Page:The New Europe (The Slav standpoint), 1918.pdf/57

 Bohemia was even then, and is to-day, the “pearl of Austria”; the military and financial burden has rested on the Bohemian lands; Czechs, Slovaks, and Austrians had to liberate, with their blood and treasure, the rest of Hungary, which only in the second half of the nineteenth century became stronger and more influential economically. The economic strength of Austria depended wholly upon Bohemia.

The centralistic constitution in Austria and the dual system have never received the sanction of the Czech nation, about these two points turns the fight of Bohemia against the Habsburgs and Austria; on the basis of their right which has recently been recognised three times by Emperor Francis Joseph, the Czechs are an independent nation and State. Austro-Magyar violence does not create a state of law, and limitations do not run against the rights of a nation so long as the nation continues to fight for those rights.

45. (b) In this war the Czecho-Slovaks, as an independent nation, acted independently—they did not follow the perjured emperor, but took their stand on the side of the Allies.

The Czech nation elected the Habsburgs to its throne, the Czech nation has the full right to withdraw its allegiance to them, when they have proved faithless to the nation. They proved faithless when Francis Joseph acted against his solemn promises to the detriment of Bohemia’s rights; therefore the nation since 1848 has been fighting the crown and those provinces and nations (Germans, Magyars) which combined with the crown against it. The Czech nation did not approve the rôle which the Habsburgs played more and more openly since 1866 as the retainers and servants of Berlin; the Czechs expressed in a solemn manner their attitude toward the threatening Prussianism in 1870 when they, alone of all the nations, officially protested in the Prague Diet against the separation of Alsace-Lorraine from France.

In the Vienna Parliament the Czechs defended not merely their own rights, but also the rights of other nations, Slavs and Latins; during the Balkan war they openly supported the Jugoslavs against Vienna and Budapest. They continued in this national and democratic policy when Francis Joseph declared war on Serbia and, as a result of it, on Russia; the entire nation condemned this war. The Czech soldiers manifested this opposition by refusing obedience, by deserting and by joining the Allied armies. This movement, and it is necessary to emphasise this fact, was spontaneous and truly popular, the Czech soldier-voters refused obedience to the Habsburgs. In all Allied and neutral countries numerous Czech and Slovak colonies with equal spontaneity proclaimed the rights of the Czech nation to independence and organised military legions; all these colonies, far exceeding in number a million people, became an organised body under the leadership of the National Council with headquarters in Paris. This National Council, being well in contact with the nation and its leading statesmen and having the approval of the whole nation, proclaimed, in the declaration of 14th November 1915, the Habsburgs deposed from their royal office and announced their determination to fight against them. Francis Joseph answered by a bloody reign of terror.

In Bohemia the whole nation by its actions approved the policy of the National Council abroad and solemnly declared on several occasions through its representatives that it demanded full independence and the severance of all ties with Austria-Hungary.

In the meantime prisoners of war increased the original legions into considerable armies in France, Italy and Russia; on all battlefields Czechs and Slovaks distinguished themselves by bravery and military discipline which was enhanced by the democratic constitution of this, their first, army. The march from the Ukraine across Siberia became an epic of this war.

The Allies recognised fully the importance of the Czecho-Slovak armies, and of the whole nation, for their cause; the French, Italian, British, 2em