Page:The future of Bohemia by Seton-Watson (1915).pdf/21

 with delegates from Poland, Serbia, Croatia, the Slovak districts, and even Russia. Palacky earned the ill-will of the German extremists by his refusal to take part in the German Federal Parliament at Frankfurt. But he very rightly held that Austria’s sole hope for the future lay in the introduction of a federal system, and this he advocated till the very end of his life. A famous saying of his has found its way through Europe and has formed the text of many edifying sermons upon Austria (I too must plead guilty to having used it more than once myself): “If there were no Austria, it would be necessary to create one.” The root meaning of such a phrase has been all too often overlooked; Palacky regarded the continued existence of Austria as the sole means of avoiding a European cataclysm. But now that such a cataclysm has actually come upon us, surely we shall do well to remember another winged word applied by Palacky to his native Bohemia: “Before Austria was, we were, and when Austria no longer is, we still shall be.” Surely a prophetic phrase.

Since 1848 the national movement in Bohemia has steadily and irresistibly progressed. Its weakest side has always been the political. The Czechs have produced a very large number of able leaders of the second and third ranks, but not a single one of supreme eminence, and what is most important of all, no one at all comparable to the really great men whom their Magyar contemporaries produced, Deák, Kossuth, and And-