None of these manifestos and proclamations availed to modify the opinion of official Russia that I had formed by study and observation; moreover, very little was said of the Slavonic peoples in the speeches made by members of the Russian Duma. The Polish representative, indeed, mentioned them so as to avoid naming the Russians; and Milyukoff, the Cadet leader, spoke of the fight against German mastery over Europe and the Slavs. Nevertheless, the Tsar’s bearing towards the Czechs in Russia encouraged our people, who knew nothing of details and were not in a position to form a critical estimate of the Russian or of the European situation. They were unhesitatingly Russophil, awaiting redemption from mighty Russia and persuading themselves that there was no need for active opposition-a state of mind fostered by Austrian political pressure and by the weariness of futile beating against Viennese prison bars.
How vague the Russian press, for its part, was in regard to Slavonic matters, may be judged from an article in the “Russkoye Slovo” which the “Čechoslovan” (a Czech journal published at Kieff) reproduced on September 20, 1914. Commenting upon the manifesto of the Grand Duke Nicholas to the Austro-Hungarian peoples, the “Russkoye Slovo” wrote:—
The great hour strikes. The varied races of Austria-Hungary are called to new life. Bosnia, Herzegovina, Dalmatia and Croatia will unite with Serbia; Transylvania and Southern Bukovina with Roumania; Istria and the Southern Tyrol with Italy. More complicated is the question as to the fate of the Czechs, Slovenes, Magyars and Austrian Germans. Against a German Austria, within ethnographical limits, nothing can be said, but it is inadmissible that German districts should be added to Germany, who would thus come out of the war stronger than ever. Germany must be separated from the Near East by an independent Austria. On the way to the creation of an independent Czech State arises the question of Czech access to the sea, a question not to be solved within the ethnographical or the historical boundaries of the Czech people. Hungary will be given independence, the fatal blunder of 1849 being thus made good, though the Hungarians must be confined to Magyar territory.
I need not dwell upon the uncertainty and haziness of this article, especially as regards our people-to say nothing of an Austria which was to separate Germany from the “Near East”! A little study of the map will show how foggy were its notions about Poland, Bohemia and the Slovenes; indeed, its only definite features were those relating to Serbia and Roumania.
While I was assuredly right in looking upon Russia with a
