Page:Namier The case of Bohemia (1917).pdf/12

 views of the Czechs, but were as yet too weak to be of much assistance.

What followed for the Czechs, after this failure, was like a nightmare. In spite of the extraordinary development of wealth, and the growth of education which put them on a level with the most progressive nations of Europe, they were weighed down by the consciousness that Bohemia was being buried alive. Her enemies were growing in strength and closing in on her. By the Dualist Settlement of 1867 the separation between the Czechs and the Slovaks was made absolute and the Slovaks were handed over to the mercies of the Magyars. By the final failure of the federalist movement in Austria, the Czechs were forced to enter the Viennese Parliament, which for years they had refused to do. They entered it under protest, still asserting the inalienable rights of the Bohemian Crown, and sat in it a hopeless minority incapable of making their influence tell in any of the great problems of domestic or foreign policy. With the Austro-German Alliance of 1879—an alliance formed by Germans and Magyars—the flood of “Mittel-Europa” completely encircled Bohemia. With the desperation of drowning men the Czechs continued to work for a rapprochement of the Hapsburg Monarchy with Russia and France, and against the German Alliance. It was all in vain. At last the thunder of an avalanche broke that oppressive silence which self-complacent coward-