THE CZECHS AND AUSTRIA
negotiations. Not content with this, the Assembly appears to have declared that it no longer recognised the Reichsrat as the supreme political authority, but that until a general Czecho-Slovak parliament should be free to meet, only the Czech deputies as a whole were qualified to speak for the nation. The inaugural speech of Mr. Stanek protested against the very idea that “a civilised nation of ten millions, living in the heart of Europe” should be ignored at the future conference of peace, denied Count Czernin’s authority to speak in the name of the nations of Austria, denounced the sham constitutions of Austria and Hungary, and culminated in the phrase “Our Czecho-Slovak nation does not ask for anything save what every educated and civilised nation claims and defends with its blood. We ask for the union of the Czech nation with the Slovaks, in a state enjoying complete political, economic, and cultural independence, and possessing all the attributes of sovereignty. What is not a crime for others cannot be a crime for us.”
The great Austrian strike diverted attention for the moment from events in Prague, but on 22 January Dr. von Seidler, whose Cabinet has been criticised with almost equal severity for its weak attitude towards the Czechs and towards the strikers, sought to regain the favour of the German parties by a violent denunciation of the Czechs and their whole policy. The Declaration of 30 May, he argued, though objectionable from a constitutional point of view, did none the less show some regard for the interests of the Empire as a whole, and was still reconcilable with “the dynastic and patriotic fundamental ideas of an Austrian.” Hence much as he disagreed with its tendencies, he felt that there was still some common ground on which its supporters and the Government could work together.
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