these lands there are 128 people to the square kilometre, as opposed to 83 in the rest of Austria.
* ↑ The bank since the beginning of 1917 has not published its gold account.
* ↑ Bohemia would introduce the franc currency, which combines the Latin and the Russian currency: 20 francs = 7 1/2 roubles (40=15).
* ↑ Count Czernin, in one of his memoranda submitted to Francis Ferdinand, charges the Czechs with having the least sentiment for the dynasty. We gladly record this denunciation of this nobleman of Bohemia and Bohemian descent, who years ago publicly declared himself to be a German.
* ↑ There is an old Polish saying about the friendship of the Poles with the Hungarians; these Hungarians were really Slovaks, as was pointed out to me by a Polish historian, who noted that, in reports of relations of Polish and Hungarian armies, there was no mention of interpreters, which would have been necessary if the Hungarian armies had been only Magyar. (I have already mentioned that Hungary, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, so far as it was not under Turkish rule, was identical with Slovakia.)
* ↑ Recently the term “Jugoslav” has found general acceptance to designate the Serbians, Croatians and Slovenes; therefore I use the term, even though it is not exact, for the Bulgarians are also Jugoslavs.
* ↑ As I picture it, Montenegro will cease, after the war, to be an independent State. Various historical individualities (Serbia-Croatia-Slav Istria-Dalmatia-Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro) might at first remain administrative units and develop gradually into a more closely united State. Montenegro might at an early date be attached to Serbia, Slav Istria and Dalmatia to Croatia.
* ↑ The population of all these nations numbers over 60 millions.