Page:Heinrich Karl Schmitt - The Hungarian Revolution - tr. Matthew Phipps Shiel (1918).djvu/53



The Revolution was a success.

What came to pass after the first days was a proof of the eternal truth that no event, of its own inherent contents, can go on prosperously to its maturity.

Hungary had shattered the fetters of an oppressive connection—the sick system of tutelage, suppression and blood-sucking was eliminated; but the recovery came with all the crises, the relapses of convalescence, and outside forces struck heavy blows at the hardly-tried land.

Only one who was present and saw the rising of despair, witnessed the flame of wrath, felt the sickness of languor, only such a one could truly affirm that all this emotion was genuine and human; only he will be able to realise that a falsification without parallel of facts and acts must necessarily shake the foundations of the thought and feeling of a country.

It began with the Czechs, who, in a frenzied rage of ambition, not only claimed frankly foreign provinces, but at once proceeded to the creation by force of the conditions they prescribed, and simply declared to be Czechish frankly Magyar, frankly German, frankly Slovak territory. To the lay mind I may perhaps illustrate these questions in this way. The Czechs maintain that the Slovaks are Czechs, and that Slovakia is Czechia. That is, translated into Western parlance: the Italians are Frenchmen, therefore Italy is France. One must cast one's mental functions to the winds! The deduction of the Czechs is somewhat as follows: Every eagle is a bird, and every sparrow is a bird, therefore every sparrow is an eagle.