Page:Bohemia under Hapsburg misrule (1915).pdf/13

 low of Austria the red and white of Bohemia—the colors that Charles Havlíček loved so well. “My colors are red and white,” declared this fearless patriot to his Austrian tormentors. “You can promise me, you can threaten me, but a traitor I shall never be.”

Never during the three hundred years of Austrian misrule were conditions so propitious for throwing off the shackles of oppression as now. In the darkest hours of national humiliation, the children of Hus and of Komenský (Comenius) did not despair. “We existed before Austria,” Palacký used to tell them, “and we shall survive her.” May not the words of the “Father of his Country,” as Palacký was affectionately called by his countrymen, come true, in view of what is taking place in the Hapsburg Monarchy to-day?

With what form of government would Bohemia make her re-entry into the European family of nations as a free state, as a dependency of Russia, as a ward of the Allies, or incorporated in a federation of the states remaining to the Hapsburg Empire?

It was a favorite theory of Palacký that the Austrian nations would, for their own protection, have to create an Austria, if she were ever destroyed. But what Palacký has said may no longer be true, because the events of 1914 have created issues and