NEW PERSECUTIONS
For the second time the “opposition tamer,” Baron Koller, was appointed Governor of Bohemia. To Moravia was sent the notorious Bohemiophobe, Baron Weber. As usual, the press was the first to feel the heel of these little despots. Public prosecutors throughout Bohemia and Moravia received instructions to proceed “fearlessly” against opposition journals. Those prosecutors who replied that they would do their duty strictly “in accordance with the law” were either removed or transferred to other posts and replaced by functionaries who were more mindful of the needs of the government. “It is not necessary in every instance to set forth the reason for the confiscation of a newspaper article,” the prosecutors were instructed. “The prosecutors have a full power to act and they are answerable to no one.” During the first year of the Auersperg-Lasser Ministry the daily newspaper “Politik” in Prague was confiscated 83 times by the conscientious prosecutor. A number of societies were dissolved, though non-political in character. An agricultural organization that had been founded during the reign of Maria Theresa and had survived the bitter days of Bach’s administration, was deprived of its charter because its president, Prince Charles Schwarzenberg, a Bohemian noble, declined to participate in the Vienna Exposition unless a separate space was allotted there to Bohemia, as to Hungary. Every presiding officer of the so-called District Committees in the provinces, who was suspected of being a Bohemian sympathizer, was summarily removed. Two of the most noted journalists, Julius Grégr and J. St. Skrejšovský, who had the courage to fight the Auersperg-Lasser Ministry openly, were put in jail for an alleged attempt to defraud the government of a trifling tax with which newspaper advertisements were assessable. Both languished in jail for months. As an instance of official meanness, the case of the publisher of the “Correspondence Slave” should be mentioned. This man received a long term in prison for failure to pay a newspaper tax amounting to less than half a florin (20 cents).
And because Bohemian juries almost uniformly acquitted journalists brought before them for political offenses, prosecuting attorneys resorted to the expedient of a change of venue to cities inhabited by Germans. To eminent jurists protesting that a procedure of this kind was unconstitutional, the Minister of Justice replied that state necessities justified this course. On one occasion a deputation of representative citizens of Prague called on Baron Koller to complain of the arbitrariness of the police. “Gentlemen, I hope you do not wish me to be uncivil to you. I am exceedingly busy, and inasmuch as I have nothing to say to you, I must ask you to leave the room in five minutes.” And when the deputation, incensed over Koller’s brusqueness, wished to explain, the redoubtable baron exclaimed: “Gentlemen, the five minutes are up. Leave.” A door was opened, and in the ante-room stood a sentry with fixed bayonet.
The year 1879 witnessed the end of the “policy of abstinence.” Due, largely, to Premier Taaffe’s persuasion and promises, Bohemians re-entered the parliament. From Taaffe and his successors in office they obtained some political concessions (crumbs fallen from the opulent table of the master, to repeat a current expression of the opposition), yet the supreme ideal of the nation, autonomy, is to-day no nearer fulfillment than it ever was. If they thought that they might be able to convince Vienna of the injustice of dualism and might by parliamentary pressure force it to grant to them home rule of which they had been twice cheated, they had reckoned wrongly. Not only did they fail to bring Vienna to terms, but they were made to feel that another foe, powerful and implacable, blocked their way to national freedom. That foe was Berlin. For it must not be forgotten that, since the formation of the Triple Alliance, Berlin influence at Vienna, always great, had become predominant. If the two Teutonic partners were agreed on any one thing, it was on the proposition that Slavic trees in Austria should not grow too tall.
To conduct the reader through the maze of purely local happenings that occurred since Taaffe’s administration would be a long, though not wholly uninteresting story. Suffice it to say that during most of the time Bohemians were forced to fight on two fronts—Vienna on one front and their fellow-countrymen with Pan-German leanings on the other. The main quarrel between Vienna and Prague during all these years has been over Home Rule. Shall Bohemians living in the countries comprising the Bohemian Crown (Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia) be the arbiters of their own destiny, and shall they govern themselves from Prague by laws made and enacted by their home parliament? Home Rule is and has been the main issue; all else is subordinate to it.