Page:Edvard Beneš – Bohemia's case for independence.pdf/13

Rh that the power of Germany to dispose of 50,000,000 Habsburg subjects for the furtherance of her military and political designs has been a main source of German strength, of this source of strength Germany must be deprived. The creation of an independent Bohemia, or rather Czechoslovakia, would remove some 12,000,000 Habsburg Slav subjects from German control, and would set them up as active custodians of European freedom. Upon the economic resources of Bohemia Dr. Beneš rightly insists. Of the devotion of the Czechs to the Allied cause he gives abundant proof. The sturdy vitality of a people that has survived persecution and oppression almost without precedent in European history needs no demonstration. The unification of Poland would deprive Austria and Germany of many more millions of oppressed Slavs who, like the Czechs, would help to safeguard the liberties of Europe. Similarly, the constitution of an ethnically-complete Romania, of a united Southern Slavia, and of a completed Italy, would subtract from 10 to 12 millions more from the Habsburg populations, hitherto at the disposal of the Hohenzollerns. The Magyars retaining independent possession of the Central Hungarian plain, the true Magyar-land, but deprived of the power to oppress non-Magyars might find their place in a Danubian Federation of States such as that of which Louis Kossuth once dreamed; while the Germans of Austria would be free, should they desire it, to join the peoples of the present German Empire. Their adhesion to Germany would not