Page:The Bohemian Review, vol1, 1917.djvu/171



The second war session of the Austrian parliament has demonstrated to the world even better than the first that the Czechs constituting more than one fourth of the population have severed all ties binding them to the empire and the dynasty. All offers of compromise have been rejected with scorn, and the world is presented with the strange spectacle of a block of more than one hundred deputies proclaiming defiantly anti-Austrian sentiments almost before the eyes of the Austrian emperor.

The latest rebel speech made on behalf of the entire Czech Parliamentary Club was pronounced in the Reichsrat on September 26 by Father Zahradník, member of the Order of Premonstrates. The choice of the spokesman indicates that every class of the Bohemian people, including the faithful Catholics, have turned against Austria. After the exposition of the minister of finance which could not hide the miserable condition of the Austrian finances, deputy Zahradník spoke as follows:

In harmony with the bold speech of the deputies is the action of the University of Prague in conferring anew the degrees of Doctor of Law upon deputies Kramář and Rašín who had been deprived of the degree and with it of the right to practice law at the time of their sentence for high treason. This was incidentally the third time that Rašín received the doctor’s degree having been deprived of it for the first time twenty-five years ago, also for political reasons. At his recent promotion Alois Rašín pronounced an address in which the German National Deputies Club saw glorification of treason. Rašín said in part:

“We did not fight for a passing right, our right has been guaranteed for centuries and is based upon our entire national history. The negation of that right by Austria was a contributing cause of the present war and