Page:The New Europe, volume 1.pdf/287

 presents a peculiar and interesting problem. For the present the important thing is to grasp clearly the significance of the Central Zone in its bearing upon the war. Ever since the time of the Bohemian Reformation, which began in the 14th century, during the reign of Charles IV., Bohemia has been of great importance to Europe, both politically and culturally. At the same time Poland became a nation of European importance, as did also Serbia and the Southern-Slavs.

In the 16th century, as the result of a union with Bohemia and Hungary, Austria became a new power in Europe and she adopted a policy of opposition to Turkey; very soon after that Prussia began to expand, to the detriment of Poland and Bohemia (Prussian Silesia, it should be remembered, belonged to Bohemia). Russia, pressing towards the West, also began, with the advent of the 16th century, to play a more important part in the history of Europe, and so the relations between Russia and Turkey, Austria and Prussia, quite naturally assumed greater importance.

The centre of gravity of European history was, step by step, shifted eastward. This historical process can be summed up in the watchword of the Oriental question in the 19th century. That question came to be focussed on the relationship of Prussian Germany and Austria-Hungary with Russia. Russia stood up against Turkey and aspired to Constantinople, and that changed the relations of Austria-Hungary and Prussia with Turkey. The two Powers became her protectors against Russia. The Slav problem simply means that Russia and the Slavs stood in the way of Germany and her allies of the Central Zone in their projected expansion to the Persian Gulf.

Considering that the war broke out in the Central Zone on account of Serbia, no thinking person can be left in doubt that it is here that lies the centre of gravity of European history and of European politics. This Zone is the centre of political unrest; the wars of recent decades, not to say centuries, have had their fundamental causes in the inorganic conditions of this part of Europe. The German Drang nach Osten, the Pangerman plan of "Berlin-Bagdad," forces not only upon the Slavs, but upon the whole of Europe the imperative necessity of solving once for all the question of the Central Zone, the Oriental question.

Author:Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk.