AUSTRIA-HUNGARY AND THE PRESENT WAR
In order to understand fully what is at stake in this war and why the Slavs are so bitterly opposed to the further existence of Austria-Hungary, it is necessary to study the foreign policy of the Central Powers during the past century. The "deepened alliance" concluded between Germany and Austria-Hungary in May, 1918, resulting in the complete surrender of Austria's independence, is in fact the natural outcome of a long development and the realisation of the hopes of Mitteleuropa cherished by the Germans for years past. The scares about the dangers of "Pan-slavism" were spread by the Germans only in order to conceal the real danger of Pan-Germanism.
1. The original theory of Pan-Germanism was the consolidation and unity of the whole German nation corresponding to the movement of the Italians for national unity. In fact it was a German, Herder, who first proclaimed the principle of nationality and declared the nation to be the natural organ of humanity, as opposed to the idea of the state as an artificial organisation: "Nothing seems to be so opposed to the purpose of government as an unnatural extension of territory of a state and a wild confusion of holding different races and nations under the sway of a single sceptre." It was this humanitarian philosophy recognising the natural rights of all nations, great or small, to freedom which inspired the first Czech regenerators such as Dobrovský, Jungman and Kollár.
The legitimate claims of the Germans to national unity became unjust and dangerous for Europe when the Germans began to think of subduing the whole of Central Europe to their hegemony, which meant the subjugation of some 100 million Slavs and Latins. At first it was Austria which, as the head of the former Holy Roman Empire, and the traditional bulwark of Germany in the east (Osterreich--an eastern march), aspired to be the head of the Pan-German Empire. At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the Austrian Emperor became the head of the German Confederation. Prussia at that time entirely gave way and left the leadership to Metternich's system of absolutism.
By and by, it became obvious that Austria was, on account of her non-German population, internally weak, condemned to constant employment of violence and reaction, and therefore unfit to stand at the head of a strong modern Pan-Germany. Prussia therefore, as the greatest of the homogeneous German states, became Austria's rival and was accepted by the Frankfurt Assembly as the leader of the Confederation. The rivalry between Austria and Prussia ended in 1866, when after Austria's defeat the clever diplomacy of Bismarck turned the rivalry between Austria and Prussia into friendship. Since the Germans in Austria began to feel their impotence in the face of the growing Slav power, a year later the centralising efforts of the Habsburgs were finally embodied in the system of dualism which gave over the Slavs and Italians in Austria to German hegemony and the Slavs and Rumanians in Hungary to Magyar tyranny. For the support of this hegemony the Austrian Germans and Magyars, whose ambitions are identical with those of Germany, were entirely dependent on Berlin. Thus Austria-Hungary became inevitably Germany's partner and vanguard in the south-east. Finally, the present war was started by the Germans and Magyars with the object of achieving the ambitious plans preached and expounded by Pan-German writers for years past. The Germans wanted at all costs to become the masters of Central Europe, to build an empire from Berlin to Bagdad, and finally to strike for world domination.
2. In this turn of events Magyar influence played a greater part than might be thought. Already in 1848 Kossuth defined the Hungarian foreign policy as follows:--
"The Magyar nation is bound to maintain the most cordial relations with the free German nation and help it in safeguarding Western civilisation."
And while the Hungarian Slavs were prohibited from attending the Pan-Slav Congress held in Prague in 1848, the Magyars sent two delegates to Frankfurt in order to give practical expression to the above Magyar policy.
The value of Hungary for the Pan-German plans has been expressed by Friedrich List who, in 1862, dreamt of "a powerful oriental German-Magyar Empire," and declared:
"The way towards the realisation of this plan runs through Hungary, and while without Hungary we can do nothing, with her aid we can do everything. Hungary is for Germany the clue to Turkey and the Near East, and at the same time a bulwark against a superior power from the north."