These wait to become gladly our moral conquest, to learn of us the better things we know, and forever to set bounds that the German barbarians shall not pass over.”
Magyars in the United States try to create the impression that theirs is one of the nations oppressed by Austria and that their sympathies are not on the German side. Cannon Barry knows that the facts are far different. “Do we realize how closely the small ruling nation of the Magyars depends on Germany for its paramount position in the midst of a great Slav ring of subject peoples? Yet so it is and must be, though Hungarians hate and look down upon the Prussians without whose backing their own supremacy would vanish. Again, if we turn to Austria proper, what do we find? I quote an authoritative statement to the following effect: In the beginning of February, 1917, two powerful parties which before the war had ruled this portion of the Empire alternately, the National Union who are Liberals, and the Christian Socialists came to an understanding. The Liberals were led by Jews and anti-Clericals, the Christian Socialists by Clericals and anti-Semites. But they now passed resolutions in favor of a customs union between Austria and Germany, they agreed that German should be the sole official language, and that all Germans resident in Austria, though not its subjects, should be reckoned as Austrian citizens. And these are the chief political forces in the western half of the Dual Empire. Thus our sum in addition is quickly done, like Portia’s declaration of love in The Merchant of Venice, “one-half of me is yours, the other half yours”. Not a legion of Counts Karolyi will persuade us that the Hungarians think of sacrificing their tyranny over Slavs and Rumanes to a platonic affection for Old England. If the Kaiser falls, the Magyar dominion collapses at the same instant. And when Jews agree with anti-Semites to Germanize what exists of Austria not owned by the Hungarians, we may well exclaim: ‘These be wonders’, ‘Vidimus mirabilia hodie’.”
The author is well acquainted with the sufferings of the Bohemian people during the war and with the persecutions and massacres perpetrated upon them by Vienna. And of course he is a warm advocate of Bohemian independence. “The whole chapter of Bohemia during these melancholy years is like the prophet’s scroll most lamentable, but yet it is glorious for a people who, cut off from help and sympathy, are struggling in a silent martyrdom that the Allies may win. This cultivated, peace-loving and constantly heroic branch of the Western Slavs should be dear to England on many accounts. But as political inducements let me add Bismarck’s saying: ‘He that holds Bohemia is master of Europe’, and the simple fact of geography that such a mountain land in the center of a continent, were it free and confederate with its kinsfolk to the East, would be like a wedge thrust into the heart of Pan-Germanism; it would split that entire system across, and thereby end the peril now threatening our Indian Empire.”
It is not practicable to quote Cannon Barry at length on the disposition he proposes to make of the various countries ruled by the Hapsburgs. But his conclusion presents a powerful argument in favor of the radical treatment of the Austrian problem.
“Our policy is large and simple. The English-speaking west, the Latin nations, the Slavs of the center, have an interest in common. Its name is freedom; its enemy is Germanism. In the light of this commanding philosophy we cannot afford to be jealous or partisan or disunited. Our danger from the military menace of the Prussian Kaiser is not now formidable, in comparison of what it was even two years ago. We are conquering and to conquer. But we might win in the field and be worsted at the council board; we have to ask our selves again and again: Is a German peace possible? Will her political victory follow her military collapse? It has been thought more than probable, since the Allies can prevent it only by setting about a total reconstruction of the Near East, in other words, by breaking Austria, settling the Balkan problem on a just foundation, reconciling the different, if not diverse claims of Poles, Letts, Ruthenes, Czechs, Slovaks and Jugoslavs with each other, and all under Western guidance of which the interpreter will, in the main, be a Greater Italy. To leave Austria-Hungary still paramount, under federal conditions, is apparently the line of least resistance, always favored by diplomacy. Perhaps it is, but without any perhaps it would make the Kaiser the lord of Europe.
“The better but surer way is to bridle the Hohenzollerns by a ring of independent nations around them; to combine Antwerp with Dantzig, Trieste with Saloniki, creating a naval quadrilateral, under the protec-
