Germany and Prussia, are able to invoke the authority of Bismarck, who is said once to have spent a sleepless night in trying to imagine what the course of history might have been had the Protestants won the Battle of the White Mountain. Bismarck may have wondered whether a Protestant Bohemia would have associated herself with the Protestant policy of Prussia against Austria. Austria would thus have remained an unimportant German borderland while, with the help of Bohemia, the Germans would have been masters of the Danube and the dream of Berlin–Baghdad might have been fulfilled with Czech assistance. We know how much weight Bismarck assigned to the geographical position of Bohemia in the mastery of Europe.
There is much virtue in “if”; but I have little liking for “ifs”? in history. I prefer facts. Our Reformation fortified our nationality as never before. While Catholicism pre-dominated, Germanization went on and the Hussite movement saved us from it. German historians bear witness that, among us as in Poland, the Reformation worked mightily in an anti-German sense. In our case as in others it fostered the national language and literature, because public worship and, especially, the reading of the Bible in the language of the country had far greater influence upon literature and national education than they have to-day. In endeavouring to raise the level of morality, the Reformation strengthened our national character; and victory at the White Mountain might therefore have invigorated and renewed the nation yet more, despite some initial penetration of the Germans among us during the Protestant era. Where is it written that the Evangelical Czechs would have let themselves be led tamely by Prussia, seeing that Protestant Prussia and pan-Germanism were defeated in the World War by Protestant England, Protestant America and revolutionary France? Comenius, who was the flower and fulfilment of the Bohemian Brotherhood, is, by himself alone, a proof to the contrary, as are all the writings and the activity of our exiles. The Hussites, the Brethren, and the Evangelical Czechs kept up lively intercourse with the Germans, who received them well, and also with the Dutch, the Swiss, the English and the Swedes; yet in all lands they worked for the liberation of their Fatherland. In defence of his people, Comenius carried on a true world-policy of education. And after the White Mountain the Catholic Hapsburgs catholicized us, not merely as they had done before but Germanized us by fire and sword, by confiscation and by the suppression of
