policy with the double object of crushing the Czechs in the North, and the Jugoslavs, and above all the Serbs, in the South.
The Germans used the unjust privileges conferred by an artificial constitution to maintain a majority in the Parliament and in the Diets; the bureaucracy and army also served their aims. The so-called Linz programme, and, still more, the motion brought forward by the Pangerman leader. Schönerer, in 1901, aimed at granting a kind of autonomy to Galicia, Bukovina and even to Dalmatia, with the object of securing to the Germans a strong and unshakable majority. Count Badeni induced the Emperor to restore to Bohemia a part of her national right, but again the Emperor gave in to German terrorism and Badeni’s decree was step by step abolished.
The Poles were partly satisfied (Galician Resolution 1868), but Vienna temporarily favoured the Ruthenes not only against Russia but also against the Poles; the Southern Slavs were utterly neglected, and though in Dalmatia the Croat language was introduced into the administration, this was done not to satisfy the Slav majority, but simply to annoy the Italian minority. Trieste was invaded by Viennese and Berlin capital—Tnieste, which not less than Prague, is coveted by the Pangermans as the starting-point for Suez and the East. The anti-Slav policy of the Magyars is too notorious to require special treatment here. King Milan’s policy is an illustration of how the Austrians are willing to extend toleration to the Balkan Slavs, when they accept thraldom.
This anti-Slav policy culminated, after the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, in unreasoning hostility to Serbia, and the present war is its logical outcome—the continuation of the policy inaugurated by the mediæval Empire.
Though essentially anti-Slav, the Pangermanism of Germany and Austria-Hungary threatens the Western nations in Africa and Asia, and has welded together Slavs. Latins, and British. In this vast struggle the place of the Czecho-Slovaks can only be on the side of the Slavs and of the Western nations; not only their geographical position, but their whole historical development and national programme forces them to join those who have proclaimed as their aim the respect for nationalities and liberation of all nations, great and small, the crushing of Prussian militarism, and con-
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