CZECHOSLOVAK INDEPENDENCE
of equality alongside of dominant Austria.(Par. 738.)
The commanding difficulty of government through out the whole course of Austro -Hungarian politics has been the variety of races embraced within the domain of the monarchy. First and most prominent is the three- sided contrast between German, Slav and Magyar. Within this general classification, again, Slav differs from Slav by reason of many sharp divergencies of history, of speech and of religion; and outside this classification, there is added a miscellany of Italians, Croats, Serbs, Roumanians, Jews—men of almost every race and people of eastern Europe. This variety is emphasized by the fact that only the Czechs (Bohemians), among all these peoples, have a separate homeland in which they are in majority. In Bohemia and Moravia the Czechs constitute considerably more than half the population; whilst in Hungary the Magyars, though greatly outnumbering any other element of the population, are less than half the whole number of inhabitants; and in Austria, though men of German blood are very greatly in the majority in the central provinces which may be called Austria proper, they constitute in Austria taken as a whole very little more than one-third of the population. (Par. 739.)
At least two among these many races, moreover, are strenuously, restlessly, persistently devoted to independence. No lapse of time, no defeat of hopes, seems sufficient to reconcile the Czechs of Bohemia to incorporation with Austria. Pride of race and the memories of a notable and distinguished history keep[ 38 ]
