Page:The Bohemian Review, vol1, 1917.djvu/154

 was followed in Austria by a decade of the most cruel reaction. The milder regime of the latter fifties of the nineteenth century was followed by ruthless oppression in the sixties and by systematic attempts at Germanization and Magyarization of the non-German and non-Magyar nationalities of Austria-Hungary.

During the present war Austria always promised reform whenever things looked bad on the battlefield, but as soon as they changed and assumed a somewhat more encouraging aspect, she returned to her felonious ways and methods. Only last month we had an example of this. When, in the early summer, the Russian army resumed its offensive and gained its notable victories in Galicia, there were promises of internal reform and of justice and fairness to the various component nationalities. But later there came the Russian rout. Russian troops refused to fight, and the Austrian chameleon assumed a new color. A dispatch from Copenhagen, dated August 9th told us that the Teuton victories in Galicia and Bukovina have thrown a veil over the promised new order in Austria; that the powers that be find the question of reform far less urgent owing to the improved military situation. In other words, the criminal promises to mend his ways when the policeman is in sight, but as soon as the policeman disappears around the corner, the felon again commences his career of murder and robbery.

The Austrian problem is strikingly akin to that of Turkey. In fact, the fate of these two purely military and autocratic empires is closely intertwined. With the fall of the Turks, Austria falls also. Austria lost her ruling idea and is unable to find a positive mission, so Austria falls from step to step, just as Turkey did. The Austro-Spanish empire was dissolved. Austria lost the greater part of Silesia, and was driven by Prussia to abandon Germany; in 1848, saved by autocratic Russia, she lost in 1859 the Italian provinces; in 1866 she was again beaten by Prussia. Since then she exists only as the vassal and tool of Berlin being divided into Austria and Hungary; it is to Berlin that both the Germans and Magyars owe their dominating position in Austria.

The other nations, especially the Czechoslovaks, are in permanent opposition against the two prussifield vassals, the Germans and the Magyars. Austria was unable to unite all her nations in a strong federation and to pursue her own aim; to work for the legitimate development of her various component nationalities. Germany—and that was Bismarck’s plan with Austria—uses the alleged Great Power for her own ends.

If humanity is to have faith in the protestations of the Allies, including the United States, that they are struggling for freedom of small nations and the removal of the Prussian menace, the Allies must adhere to their original program of the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary. It is an utter absurdity to speak of democratizing Germany without realizing at the same time that democracy cannot be achieved without liberating the suppressed nationalities of Austria-Hungary. This is all the more evident when we realize that the German nation so far shows very little desire to be liberated, but that in Austria-Hungary, with the exception of the German and Magyar minorities, everybody else asks not only for democracy, but believes that democracy cannot be achieved without the destruction of the bankrupt, germanized and magyarized empire.

It is for this reason that I refuse to believe that the president’s reference in his note to the Pope, that dismemberment of Empire cannot furnish a proper basis for a peace of any kind, relates to Austria-Hungary. This cannot be. It would be an absolute denial of the principles of democracy and popular rule Woodrow Wilson has so frequently enunciated. It would mean not only that the Czechoslovaks must remain under alien domination, but that the Roumanians of Transylvania and Bukovina must continue to suffer under the unspeakable cruelties of the Magyar regime; that Poland cannot become united; that the Italians of Trentino cannot be joined to their brethren of Italy; that the question of Alsace and Lorraine must remain unsolved. Furthermore, such construction would make the reply to the Pope self-contradictory and inconsistent, for in another part thereof the President maintains that the American people “believe that peace should rest upon the rights of peoples, not the rights of governments—the rights of peoples, great or small, weak or powerful—their equal right to freedom and security and self-government, and to participation upon fair terms in the economic opportunities of the world, the German people, of