right of nations to self-determination. It is of course possible that Galicia will be granted this larger share of self-government. But if Count Clam imagines that we would ever sit in a parliament in which Polish deputies would not participate in their full number, he is greatly mistaken. We will not submit to force. Should the Poles attain independence—and we hope from the bottom of our hearts that they will—and we should be left here at the mercy of greater numbers, it would be the end of this Reichsrat.
“We demanded in our formal reservation that when new political forms are created, regard should be had to the closely related Slovak branch of our nation, living across the boundaries of our historical fatherland. We have done that upon the supposition that here also the final word lies with the free and untrammelled decision of three million of Slovaks and not with our own ardent desires and interests.
“We should be faithless to the moral foundation of our program, if we thought of its realization upon any other basis than the complete, unambiguous, and secured guarantees that full racial freedom and autonomy of Germans in our country shall be safe and their national honor unimpaired.
“What we ask for the Slovaks, applies to Poles, Little Russians, Roumanians, Jugoslavs and Italians. There is only one political program for them all—the free determination of these nations.”
Newspapers in this country have displayed prominently what to them must have been a startling pronouncement of a former Austrian minister, namely quotations from a speech by Karel Prášek, Czech agrarian deputy and formerly the Czech representative in the Austrian cabinet. He said, as quoted in American papers: “How can we obtain peace, if we continue to cling to Germany? The hatred of the entire world is directed not against Austria, but against Germany. Shall we continue to sacrifice our interests for German expansion? Shall we continue to support German militarism which drew us into this war? Czech deputies are still in prison for struggling for an alliance of Austria with France and Russia. Their viewpoint is at present ours. If you call them traitors, you should call us too traitors. We are all traitors.”
These were bold words to be uttered even in parliament, when that parliament is dependent on German bayonets. But lest it should be thought that Prášek cared for the interests of Austria, rather than of Bohemia, when he advocated a separation from Germany, let us quote the remainder of his speech, as given in the Echo de Paris. Speaking of the Seidler cabinet, deputy Prášek said:
“This ministry admits that it is provisional and transitory. It is in effect a pitiable makeshift, an eloquent expression of the difficulties in which the Austrian bureaucracy finds itself. But when the cabinet calls itself the national ministry, we have to declare that a majority of the people are not represented therein. The Bohemian nation takes good care not to ask for a place in the cabinet. It has definitely given up all thought of sending one or two of its deputies to play the role of fools in a German centralist ministry. The Bohemian nation is grown up and it holds together all its forces in order to conquer independence. For that task she needs every one of her children. It will support no Austrian government that will not declare for the destruction of dualism and the complete autonomy of all its oppressed nations, in Austria and Hungary alike. We shall fight to final victory to bring down a regime by which two minorities, the Germans and the Magyars, oppress all other nations. God be thanked; those two nations will not stop the progress of the world.”
A short quotation from the speech of a priest deputy may be of some interest. Father Zahradník, a Czech agrarian deputy and member of the Order of Premonstratensians, related in parliament a conversation he had with Premier Stuergh three weeks before his assassination by Dr. Adler. “I reproached him for all the evil he had done to the Czech people and to the whole monarchy. Your Excellency, I asked, do you believe in God? Do you believe in His justice? I call you before his tribunal, you and the other members of the government. God whom I serve will punish the guilty; He will defend and protect my people and will give them final victory and deliverance.”
This speech called forth applause and enthusiasm from all the Slav benches and violent protests from the ranks of the Germans.
