Page:The Bohemian Review, vol2, 1918.djvu/39



At the very time, when the plenipotentiaries of Germany and Austria at Brest Litovsk expressed their wholehearted endorsement of the principle of self-determination of nations, as applied to Russia, the elected representatives of the Czech nation assembled in Prague, one of the great cities of the Dual Monarchy, and applying the principle at home, declared that a nation of ten million which had been the chief source of strength of the Hapsburg realm, renounced allegiance to the Hapsburgs.

January 6, 1918, marks the culmination, up to this moment at any rate, of the revolt of Bohemia against German rule. On that day over 200 representatives of the Czech people met in Prague, the ancient capital of their race. All the Czech deputies elected by universal manhood suffrage to the Vienna parliament, all the living members of the last Diets of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, including one woman member who had been duly elected, but never allowed to take her seat, made up this assembly which was fully entitled to speak for the Bohemian people. The session was opened by Deputy Staněk, chairman of the United Czech Deputies’ Club; the entire proceedings lasted only one hour. The gathering declared itself to be a Constituent Assembly and as such adopted a declaration, the text of which unfortunately is not yet known in America, as the Austrian Government took the most severe measures not merely to confiscate, but to suppress it altogether. But Premier Seydler himself gave out what was startling in the declaration. He stated in the Reichsrat that in the Declaration of Prague one cannot find the slightest trace of any connection between Bohemia and the Hapsburg dynasty or the Austrian Empire. In fact Seydler said, according to the Vienna papers, that the Bohemian chiefs must now be looked upon as enemies of the State and be treated as such.

That the elected leaders of the Czechoslovak people should finally throw aside all ambiguity and burn their bridges behind them will surprise no one who has followed with sympathy and understanding the part played by Bohemia in the Great War. The Czechs have not been trimmers. They have not hesitated between the Teutons and the Allies; they have not threatened rebellion for the purpose of gaining concessions from their rulers; they did not back down, when repression was applied to their people with the famous German thoroughness and brutality, neither could they be bought by the emperor’s amnesty. And at the very time, when their tyrants seemed stronger than ever, when Austria drove out the invader both in the East and the South, when even the enemies of Austria flattered her and courted her, the Bohemian deputies defied their masters by declaring it to be the will of their people to have their own, completely independent Czechoslovak Republic.

The rage of the Germans of Austria, the fury of the emperor whose advances had been scorned, whose amnesty failed to win for him the condemned leaders, foretell another period of repressive measures. Von Seydler announced that the government would fight with all the means at their disposal the tendencies expressed in the Prague Declaration. What was even more striking and unusual was his statement that he had behind him in all this the highest factor in the State, the one who made the ministries come and go, the emperor himself. The easy-going Charles will not let the richest part of his inherited estate be lost to him without an effort to retain it by hangings and dragonnades.

It is a matter of regret that the text of the declaration has not yet been smuggled out of Austria. But the speech of Deputy Staněk who opened the convention has been published in the “Národní Listy”. In