Page:Namier The case of Bohemia (1917).pdf/9

 such as was allowed to them in Austria before the war, will be tolerated anywhere in “Mittel-Europa,” once they have been an issue in an armed conflict.

But whilst the German-Magyar scheme thus threatens the fringes of the British Empire, France, Italy, Russia and Roumania, it postulates the complete destruction of two nations—the Serbs and the Czechs. These must cease altogether to exist as nations if “Mittel-Europa” is to arise: for they intervene between the Germans and Magyars, and the Magyars and Bulgars. The Serbs stand in the way of the Central European steam-roller. The Czechs are a spoke in its wheels, and unless broken up they threaten to paralyse its movements. Bohemia occupies the centre of “Mittel-Europa”; it intervenes between its capitals. It extends within less than fifty miles of Vienna, Budapest, Leipzig and Breslau, within less than a hundred miles of Berlin and Munich. The Czech nation stands there as truly for the discomfiture of the German-Magyar allies, as it is not there for their service.

The national history of Bohemia is filled by one long struggle against the Universal German Monarchy under whatever garb it should appear. The Hussite Wars, in the first half of the fifteenth century, were as much national as they were religious; they were a revolt against German dominion in Bohemia and against the claims of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation,