THE CZECHS AND AUSTRIA
Ukrainian deputies of the Austrian Parliament to demand that elected representatives of the various nationalities of the Monarchy should attend Count Czernin in a consultative capacity during the peace negotiations. This demand was, of course, refused by the Austrian premier, on the plausible ground that such a course would run counter “to the spirit of the constitution in all constitutional states.” But the Slav deputies were strong enough to secure urgency for a discussion of the whole question; and the uncompromising spirit in which they have been met by the authorities only serves to strengthen the general discontent at a system which renders whole nations and their spokesmen powerless to control the most vital questions of policy upon which their very existence depends. The conflict between the German and Slav points of view in Austria has never been more acute, and the Czechs in particular are the subject of systematic attacks in the press and in Parliament for their whole attitude towards the war. The exploits of the Czecho-Slovak brigade under Brusilov, and, more recently, the official recognition of a Bohemian army on the Western front and the permission granted by the Consulta to raise a Czech legion among the prisoners in Italy, have made it impossible to overlook any longer the openly Austrophobe sentiments of the Czech masses. A whole series of interpellations in the Reichsrat—one signed by 90 German deputies and forming quite a bulky volume—deals with the “treasonable” practices of the Czechs, their propaganda in Russia, America and Western Europe, the wholesale surrenders of their troops and their repeated refusal to fight against the Entente, the passive resistance of the home population and its indifference to Austrian war-loans and “patriotic” appeals. Nothing, however, has availed to intimidate the Czechs, in whose eyes the virtue of patriotism and the crime of treason alike have no meaning save in respect to Bohemia, not Austria. The Slovene leader, Dr. Korošec, was speaking no less for the Czechs than for the Southern Slavs when he declared that “if our demand constitutes the crime of treason, there will never be enough scaffolds to hang all the criminals.”
Perhaps the most remarkable feature in Austrian politics during the past six months has been the way in which the consolidation of the Czech parties has kept pace with the disintegration of the German parties. While the German
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