Page:The Bohemian Review, vol1, 1917.djvu/73

 our failure to see clearly now, would be permitted to exist.

A liberal Russia will be what Russia always claimed to have been: a protector of the small Slav nationalities. With Russia liberalized, the spirit of nationalism, which must not be confounded with chauvinism, will be intensified, and Russia will never again look with equanimity upon the Asiatic oppression of Slovaks by the Magyars, to cite a single illustration. This again shows the necessity of a final solution, and the danger of compromise and temporizing. The Czechs have proven the possibility of independence by their economic and cultural development. Economically and financially the Czech countries are the richest of the present Austrian “provinces”, and when freed of oppressive taxation, discriminating in favor of financially “passive” Austrian lands, the independent Bohemian-Slovak state would be even richer. At the present time 62.7 per cent, of the burden of Austrian taxation is borne by the Czech countries, while the rest of Austria carries only 37.3 per cent.

It should be emphasized that the economic strength of the new state would be reinforced by the undeveloped resources of Slovakia, the inhabitants of which form a part of the same ethnic group as the Bohemians, and desire to be joined with the Bohemians in one state. This presents no difficulty, since the Slovaks live in one part of the Hungarian kingdom, and are not scattered in isolated groups. For that matter, the world has about realized that in provoking the Great War the Magyar oligarchy was particeps criminis; this war was not only a German war, but it was a Magyar war as well.

The Bohemian-Slovak state would thus consist of the lands of the crown of St. Wenceslaus: viz, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Slovakia, so that it would have a population of over twelve million inhabitants and a territorial extent of fifty thousand English square miles, while Belgium has only eleven thousand three hundred seventy-three square miles. Therefore, it would not be a small state, being in fact eighth among twenty-two European states. After all, the belief in the necessity of large states is largely a product of German mechanistic political philosophy and political economy. Already voices have arisen that certain states have become too large to manage. Mr. Louis D. Brandeis has shown that even under modern conditions certain business units can become so large as to be physically incapable of successful administration. May this not be equally true of states, especially polyethnic states?

If it be said that it is hard to reconstruct a state, or organize a new one, permit me to answer that it was not easy to organize the United States of America, and the period of experimentation under the Articles of Confederation was full of trials and tribulations. For a long time it was a question whether in America we should have an aggregation of loose-jointed states, or whether a foundation for a real nation will be laid. Yet those architects of human society, to borrow an expression of Walter Lippman relative to Alexander Hamilton, who after our revolution held in their hands the destiny of this nation, did not shrink from undertaking the task.

It is objected occasionally that the new state would have no direct access to the sea. Access to the sea is important, but with modern methods of communication not as important as it was in the past. The sea after all is a means of communication; whether these means be the ocean, or the railroad, it makes little difference if the country is confronted by high tariffs. Again, the solution of this problem has been suggested by a number of writers, and by President Wilson in his address to the Senate, wherein he advocates the granting of economic rights of way to landlocked states in the following language:

It should also be remembered that a direct connection could be established with the new Jugoslav state with its harbors on the Adriatic.

It is also true that the future Bohemian-Slovak state will have a German minority; but in central and eastern Europe hardly any state can be constructed without ceraincertain [sic] national minorities. In the present instance the minority is not as large as would seem on the basis of the false Austrian and Magyar statistics. But it will certainly be