Page:The New Europe (The Slav standpoint), 1918.pdf/64

 The following table illustrates the Bohemian contribution on the basis of direct taxation to the Austrian finances:—

The Bohemian lands and the other Austrian lands (not counting Lower Austria and Vienna) have 25·04 million inhabitants, in the proportion of 40·5 and 59·5 per cent. respectively. Lower Austria is placed separately, because it contains Vienna as the capital, and is thereby privileged; it is also the real centre of the Bohemian industry and export trade. Many Czech undertakings have their central offices and rights of domicile there, because the scale of taxation and the municipal rates of Vienna are lower than in Bohemia.

That explains why the rateability of Bohemia tends to drop, while that of Vienna and Lower Austria tends to rise. If we could include those figures in the statistics, and if we entered, in the archives of the Bohemian lands, the precise rateability of those Bohemian undertakings that are domiciled in Vienna, the difference would be still more in our favour; but even as it is, the rateability of the Bohemian lands is 11·90 crowns per head, whereas, in the rest of the Austrian lands it is only six crowns.

Still more significant are the statistics of indirect taxation in Austria (taxes on beer, sugar, spirits, salt, paraffin, tobacco and excise taxes, etc.); with the exception of spirits, the consumption of all those articles is far greater in the Bohemian lands.

The Bohemian lands, are, indeed, the “pearl of Austria,” not only from the point of view of agricultural and industrial production, but also, and as an inevitable result thereof, from the financial standpoint. In the other lands of the Monarchy, the State expenses are greater than the income received from them in return, and this deficiency is made good by the Bohemian countries. In view of the foregoing facts, few people will entertain any doubts as to Bohemia’s chances of being self-supporting and progressive.

Bohemia has no seaboard (except in one of Shakespeare’s plays), and that, no doubt, is a great drawback as compared, for instance, with little Denmark and the other sea-bordered countries; but Bohemia does not stand alone in that respect; she is no worse off than Serbia, Hungary, Switzerland. The example of Switzerland shows that not only political independence can be preserved, but also that modern means of communication enable even a landlocked country to maintain a flourishing industry. Switzerland has not even any coal and iron, and yet she has succeeded in becoming an industrial country. Bohemia, on the other hand, is very rich in coal, and will, therefore, be able to run the necessary railways; but she will have at her disposal Trieste, which, it may be presumed, will be a free port; and she will also have the Serbo-Croatian ports and Polish Danzig, should her relations with Germany prevent the use of Hamburg. The distance from Prague to Hamburg is the same as that to Trieste; Danzig is a little further, as is also Fiume. There is a possibility of creating a cheap waterway by a Moravia–Oder–Vistula channel, of which there already exists the beginning.

The sea undoubtedly also furnishes comparatively strong strategical frontiers, yet the development of modern navies and aeroplanes easily counterbalances that advantage, as has been experienced in this war. Belgium, Denmark, Norway, for instance, can make little use of the sea.

Bohemia would take her share of the Austrian public debt contracted before the war, but she will decline to participate in the debt resulting from