no less than its economic interests, told in favour of our historic right; and, at the Peace Conference, these considerations prevailed.
Soberly judged, it is to the interest of our Germans themselves that there should be more rather than fewer of them among us. Were we to cede one and a half or even two millions of them to Germany, the remaining million would have far greater reason to fear Czechization than the three millions fear it now. And, if we consider the position between us and our Germans as it was under Austria and as the pan-Germans would like to have it to-day, the question arises whether it is fairer that a fragment of the German people should remain in a non-German State or that the whole Czechoslovak people should live in a German State.
The authority of President Wilson and the principle of self-determination have been invoked by our own Germans as well as by those of Austria. True, “self-determination was not recognized in Germany, nor did Austrian Germans like Dr. Lammasch, Dr. Redlich, and others admit it, not to mention Czernin and other Austro-Hungarian Ministers. Before the war our people, too, proclaimed it; but, in point of fact, it has never been clearly defined. Does it apply only to a whole people or is it valid also for sections of a people? A minority, even a big minority, is not a nation. Nor does “self-determination” carry with it an unconditional right to political independence. Our Germans may “determine” to remain with us, as the Swiss Germans have “determined” to stay outside Germany. Individual rights are not the sole governing factors in the question whether a whole, or parts of a whole, shall be independent; the rights of others enter into it, economic rights no less than the claims of race and tongue; and in our case, Czech rights as well as German, and considerations of reciprocal advantage, especially in the economic sphere.
Hence it was urged at the Peace Conference that to exclude the German minority from Bohemia would damage the Czech majority a decision the more warranted because the German people in general derives great political benefit, greater than it would if it were wholly united, from the circumstance that a notable part of it lives outside Germany proper, forming an independent State in Austria, holding a preponderant position in Switzerland, and possessing minorities in Czechoslovakia and elsewhere. Even since the war a number of German political men and historians have, indeed, proved that, from the standpoint of culture, the German people gains by its membership of
