THE CZECHOSLOVAK PROBLEM
and that the Entente and the United States have abandoned them.
To sum up, every one of Germany’s many ambitions in the East depend for their success upon her breaking through and crushing the ring of western and southern Slavs which encircles her on the east and southeast. For this reason (even if we look at the question from a merely selfish standpoint) there is nothing which the United States should not do to aid these Slavic races; and if we look at the question from a humanitarian standpoint there are no races anywhere more deserving of the sympathy and support of the United States than the Czechoslovaks, the Jugoslavs and other Slavic races of Austria-Hungary.
The question which should first be decided by the United States at this time is not what terms can probably be secured, but what terms would secure justice and a peace that can endure. It is at least possible for the United States to set for itself an ideal that will do justice to the races whose fate depends upon the result of this war, and then to secure an actual peace which will conform as closely as possible to the ideal which we have set for ourselves. For a century and a half; after the question might have been settled, the situation in the Turkish Empire has remained a world scandal and a constant menace to the peace of Europe, because the European powers never had the courage to bring about a final solution of the problem. Austria-Hungary will become another constant menace to the peace—not only[ 89 ]
