Page:The Bohemian Review, vol1, 1917.djvu/52

  and Poland; the other changes will either extend or reduce States already existing. Austria and Hungary will be reduced; Roumania, Serbia, Italy will be enlarged. Nations will be liberated; the oppressive dynasty—the Habsburgs—and the oppressive nations—the Germans and Magyars—will be forced to rely on their own forces.

Mr. Balfour is right when he emphasises the facts that the programme of the Allies will weaken the German lust of domination, and secure freedom and independence for the oppressed races; for Austria in its present form is not less German than Prussia.

Its geographical position in the centre of Europe, and its historical antagonism to oppressive Germanism and Pangermanism secures to Bohemia that great political significance expressed in the Allies’ Note to President Wilson, which demanded the liberation of the Czecho-Slovaks. And it is in the interest of the Allies to liberate Bohemia, if Prussian militarism and German lust of dominion are to be crushed, and the Pangerman plan of Berlin-Cairo and Berlin-Bagdad frustrated. The Allies’ plan, like that of the enemy, is a far-reaching programme of creative politics. The war and its consequences is the greatest event in human history. The Napoleonic wars, the Thirty Years’ War, the Crusades—all these were child’s play compared with this war. Realist politicians and statesmen must grasp the inner meaning of German and European history: they must comprehend the direction in which history is pointing, and what Europe's aims and objects can and must be.

I do not maintain that the liberation of Bohemia is the most vital question of the war; but I can say without exaggeration that the aims proclaimed by the Allies can not be attained without the liberation of Bohemia. Her future fate will be the touchstone of the Allies’ strength, earnestness and statesmanship.

Among the many problems which the United States will face upon declaring the state of war not the least will be the problem of the foreign-born population. It has proved to be an embarrassing one in all the belligerent countries, but in America it is one of unusual dimensions. According to the census of 1910 out of 92 million inhabitants 13,345,545 were foreign born. Their children born in this country were still more numerous, the total being 18,897,837. It may be taken for granted that speaking generally those who were born in the United States and have never known any other homeland will not be troubled by conflicting claims of a divided allegiance. But what about the thirteen, at this time more than fourteen million men and women born under other flags? Will they not disturb the public order, interrupt communications, interfere with military operations, spy out our navy secrets? Which of these millions should be suspected and watched?

To start with, we may leave out of consideration people born in countries that are at war with Germany and people born in neutral countries. There may be traitors among them, but then there may be traitors among Americans of the oldest stock. The danger, whatever it may be, is to be found among the subjects and former subjects of Germany and its Allies. Now in 1910 there lived in the United States 2,501,333 people born in Germany, 1,670,582 born in Austria-Hungary, 11,498 born in Bulgaria and 61,959 born in Turkey. The potential enemies should be found among these classes of the American population.

The index of the country of birth, however, gives little real indication of the sympathies of the individual thus indexed. Frenchmen from Alsace-Lorraine or Italians from the Trentino are not likely to favor the country which had oppressed them and from which they fled to the free country beyond the ocean. Or take the Poles; they come from three states, two of them on the Teuton side, one with the entente. Shall we look upon the Austrian Pole as a suspected person and on the Russian Pole as a friend? The real criterion is not former political citizenship, but rather racial affiliation. Those that appreciate the real significance of the European struggle realize that it is due to the imperialistic tendencies of the German race. Germans look upon themselves as a race of lords—Herrenfolk—a chosen people destined to rule the world and incidentally to confer upon the weaker races the benefits of German