Page:The Bohemian Review, vol1, 1917.djvu/147

 the Austrian Germans to be reasonable and conciliatory, not to carry their uncompromising attitude far enough to threaten the existence of the State. She seeks to impress upon the Austrian Germans that, in the interest of Deutschtum, it is their duty to make sacrifices in favor of the Austrian Slavs, that, to a certain extent, they must sacrifice themselves in the true sense of the word, and that they will render to Germany an infinitely greater service if they preserve their State, in which they will share their power with the other nations, than if they compromise everything by hurrying on the general ruin. So spoke Herr Georg Bernhard in the Vossische Zeitung; and the Frankfurter Zeitung and the Zeit of Vienna have summed up the situation in similar terms. The Magyars especially thoroughly understand the position when they earnestly advised the Austrian Germans to make concessions in “Austria,” so that they should not be compelled to make them themselves in Hungary, and thus bring about the same state of impending dissolution as obtains now in Austria. And thus also those who conceived the idea of the amnesty to the Slav political prisoners were acting under the prompting of Berlin, with the deliberate intention of saving Austria by throwing dust in the eyes of the Entente. In short, Germany’s plan is this: Untenable as are conditions in Austria today, dismemberment would be a real disaster for Germanism in general; and, therefore, a bold scheme of federation must be advertised in order to dupe the Entente, and to preserve Austria until Germany herself is once more able to recover the lost ground.

The whole of Austro-Hungarian and German policy is now briefly: How to stop this irresistible movement of the nations leading irrevocably to the dissolution of the Monarchy; how to dupe these nations and the Entente at the same time by a scheme of reform acceptable to the Allies; how to save this state which threatens to crumble away the moment a single part of its frame work is really touched?

Such is the problem at present. Such is the meaning of the Austro-German pour-parlers, of the probable early offer of “peace without annexations and indemnities”, of the amnesty accorded to the Slavs, of the plan to establish a commission at Vienna for the revision of the Constitution, of the departure of Clam-Martinic and Tisza, and of the project for a coalition cabinet in Austria. It is no new political orientation nor is it new tactics. It has been long in preparation and is now being tried. Its success depends upon our ability to distinguish the true from the false.

Bohemian volunteers in the French army, few though they are, have made quite a name for themselves. They came forward in the first days of the war and enrolled in the Foreign Legion. After three years of fighting their number has dwindled down, and as many have been assigned to special details, they are now scattered through the two regiments of the Legion. The story given below, writen by one of them for the “Česko-slovenská Samostatnost”, tells of their part in this year’s offensive. A fitting introduction to it is an incident related in the Chicago Daily News, July 7, 1917, by Capt. Charles Sweeney, American member of the French Foreign Legion. In describing the Legion in repose, the captain says:

“It is at such times, too, that the men of the front get a chance to see their generals. Sometimes Nivelle or Petaine or Lyautey flash through the village in which they are spending their little leisure. Sometimes a gray car with a white haired man sitting erect on the right of the passenger’s seat would go by, and the men touched their caps to Grandpa Joffre. Now and then there is a ceremony, as when the colors of the first regiment of the legion were decorated for the charge it made at Carency in the battle of Neuville St. Vaast. It was in this fight that our Czech battalion broke the German line. “Go as far as you can,” our regiment had been told.

“Not even a Frenchman hates a German more bitterly than does a Czech. The Slavs beat their way into the first German line and through it, and I doubt if many living Germans were left to tell the tale. They swept through the second German line like a storm. They drove past the third German line. And so one whole battalion of the Czechs kept on until they were stopped eight kilometers behind the German front. They had literally broken the German line.

“They were forced back that afternoon. Re-enforcements did not arrive and even a battalion of the foreign legion could not hold such a position. It would have been sheer suicide. But they took their toll before they returned.”