Independent Bohemia | Page 3

were cruelly punished for their rebellion. All their nobility were either executed or sent into exile, and their property confiscated. The country was devastated by the imperial hordes, and its population was reduced from 3,000,000 to 800,000 during the Thirty Years' War.
In 1627 Ferdinand II. greatly curtailed the administrative rights of Bohemia, yet he did not dare to deprive her entirely of her independence. In his "Renewed Ordinance of the Land" Ferdinand declared the Bohemian crown to be hereditary in the House of Habsburg, and reserved legislative power to the sovereign. But otherwise the historical rights of Bohemia remained valid, notwithstanding all subsequent arbitrary centralising measures taken by the Habsburgs. Bohemia's rights were repeatedly recognised by each succeeding Habsburg. Legally Bohemia is an independent state to-day.
The heavy persecutions inflicted upon Bohemia had a disastrous effect upon her intellectual life and national development which were completely paralysed until the end of the eighteenth century, when owing to the humanitarian ideals of those times, and as a reaction against the Germanising centralistic efforts of Joseph II., the Czechs again began to recover their national consciousness. This revival marked the beginning of the Czecho-Slovak struggle for the re-establishment of their independence. The movement was at first literary, and only in the forties became political. It was a continuous struggle against reaction and absolutism, and if the Czecho-Slovaks to-day can boast of an advanced civilisation, it is only owing to their perseverance and hard endeavours, and not because of any good-will on the part of the Austrian Government which put every possible obstacle in their way.
2. _The present Austria-Hungary_ is primarily a dynastic estate, for the crown was always its supreme political driving force, although at present the Habsburgs are mere slaves of their masters, the Hohenzollerns. It is this characteristic which justifies us in concluding that Austria is an autocratic state par excellence. If there were no other reason, this should be sufficient to make every true democrat an enemy of Austria. Furthermore, it is this characteristic which makes us comprehend why the Habsburg monarchy is fighting side by side with German autocracy and imperialism against the allied democracies of the world.
Notwithstanding the so-called constitution which is a mere cloak for absolutism, the monarch in Austria is emperor by "Divine Right" alone, and is the absolute master of his subject peoples in virtue of his privileged position which confers on him an inexhaustible amount of power and influence. The internal as well as the foreign policy of the monarchy is directed in the real or supposed interests of the dynasty. The principle divide et impera is its leading idea in internal politics, and the increase of dynastic power in foreign policy. The question of war and peace is decided by the emperor, to whom it also appertains to order matters concerning the management, leadership and organisation of the whole army. And though in Hungary the power of the monarch largely depends on the Budapest Parliament, yet even here the constitutional power of the dynasty is enormous, the King of Hungary being a governing and legislative factor by no means inferior to that of the parliament.
Even when attempts were made at enfranchising the masses (as in 1896 and finally in 1905), the motive again was purely dynastic. Such constitutional measures as were taken, only strengthened racial dissensions and were equally insincere and inefficient. The present constitution of 1867, as well as the previous constitutions of 1849, 1860 and 1861, was granted by the crown, to whom it was reserved to reverse or modify the same. The parliament is absolutely powerless in Austria. It is a mere cloak for absolutism, since the famous Paragraph 14 provides for absolutist government by means of imperial decrees without parliament in case of emergency. The dynasty took ample advantage of this clause during the first three years of this war when absolutism and terrorism reigned supreme in the Dual Monarchy. While since 1861 up to the beginning of the war 156 imperial decrees had been issued, fully 161 have been passed during the first three years of the present war.
The arbitrary power of the dynasty is based: upon the organisation of the army, the leadership of which is entrusted to the Germans; upon the feudal aristocracy who are the only real Austrians, since they have no nationality, though they invariably side with the dominant Germans and Magyars; upon the power of the police who form the chief instrument of the autocratic government and who spy upon and terrorise the population; upon the German bureaucrats who do not consider themselves the servants of the public, but look upon the public as their servant, and whose spirit of meanness and corruption is so characteristic of the Austrian body politic; finally, the dynasty relies upon the Catholic hierarchy who hold vast landed