Page:Namier The case of Bohemia (1917).pdf/13

 ice used to call the peace of Europe. The creeping glaciers of Mid-Europe were reaching Serbia in their advance, and this at least is for a nation the advantage of having a State of its own, be it within the narrowest boundaries, that the agonies of its death-struggles break the urbane silence of diplomats and the ignorant indifference of more fortunate nations.

Now at last the problem of “Mittel-Europa” and of its aggrandisement has become for all Europe the cardinal political issue. At such a moment can Bohemia be forgotten, or her case passed over in silence? When once a free Bohemian land emerges in the heart of Central Europe we shall know that the flood of German-Magyar aggression is receding, never to rise again. For the Powers which establish Bohemian independence will by that very act be united in the future against a possible recrudescence of German Imperialism. There is not a single State the Allies whose interests clash with those among of the Czech nation. To all of them the freedom of Bohemia will be a safeguard against a new German advance and a barometer of German pressure. The desire to remove the Czech wedge which divides “Mittel-Europa” will be foremost in any revival of the Pan-German dream. But once the independence of Bohemia is established, neither Russia, Great Britain nor France can ever concede the smallest abridgment thereof. For in it each of these nations will find a prin-