THE FALL OF THE LIRA
the crisis in freights. It contributes to limit severely unnecessary emigration of national wealth; and presently it may help in ascertaining the amount of wealth which has already left the country, thanks to the transient and fictitious factor of exchange, and, eventually, in agreement with the Allies and on the most favourable conditions possible, in recovering a large measure of that wealth.
The Czechs and Austria
The principle of self-determination-which is simply the old Mazzinian doctrine of last century revived under a new name—has figured prominently during the peace negotiations at Brest-Litovsk. But from the first it has been interpreted in two sharply divergent senses. While the Russians are ready to apply it to every national unit in Europe, irrespective of the artificial political frontiers of the old régime, the Central Powers insist upon restricting its application to states, not nations, and leaving existing frontiers unimpaired. Austria-Hungary in particular has the most obvious reasons for adopting such tactics, since self-determination, if applied within the Habsburg dominions, would automatically put an end to the present Dual System-resting, as it does, upon the enforced hegemony of two nations over six others. The official representatives of Vienna and Budapest, being invariably and exclusively drawn from the two ruling nations, are hardly likely to submit to a change which would undermine their own position. Their point of view is briefly summed up in the phrase which they incorporated in the Speech from the Throne last December—“We want to remain masters in our own house.”
This phrase is, in itself, a proof that the household is not composed on a basis of equality, that among its members are servants as well as masters. The subject-races have voiced in recent years with ever-growing emphasis their dissatisfaction with the place which they occupy in the domestic economy of the Monarchy: and since the Russian Revolution they have openly claimed the same right of self-determination for themselves as was so freely conceded by the new régime in Petrograd to the non-Russian races of Russia. It was this claim which led the Czech, Southern Slav and
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