Page:The Bohemian Review, vol2, 1918.djvu/98

 Secretary Lansing’s announcement that the government of the United States had followed with great interest the proceedings of the Congress of Opressed Races of Austria-Hungary, held in Rome in April, has called the attention of the American people for the first time to an event of first class importance. Representatives of the Slavs and Latins of Austria-Hungary met in Rome on April 8 under the auspices of the Italian government and agreed up on a common program which has since received the endorsement of all the Great Powers opposed to the Central Empires.

The world has heard a great deal since the outbreak of the war of the aspirations of the Poles, the Czechslovaks and the Jugoslavs for independence. It is well known that Italy and Roumania entered the war pricipally to liberate people of their race from German and Magyar oppression. Each of these peoples has carried on a propaganda within the Allied countries with the aim of gaining the support of the statesmen and the people of the West for their cause, and each of them has waged war against the common enemy in ways ranging from sabotage and parliamentary obstruction to desertion en masse and organization of deserters into complete armies. But up to recently each of these oppressed nations carried on its campaign independently of the others. They had a common enemy and a common aim, but it took nearly four years, before they got together and agreed upon a common campaign. The Congress of Rome, like the February meeting of the Allies at Versailles, marks an important step in co-ordinating the great forces opposed to Central Europe.

For more than a year before the realization of the Congress there have been occasional conferences in Paris between the representatives of the various oppressed nationalities and the inter-allied parliamentary commission. Steps were taken in common to combat the frequent Austro-Magyar intrigues, and the desirability of a league of nations oppressed by the Hapsburgs was assented to by every one. But there were many obstacles in the way. It has always been the ruling principle of the Hapsburg emperors to hold together their various peoples by sowing dissension among them, and so these races were not used to co-operation. The Czechs and the Jugoslavs were ready for close alliance. But the Poles had a different viewpoint; their chief enemy was Germany, while Austria had treated their race rather well so that the Austrophil element among them had always been strong. The most serious obstacle to the union was the quarrel between the Italians and the Jugoslavs about the division of the Adriatic coast among these two races. Austrian influences were all the time at work to keep alive and increase the differences between Italy and the South Slavs.

The failure of the oppressed nationalities of Austria-Hungary to unite was a serious obstacle to their separate campaigns. Their chiefs in Paris and London and Rome were met with the objection: “How can you claim the right of self-determination, when you are unable to agree among yourselves? We do not intend to break up Austria merely to have the liberated nations fall upon each other, as the Balkan nations did after their victory over Turkey.”

Early this year the situation cleared up. The developments in the East—the total collapse of Russia with German occupation of all its western provinces, the loss of the Cholm province to Poland and the complete subordination of Austria to Germany—convinced the Poles that they must take a stand against Austria just as definitely as against Germany. In Italy the searching of hearts after the great defeat of November caused a great change in the tone of public opinion. The jingoes were silenced and a conciliatory attitude was manifested in the press and on the platform towards the claims of the Jugoslavs for the inclusion in their state of Adriatic territories which were mainly Slav in language and sentiment.

During the month of February, 1918, the Italian under-secretary of state Gallenga visited Paris, and the occasion was used by the French friends of the Austrian Slavs to call together a conference of the representatives of these nations at which the decision was taken to hold a congress at an early date either at Paris or Rome. In March Italian deputies returning from the Inter-Allied Labor Congress in London in-