Germanism, defending it against the Germanism of Germany and particularly against Prussianism. The independent existence of Austria for a thousand years argues in favour of her maintaining it under the new conditions. Hence, in regard to Austria, a Republican Austria especially, our policy can and should be entirely friendly. In other words, we ought seriously to ponder the Austrian “Idea,” even in the new situation, and to develop Palacký’s conception. In any case the evolution of the new Austria demands alertness and political maturity on our part.
In the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy we lived alongside of Poles, Little Russians or Ruthenes, Roumanes and Magyars. With the Poles, Little Russians and Roumanes our relations were, even then, friendly in politics and in culture; and in Hungary, the Roumanes and the Slovaks went hand in hand. Now all of them, including the Magyars, are our neighbours and it is natural that we should wish to stand on a neighbourly footing with them. Not only do the union of Sub-Carpathian Russia (the former Hungarian Ruthenia) with us, and the Little Russian minority in Slovakia, give us a particular interest in the Little Russians, but Poland, Roumania and Hungary are quite especially important because they border on Germany, Russia and Austria-yet another reason for a policy of friendship.
Germany and Czechoslovakia.
Palacký and other of our leading political men descried the chief obstacle to our independence in our numerical weakness as compared with our German neighbours. While there are but nine or ten millions of us, there are more than 70 million Germans of whom 60 million live in Germany alone. After the Russians, the Germans are, numerically, the strongest people in Europe. They surround us on three sides. Three millions of them dwell in our own State and a goodly number in other States. Treitschke thought it the mission of the Germans to colonize the East. Indeed, in olden times, their tendency was towards the East and South-East; and as it is not to be expected that a dictated peace will destroy a tradition and alter tactics that are centuries old, we have constantly to reckon with German pressure. Our historians, including Palacký himself, claim that the main feature of our history has been “a constant contact and struggle of Slavdom with Romanism and Germanism” and “an overcoming and assimilation of alien elements.” Should the Magyars remain pro-
