The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 1/Permanent Peace and Austria-Hungary

by Charles Pergler

The Bohemian Review OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE BOHEMIAN (CZECH) NATIONAL ALLIANCE OF AMERICA
Jaroslav F. Smetanka, Editor, 2324 South Central Park Avenue, Chicago. Published by the Bohemian Review Co., 2627 S. Ridgeway Ave., Chicago, Ill.
Vol. I, No. 9.	OCTOBER 1917	10 cents a Copy $1.00 per Year

 

Permanent Peace and Austria-Hungary.

(From an address delivered by Charles Pergler on September 6th at the Minneapolis Conference on Labor and Democracy).

 

Austria-Hungary is organized violence. There is no common bond between the various elements forming this empire except the person of the sovereign and the bureaucracy, and in modern times this is not sufficient to justify the existence of any state. Indeed, the Austrian problem is the crucial problem of the war, and without its solution the war will have been fought in vain. The fact that it has becomes somewhat obscured, that the world, in its abhorrence of Prussian militarism, is forgetting that older than the despotism of the Hohenzollerns is the autocracy of the Hapsburgs, does not do away with the correctness of this contention. It calls simply for more stress upon the Austrian phase of the various questions fronting the world. It would be height of inconsistency to smash Hohenzollern rule and to permit the even worse Hapsburg government to continue.

“Until Germany is made either powerless or free, I do not think the peace of Europe can be secured,” declared recently Lord Balfour. Until Austria is dismembered, until the Hapsburgs are sent to oblivion, just so long the peace of the world is not secure.

Before the Hohenzollerns came to real power, the Hapsburgs had been engaged in their trade of murder and robbery for centuries. Their attempted Germanization of Bohemia in the seventeenth century and suppression of the last semblance of freedom of thought in Central Europe at the same time, prepared the ground for the modern German schemes of Middle Europe and world dominion.

The Hapsburgs not only permitted, but actually encouraged a division of the Austro-Hungarian empire into two parts, in one of which the non-German nationalities were turned over to the untender mercies of the German minority, while in the other, the Magyars reigned supreme, Magyarizing the Slavs and Roumanians, and endeavoring to make veritable slaves and helots of them. It is a partnership in crime on a tremendous scale. This partnership in crime will not be voluntarily dissolved, for Germans and Magyars will never surrender the position of privileged and ruling nations in Austria-Hungary. Even if they should give way partially and concede a measure of autonomy to the non-German and non Magyar nationalities, this would be merely temporary. As soon as the Allied armies disband, what is there to prevent the Germans and Magyars in resuming their old methods with the support of Berlin? If there is to be permanent peace, the Hapsburgs must go, and Austria must vanish from the roll of existing states.

In some ways, the Hapsburg dynasty is much more conservative than the House of Hohenzollern. The latter at least endeavored to aid the economic and social development of the German nation by means of social amelioration and economic improvement. But the Hapsburg policy was ever dictated by empty dynastic ambitions, resulting in all sorts of intrigues with the military and court camarilla, this in turn again resulting in the disruption of the economic life of the monarchy and impoverishment of the various Austrian nationalities.

If the Hohenzollerns are uncompromisingly opposed to modern democratic ideas, it cannot be maintained directly or indirectly that the Hapsburgs even remotely favor anything savoring of democracy.

The Hapsburgs are adepts in juggling with constitutions and in making promises, but they are still more expert in violating their pledges and oaths. The short-lived relatively democratic constitution of 1848 was followed in Austria by a decade of the most cruel reaction. The milder regime of the latter fifties of the nineteenth century was followed by ruthless oppression in the sixties and by systematic attempts at Germanization and Magyarization of the non-German and non-Magyar nationalities of Austria-Hungary.

During the present war Austria always promised reform whenever things looked bad on the battlefield, but as soon as they changed and assumed a somewhat more encouraging aspect, she returned to her felonious ways and methods. Only last month we had an example of this. When, in the early summer, the Russian army resumed its offensive and gained its notable victories in Galicia, there were promises of internal reform and of justice and fairness to the various component nationalities. But later there came the Russian rout. Russian troops refused to fight, and the Austrian chameleon assumed a new color. A dispatch from Copenhagen, dated August 9th told us that the Teuton victories in Galicia and Bukovina have thrown a veil over the promised new order in Austria; that the powers that be find the question of reform far less urgent owing to the improved military situation. In other words, the criminal promises to mend his ways when the policeman is in sight, but as soon as the policeman disappears around the corner, the felon again commences his career of murder and robbery.

The Austrian problem is strikingly akin to that of Turkey. In fact, the fate of these two purely military and autocratic empires is closely intertwined. With the fall of the Turks, Austria falls also. Austria lost her ruling idea and is unable to find a positive mission, so Austria falls from step to step, just as Turkey did. The Austro-Spanish empire was dissolved. Austria lost the greater part of Silesia, and was driven by Prussia to abandon Germany; in 1848, saved by autocratic Russia, she lost in 1859 the Italian provinces; in 1866 she was again beaten by Prussia. Since then she exists only as the vassal and tool of Berlin being divided into Austria and Hungary; it is to Berlin that both the Germans and Magyars owe their dominating position in Austria.

The other nations, especially the Czechoslovaks, are in permanent opposition against the two prussifield vassals, the Germans and the Magyars. Austria was unable to unite all her nations in a strong federation and to pursue her own aim; to work for the legitimate development of her various component nationalities. Germany—and that was Bismarck’s plan with Austria—uses the alleged Great Power for her own ends.

If humanity is to have faith in the protestations of the Allies, including the United States, that they are struggling for freedom of small nations and the removal of the Prussian menace, the Allies must adhere to their original program of the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary. It is an utter absurdity to speak of democratizing Germany without realizing at the same time that democracy cannot be achieved without liberating the suppressed nationalities of Austria-Hungary. This is all the more evident when we realize that the German nation so far shows very little desire to be liberated, but that in Austria-Hungary, with the exception of the German and Magyar minorities, everybody else asks not only for democracy, but believes that democracy cannot be achieved without the destruction of the bankrupt, germanized and magyarized empire.

It is for this reason that I refuse to believe that the president’s reference in his note to the Pope, that dismemberment of Empire cannot furnish a proper basis for a peace of any kind, relates to Austria-Hungary. This cannot be. It would be an absolute denial of the principles of democracy and popular rule Woodrow Wilson has so frequently enunciated. It would mean not only that the Czechoslovaks must remain under alien domination, but that the Roumanians of Transylvania and Bukovina must continue to suffer under the unspeakable cruelties of the Magyar regime; that Poland cannot become united; that the Italians of Trentino cannot be joined to their brethren of Italy; that the question of Alsace and Lorraine must remain unsolved. Furthermore, such construction would make the reply to the Pope self-contradictory and inconsistent, for in another part thereof the President maintains that the American people “believe that peace should rest upon the rights of peoples, not the rights of governments—the rights of peoples, great or small, weak or powerful—their equal right to freedom and security and self-government, and to participation upon fair terms in the economic opportunities of the world, the German people, of

CASTLE KONOPISTE, FAVORITE RESIDENCE OF LATE ARCHDUKE FRANCIS FERDINAND.

CASTLE KONOPIŠTĚ, FAVORITE RESIDENCE OF LATE ARCHDUKE FRANCIS FERDINAND.

course, included, if they will accept equality and not seek domination.” What the President unquestionably wanted to do was to assure the German people that their national state would be left intact; that there would be no attempt to disrupt Germany as a national state. Austria is not a national state; it is not a nation even in the political sense of the term; it has become a wholly artificial entity, without a solid foundation in the facts of international life. Nor could the President intend to guarantee to Germany the booty gained in previous wars, such as Alsace-Lorraine and Posen.

But in any event the signing of a peace protocol does not necessarily mean peace in the real sense of the term. A state of war may exist without an actual clash of arms, and without bloodshed. Austria-Hungary has been the scene of what in its effects was real warfare ever since the rise of the spirit of nationality. Because of this warfare, parliamentary life in Austria was impossible and the state brought to impotence and the very verge of bankruptcy. Indeed, this warfare without bloodshed led to the present bloody struggle; was one of its proximate causes. Therefore if there is to be really permanent peace, this bloodless warfare must be stopped, and it can only be stopped by complying with the demands of the Roumanians, Italians, Czechoslovaks and Jugoslavs, all of whom are anti-Austrian. Only a minority of Austrian peoples, the Germans and Magyars, care for the preservation of Austria, and even then only if they can maintain their hegemony.

Speaking for the Czechoslovaks,—I hope this will not be considered presumptuous—they will never again voluntarily submit to Austrian sovereignty and Hapsburg rule. The Czechoslovak people demand complete and absolute independence and will not cease their warfare upon the House of Hapsburg and Austria until their ideal, absolute independence, is realized. This is the position of the whole nation, as is best evidenced by recent declarations in the Austrian Parliament, by a recent manifesto of Czech authors and artists, and by repeated declarations of Czech workingmen. Permanent peace is possible only when nations are satisfied in their legitimate desires.