For Austria to pursue further its policy of Teutonism is madness. If the monarchy wishes to live it must be neither German, for there is no room in Europe for two Germanic Empires side by side, nor wholly Slavonic, like Russia. Her manifest destiny is, or rather has been, to form a bridge between Germany and Russia, between the Slavs and Teutons, between the west and the east. For Germany to go to war to fight the Slavic peril is conceivable, even justifiable; but for Austria, more than 60 per cent. Slavonic, to draw her sword to combat Slavism sounds very much like the familiar story attributed by Plutarch to Menenius Agrippa, according to which various members of one’s body determined to down the stomach as the source of all their troubles. To fight the Slavs Austria must fight herself.
Plainly the destinies of Austria and Germany are as unlike as are divergent their ambitions. Germany aspired to be a world power, a Weltmacht, and in pursuance of this dream she began to build up a colonial empire. Austria possesses no colonies. The plan of her statesmen (Aehrenthal) has been to establish a predominating Austrian influence in the Balkans, where Germany’s interests, to quote the well-known words of Bismarck, were not worth the bones of one Pomeranian grenadier. Germany is a homogeneous country or nearly so; Austria, on the contrary, is the most heterogeneous empire in Central Europe.
Quite naturally the question suggests itself: what would arise on the splendid ruins on the Danube should the proverbial ill-luck overtake the Hapsburgs in the present war? With Galicia and Bukovina lost to Russia, with Transylvania annexed to Rumania, with Trentino and Trieste restored to Italy, and Bosnia and Herzegovina incorporated in Greater Serbia—provided the partition went no further—what would be left of the Hapsburg inheritance? Instead of a Greater Austria, that should have included conquered Serbia, it is not improbable that the Hapsburgs will return home from the Great War with a Small Austria—an Austria as it began in 1527, when the Austrians, Bohemians, and Hungarians formed a confederacy and elected a Hapsburg as their ruler.
Rieger, a Bohemian statesman, once declared in the Vienna Parliament, that Austria will only live as long as the Slavs wish her to live and no longer. Rieger’s famous utterance has acquired a new meaning in view of the passing events in the Hapsburg Empire.
Thomas Čapek.
References: The writer of this article is largely indebted for much of the material to Professor Ernest Denis’ most excellent work, La Bohême depuis La Montagne-Blanche (lately translated from the French into Bohemian). Among others he has consulted the following Bohemian works: Our Re-birth, Review of Bohemian National Life Within the Last Half Century, by Jakub Malý; Slavdom, Pictures of Its Past and Present. (This is a standard work containing isolated articles by a number of representative authors.) History of Our Times, by Dr. Jan Krištůfek; Political History of the Bohemian Nation from the Year 1861 to the Ascension of the Badeni Ministry in 1891, by Adolf Srb; Political Ideas of Francis Palacký; Political Utterances and Principles of Francis L. Rieger; A Great Bohemian: The Life, Work and Meaning of Francis Palacký, the Father of the Nation, by Vácslav Řezníček; Karel Havlíček: Aims and Hopes of Political Awakening, by T. G. Masaryk.
II
THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY
The Slovaks, a branch of the Slavic family, numbering between 2,000,000 and 3,000,000 people, and kinsmen of the Bohemians, inhabit the northwestern provinces of Hungary. There is not uniform agreement among Slovak scholars with reference to the ethnic affinity of this people with the Bohemians. Are the Slovaks a direct offshoot of the Bohemians or a separate branch of the Slavic family? Ethnologists find convincing arguments for and against both theories. Bohemians, as may be surmised, take the ground that they and the Slovaks are one—one in language and one in racial traditions—and that nothing divides them except political boundaries,—the Slovaks being subject to the rule of Hungary, Bohemians owing allegiance to Austria. Samo Czambel, a learned Slovak, published a book recently on the grammatical peculiarities of his mother tongue in which, contrary to the almost universal opinion of philologists that Slovak is but an older form of Bohemian, he contends that the old grouping of Slovak jointly with Bohemian is wrong; and that the language should be treated as an independent Slavic idiom, precisely in the same way as Polish, Russian, etc. But, though grammarians may disagree about this or that Slovak or Bohemian root or termination of a verb; though they may fancy they see a difference where probably none exists, the people themselves have no quarrels to pick, no disputes to adjust. On the contrary, they have always been good neighbors[20] and loyal friends. As for real differences of speech, these are so slight that a Slovak will understand a Bohemian as readily as an Englishman from Yorkshire will his cousin, the Yankee. One is reminded of the closeness of the two languages when one recalls that Slovaks of the Protestant faith read at their church services from the Bohemian Bible. Recently a meeting of representative Bohemians and Slovaks[21] in New York passed a resolution, in which occurs this significant passage: “Nothing now separates us, except that we owe political allegiance to two different states, one to Austria, the other to Hungary. Remove that barrier, and it will be seen that the Bohemians and Slovaks are one in language, one in blood, one in national faith, indissoluble and indivisible.”