The Pan-Slavonic idea will not work in Europe because the Slavs are beginning to prefer democracy to Pan-Slavism. The Russians have already painfully realised that truth in the Balkans, where the young Slav peoples have preferred to establish their little states on a democratic basis rather than to coalesce with Russia. That democracy is rapidly laying its axe against Slavonic unity can be judged from the case of Austria. Austrian democracy is actually striving, with some prospect of success, to reconcile the Slavonic with the Teutonic and the Magyar races, and thus to foster peace and harmony among these intense antagonisms.
In Austria, democracy works also to amalgamate the Slavs into one people, but not on Pan-Slavonic lines. The recent policy of the Emperor, in urging his peoples to adopt universal suffrage, had no other object than to cure racial hatred by democracy. Thus Austria, by means of democracy, bids fair to refute the sarcasm of Gortchakoff that she is not a nation, or even a State, but only a government. For her, the question of the unity of her southern Slavs with each other, and of their consolidation in the Dual Monarchy, is a main question, and a main hope for to-morrow.
In a word, European democracy, so far from fomenting Pan-Slavism, on the one hand, gathers the Slavs into separate nations; and, on the other, attempts to harmonise their intestine quarrels, and even to reconcile them with their Teutonic fellowcitizens under the Hapsburg ægis.
