Civilized War Codes—Scraps of Paper.
By E. F . Prantner.
The Czechoslovak soldiers, recently captured by the Hungarians in the last Austrian drive, went to their death “willingly and smilingly”. They evidently were comforted by the words of Huss, spoken at the moment when he was tied to the stake in Constance, “Joyfully do I seal with my blood those divine truths which I have spread by my lips and by my writings.”
About the time that these brave men were executed, Germany made another bid for peace through Dr. Kuehlman, then her foreign minister, and insisted that “a certain degree of mutual confidence in each other’s honesty and chivalry” be granted to the nations which will have to consider terms of peace.
“So soon as a man is armed by a sovereign government and takes the soldier’s oath of fidelity he is a belligerent.” (57) “All soldiers . . . all men who belong to the rising en masse of the hostile country” when captured, shall be regarded as prisoners of war. (49) “A prisoner of war is a public enemy armed or attached to the hostile army for active aid.” (49)[1]
Austria-Hungary recently signed a treaty with the Kaiser by the terms of which it is reduced to a mere vassal state of Germany. Her continued existence depends upon German toleration, pleasure or whim; so long as Austria responds to and obeys German orders, she will not be absorbed or dismembered. For centuries the peoples inhabiting the lands of the ancient kingdom of Bohemia, the Czechoslovaks, have sought to obtain for themselves from the Austrian crown civil rights equal to those granted to other inhabitants of the monarchy. The successive rulers, to whom the appeals were made, supported by the nobles, the hierarchy, the bureaucracy and the vested interests, refused to listen to the pleas presented by these peoples. Generally the answer was increased taxation, for these lands, the gems of the Austrian crown, must support the other economically weak territories of the empire.
When war was declared, the world rocked and trembled to its very foundations. The Czechoslovaks then realized that the purposes for which this war was waged by the Germans and the Austria-Hungarians, were the conquest of territory and the Kulturing of the conquered peoples. From the day of the declaration of hostilities they opposed the war, but they were forced to shoulder arms against brother Slavs, the Serbians and the Russians, and against the French, their devoted friends for many years.
They deserted from Austrian armies, they surrendered whenever an opportunity offered, not because they were cowards or afraid to fight, but because they would not fight against brother Slavs and friends, and further because they did not believe in the purposes of the war for the reasons advanced by the German, Austrian and Hungarian autocrats.
Immediately after the declaration of war, the realization was brought home to the Czechoslovaks that the continued existence of their lands and language depended upon their independence; that they must be freed from Austrian rule, be independent of that grand German super-dream, Mittel-Europa, and that thus and only thus they will avoid being Kultured. Their men were forced into the Austria-Hungarian armies, but determined to desert, to surrender, so that they might give battle to the oppressors of their ancestors, of themselves and of their children. Now they fight for freedom, liberty and democracy and are in the war to the last man.
In the days of Huss the Bohemians were noted for their “indomitable strength, such scorn of death, such passionate faith in their holy cause, that every obstacle must needs fall before them.” The traditions of those days are being nobly and religiously upheld by the brave men now fighting for Bohemia.
The Czechoslovaks revolted against the Austria rule. If there ever was any doubt on this point it was removed when the Constituent Assembly adopted, in Prague on January 6th, 1918, the declaration that they (the Czechs) demand a “union with our Slovak brothers and independent economic and cultural life.”
The French republic recognized the National Council for Czech and Slovak lands
- ↑ John Bassett Moore, International Law, No. 1127. Also, Holland, Laws of War on Land, Sec. 4.
