Page:The New Europe - Volume 3.djvu/371

 by Slovenes, Croats and Serbs in an independent State organism, free from the rule of any foreign nation and resting on a democratic basis, under the sceptre of the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty; and that they will devote all their energies to the realisation of this demand of their nation, which forms a single unit. With this qualification the undersigned will take part in the work of Parliament.”

(3) Dr. Petruszewycz, in the name of the twenty-four Ukrainian deputies from Galicia, read the following declaration: “With regard to the conditions created by the war and the new situation announced for Galicia by the Imperial Decree of 4 December, 1916, the representatives of the Ukrainian people in Austria consider it necessary to enter the following constitutional protest.

“‘1. The present Crown land of Galicia is an artificially-created administrative unit which conflicts with historic and national rights. By the October Diploma of 1860 and the February Patent of 1861 the historic Ukrainian Kingdom of Galicia and of Lodomeria was welded with the Duchy of Cracow and the principalities of Auschwitz and Zator into a constitutional unit; and this has always been regarded by the Ukrainian people as illegal and as a national outrage. In view of the historic events of to-day the representatives of the Ukrainian people lay special emphasis upon the inalienable constitutional rights of Galicia and Lodomeria; they demand the restoration of the Ukrainian territories as a constitutional unit within the framework of the State as a whole, and they solemnly protest against the intention of forcing these Ukrainian territories into further constitutional union with the Polish territories or of providing the latter with a special autonomy of its own.

“‘2. The representatives of the Ukrainian people protest against even the smallest portion of the Ukrainian territories of Cholm, Podlachia and Wolhynia ever being added to the kingdom of Poland which is in process of formation, and regard any attempt in this direction as an outrage upon the living body of the Ukrainian people, as a violation of its historic rights and a mockery of the principle of the self-determination of peoples.

“‘3. The representatives of the Ukrainians of Austria greet most heartily the efforts of the Ukrainians of Russia to secure the right of constitutional self-determination, and declare that they in Austria, too, will not abandon the struggle, so that the great Ukrainian nation may acquire the fullest rights upon the whole of its national territory.’”

(4) Herr Pacher (a member of the Pangerman group of Herr Wolf) read the following statement in the name of the German National League of the Christian Socialists and of those German Bohemian deputies who do not belong to any party club: “Bohemian constitutional law, by which millions of Germans in the Sudeten lands would be forced against their will into a new State formation, is not