Independent Bohemia | Page 9

policy which I followed all my life_. I wished to do everything which lay within the compass of my small powers, to render my own nation happy and great in a free, powerful and generally respected Austria ... _I have always resented the fact that when they talked about Austria people really meant only the Germans and Magyars, as if the great majority of Slavs upon whom rest the biggest burdens did not exist_. But now--and no beautiful words can make me change my opinion on that point--an entirely independent policy has become unthinkable, because the only path which remains open to Vienna leads by way of Berlin. Berlin will henceforward direct our policy."
4. To offer any proofs that the present war was deliberately planned and provoked by the Governments of Berlin, Vienna and Budapest seems to me superfluous. Who can to-day have any doubt that Austria wilfully provoked the war in a mad desire to crush Serbia? Who can doubt that Austria for a long time entertained imperialist ambitions with respect to the Balkans which were supported by Berlin which wished to use Austria as a "bridge to the East"?
No more damning document for Austria can be imagined than Prince Lichnowsky's Memorandum. He denounces Austria's hypocritical support of the independence of Albania. In this respect he holds similar views to those expressed in the Austrian delegations of 1913 by Professor Masaryk, who rightly denounced the Austrian plan of setting up an independent Albania on the plea of "the right of nationalities" which Austria denied her own Slavs. Professor Masaryk rightly pointed out at that time that an outlet to the sea is a vital necessity for Serbia, that the Albanians were divided into so many racial, linguistic and religious groups and so uncivilised that they could not form an independent nation, and that the whole project was part and parcel of Austria's anti-Serbian policy and her plans for the conquest of the Balkans. Prince Lichnowsky admits that an independent Albania "had no prospect of surviving," and that it was merely an Austrian plan for preventing Serbia from obtaining an access to the sea.
He apparently disagrees with the idea of "the power of a Ruling House, the dynastic idea," but stands up for "a National State, the democratic idea." That in itself seems to indicate that he is in favour of the destruction of Austria and its substitution by new states, built according to the principle of nationality. He admittedly disagrees with the views of Vienna and Budapest, and criticises Germany's alliance with Austria, probably knowing, as a far-sighted and well-informed politician, that Austria-Hungary cannot possibly survive this war.
Prince Lichnowsky frankly admits that the murder of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand was a mere pretext for Vienna, which in fact had resolved on an expedition against Serbia soon after the second Balkan war by which she felt herself humiliated. In scathing terms he denounces the Triple Alliance policy and thinks it a great mistake that Germany allied herself with the "Turkish and Magyar oppressors." And though he says that it was Germany which "persisted that Serbia must be massacred," he makes it quite clear that it was Vienna that led the conspiracy against Europe, since on all questions Germany "took up the position prescribed to her by Vienna." The policy of espousing Austria's quarrels, the development of the Austro-German Alliance into a pooling of interests in all spheres, was "the best way of producing war." The Balkan policy of conquest and strangulation "was not the German policy, but that of the Austrian Imperial House." What better testimony is required to prove that Austria was not the blind tool, but the willing and wilful accomplice of Germany?

III
CZECH POLITICAL PARTIES BEFORE AND DURING THE WAR
The Czech policy during the past seventy years has always had but one ultimate aim in view: the re-establishment of the ancient kingdom of Bohemia and the full independence of the Czecho-Slovak nation. From the very beginning of their political activity Czech politicians resisted the Pan-German scheme of Central Europe. They preached the necessity of the realisation of liberty and equality for all nations, and of a federation of the non-Germans of Central Europe as a barrier against German expansion.
The chief reason for the failure of their efforts was the fact that they sometimes had illusions that the Habsburgs might favour the plan of such an anti-German federation, although the Habsburgs always mainly relied on the Germans and Magyars and could not and would not satisfy the Czech aspirations. The Czechs were greatly handicapped in their political struggle, because they had only just begun to live as a nation and had to face the powerful German-Magyar predominance, with the dynasty and the whole state machinery behind them. Moreover, the Czechs had no national aristocracy like the Poles or Magyars,