Page:The future of Bohemia by Seton-Watson (1915).pdf/33

 Triple Entente and a powerful obstacle in the path of German aggression.

The chief difficulty which will face the new State is the problem of racial minorities for in the event of Bohemian independence it will inevitably include at least a million and a half Germans. There are, of course, certain points at which the existing frontier can be pared down, leaving certain German districts, such as the Egerland, the territory round Bodenbach, or South of Budweis, to German-Austria, to Bavaria, or to Saxony, and along the Silesian frontier similar concessions could be made to the racial principle. But this is unhappily impossible in North Bohemia, where the new State, if it is to be self-sufficient and economically independent, must of necessity hold on to the mining and industrial districts and where the existence of numerous Czech minorities cannot be overlooked. But this difficulty of racial minorities must not deter us. It is present almost everywhere in central and south-eastern Europe, and there is not a single problem which the war has raised, that can be solved in defiance of it. The best that we can do is to educate public opinion to oppose strenuously the suppression of national minorities, and to make a guarantee of linguistic rights in the schools, churches, local bodies and cultural institutions a sine qua non in the settlement of each individual problem. The Germans of Bohemia and Southern Hungary must be secured the same