THE CZECHS AND AUSTRIA
of the German people, to dissolve the existing State and to secure the full independence and sovereignty of the Sudetian lands,[1] whether in Austria or not. Thus the Resolution takes stock of eventualities which have nothing in common with the Austrian idea. Thus it clearly enters upon an extremely dangerous sphere and is to be interpreted in a sense positively hostile to the State, such as must be rejected with indignation by every Austrian and resisted by every Austrian Government with all the means at its disposal.”
After announcing that he was speaking with the express authorisation of the Crown, he concluded, amid prolonged interruption, with the assumption “that the noble and healthy kernel of the nation has not been infected by the poisonous seeds of a suicidal policy which ignores the clear course of historical development.” Such tendencies he affected to regard as “a mere aberration, only explicable as a kind of war-psychosis,” and as bound to yield to “a confession of faith which, however national, will still be Austrian.”
Simultaneously with this uncompromising official pronouncement, the German parties of Bohemia issued a declaration denouncing the Czech national programme and demanding the erection of “Deutsch-Böhmen” into an autonomous Austrian province with its own Diet, and with German as the exclusive language of schools and administration. It is obvious that in the event of the Czechs attaining their dream of a restored Bohemian Kingdom, the German minority would be fully entitled to such an autonomy. But the manifesto ends with an ominous phrase which reveals the mind of its framers. “A state in whose preservation we are to collaborate must offer guarantees for the national existence and freedom of the German people.” In the words of an acute German observer, “The burning question is, under what conditions Austria is still in any way possible as a state.” Is the moment at hand when the Germans of Austria, realising that they can never again hope to assume the offensive against the Slavs, will prefer to abandon the rôle as outpost of Germany which Bismarck assigned to them, and to merge their identity in that of their kinsmen of the Empire? In any case it is abundantly clear that the Germans of Austria, on the day when their political hegemony over the other races can no longer be maintained, lose all real
- ↑ i.e., Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia.
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