Page:The Bohemian Review, vol2, 1918.djvu/60

 shall be employed Only he is guilty of treason who sins against his own nation. But he who goes as his heart and conscience demand, as his nation’s ideals guide him, he is no traitor. And if you call such people traitors, then I, too, am a traitor. For us there is no Austrian fatherland; we know only our Bohemian country, where we were born and where our nation lives.”

Dr. Seydler attempted in vain to find a majority in the Reichsrat for his budget. All the Slavs, including the Poles, refused to vote for it. On February 7th Seydler therefore resigned with his entire cabinet. That, however, could not solve the crisis. No cabinet could be formed, willing to stick to the German alliance, that could find a majority in the Reichsrat. Seydler had to take up again the burdens of office and the difficult task of finding a majority among the hostile deputies. With the Czechs and the Jugoslavs nothing could be done. But the Poles had been the main reliance of the Austrian cabinets for more than fifty years. By what arguments they were won over is not yet clear, for the Poles were greatly embittered against the Central Empires by their refusal to admit the Polish representatives to the Russian and Ukrainian peace negotiations, and by the cession of the old Polish province of Cholm to Ukrainia.

At any rate, some promises were passed by Seidler to the deputies from Galicia and confirmed by the emperor himself. As a result the Poles abstained from voting, and Seydler got his budget approved by a majority of 203 to 165.

In the fourth year of the terrible war which has already cost such immense sacrifices of the wealth and blood of nations the first tentative peace parleys are going on. We, Czech members of the parliament, that parliament which has been by judgments of illegal military courts deprived of many of its Slav deputies, further we, Czech deputies to the dissolved and not renewed Diet of the Kingdom of Bohemia, together with deputies of the Diet of the Margravate of Moravia which has not been convened during the war, and of last Diet of the Duchy of Silesia, ratify the declarations of the Czech deputies in the parliament and we deem it our duty to declare emphatically on behalf of the Czech nation and of her Slovak branch held down by Hungary our attitude toward the reconstruction of international relations.

When the Czech deputies of our then recently revived nation during the Franco-German war made a declaration with reference to the European international questions, they used in their resolutions of Dec. 8, 1870, the following solemn words:

'''“All nations, the small as well as the great, have an equal right to self-determination, and their equality in this regard should be respected. Only by recognizing this equality and respecting the right of every nation to shape its own destiny can mankind establish true equality and brotherhood, General Peace and Genuine Humanity.”'''

We, the deputies of the Bohemian nation, faithful to these principles of our predecessors, greet with joy the fact that now all the states built on the principles of democracy whether belligerent or neutral, agree with us in looking upon the right of nations to free self-determination as the guarantee of a general and lasting peace.

The new Russia also in her attempt for a general peace adopted the principle of the right of nations to self-determination as one of the fundamental conditions of peace; she urged that nations should freely choose their own mode of life and determine, whether they will construct their own independent state or form one common state with other nations.

As against that the representative of Austria-Hungary on behalf of the Four Allies declared that the question of the self-determination of nations that have not at present an independent position in any existing state should be solved by constitutional means. We deem it our duty to declare on behalf of the Czech Nation that the attitude of the Austro-Hungarian representative is not our attitude On the con-