Czech newspaper the following statement favoring Czech plans: ‘The Czech Declaration (referring to the Declaration of Independence of the Prague Constituent Assembly) gives us joy and finds here sympathetic reception. We form one nation with the Czechs. The Czech Declaration is among other things a great blow at the Magyar Government which has remained deaf to all Slovak protests. We are indebted to our Czech brothers in that, through them, the whole Europe speaks to day of the oppressed Slovak race.’
“Whoever knows the situation in Slovakia cannot doubt that even the common Slovak people will be captured by Czech agitation, unless we take the proper steps in time. The intellectual class of the Slovaks has for a long time been Czechs. With great boldness and remarkable courage they rouse hatred against Hungary in elections to the parliament and to the county and town councils. As a result it is not really the Slovak question, but the Czech question that threatens Upper Hungary, since the Czech language is supplanting the Slovak. Unless we take a firm stand in time, these Czechoslovak deputies will soon agitate the union of the thirteen Slovak counties to Bohemia not merely in the Austrian Parliament, but also in the Hungarian Chamber of Deputies. It is therefore absolutely necessary that the provisions of the electoral reform bill both as to the right to vote and as to qualifications of deputies should be revised in the interests of the Magyar nationality; and further, that the Magyar national army should become a reality, that administration be centralized, at least six years of schooling required of voters, and above all state police be introduced in all non-Magyar districts.”
The following day Baron Louis Kurthy, former food controller, discussed the same subject. He said:
“Let us avoid an exaggerated and fatal optimism. If one were to judge from the speeches delivered here, it would seem that some of the speakers rely exclusively upon the inherent strength of the Magyar race and its intellectual superiority to solve the problem of nationalities in our interest. On the other hand, we heard here yesterday some sad facts about Slovakia and Transsylvania. I know personally the Slovaks of Upper Hungary and I can state the deplorable fact that our power in Slovakia rests exclusively upon the force of our administration. The intellectual leadership has gotten away from us; it has passed into the hands of Slovak extremists and agitators.”
That was a true saying. The rule of the Magyars over the races of Hungary is founded not on Magyar superiority of character and intellect, but solely on brute force. It will be forever broken by the defeat of Germany in the present war.
The Defenestration of Prague.
On May 23d of this year the Czechs will observe the three hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of their last rebellion against the Hapsburgs. It was an uprising that ended disastrously, mainly because it was the act of the three privileged classes, noble men, knights and towns while the peasants, who had been the mainstay of Žižka′s armies, remained untouched by it. The revolution carried on today by the Czech people against their Hapsburg tyrants is supported with just as much enthusiasm by the peasant and the workingman, as by the bourgeois, although of course it is true that the nobles of Bohemia are nearly all German. And because the whole nation is united against the foreign ruler, this rebellion of 1918 will have a different outcome than the rebellion of 1618.
We give here an account of the so called “Defenestration of Prague”, the opening act of the Bohemian rebellion and of the thirty years’ war, as told by Count Lützow in his “Story of Prague”.
During the brief reign of Matthias (1611–1619) the religious troubles in Bohemia continued and reached their climax in the famous defenestration of Prague. Matthias, like his brother, was childless, and the question of the succession to the Bohemian throne was therefore urgent. The Estates met at Prague in 1617, and through the influence of the Government officials, Archduke Ferdinand of Styria was accepted as heir to the throne. Only one of the officials Count Thurn, burgrave of the Karlstyn, opposed the acceptation, and was therefore deprived of his office. The decision which assured the Bohemian crown to Ferdinand, a determined persecutor of the Protestants, necessarily hastened the progress of events. The Protestants knew that war to the knife awaited them; the only question was when hostilities should begin. The initiative finally, however, came from the Catholics. In direct violation of the agreements of 1609 the Romanist Archbishop of Prague caused the Protestant church at
