Police Rule in Bohemia.[1]
In his speech to the Senate President Wilson said: “No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the principle that Governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed. . . . No nation should seek to extend its polity over any other nation or people, but every people should be left free to determine its own policy, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful.”
The realization of these admirable sentiments presents infinite problems in various section of Europe, but nowhere, perhaps, more than in Austria-Hungary. In his heterogeneous collection of peoples, the old Emperor had to make a choice between two courses in order to hold his thirteen distinct races together in one Empire. He could have tried to make them politically contented through freedom to manage their own affairs while owing allegiance to the Empire as a whole, or he could suppress the individual people to such an extent that he would have unity by force.
He chose the second course. With the Germans dominant in Austria and the Magyars in Hungary, other nations have been scientifically subjugated. As in the case of the procedure of "Preventive Arrest" in Germany, the authorities seek to work smoothly and silently, with the result that only an occasional echo reaches the outside world.
The description of the relations of the various peoples and the “Unity-Machine” employed would fill a large book. Control of public opinion has been the first action of the rulers of the Dual Monarchy. In peace time, not only were the suppressed nations, such as the Czechs, Slovaks, Rumanians, Ruthenians, Poles, Slovenes, Italians, but all the citizens of Austria-Hungary, denied the right of free speech and freedom of the Press. Some of the regulations by which the Government held absolute sway over its subjects are:
(1) No newspaper or other printing business could be established until a heavy deposit was made with the police for the payment of fines, such fines to be arbitrarily imposed by the police—in whom is vested extraordinary power—when anything political was written which did not please them. They are difficult to please, I may add.
(2) A complete copy of each edition must be sent to the police before it was put on sale. “Good” editors whose inspiration was of a nature to enable them to interpret the wishes of the Government, sometimes received a dispensation from this formality.
(3) No club might hold a private meeting. A representative of the police must be present. This rule was often extended even to friendly gatherings in private homes in such places as Bohemia.
(4) No political meeting might be held without a permit, and a representative of the police must be present. Often he sat on the platform. It is amusing for the visitor from a free country to attend a political meeting where the chairman, speaker and policeman file up on the stage to occupy the three chairs reserved for them. The policeman may be heard by those in the front rows continually cautioning the speaker. If he thinks the speaker is talking too freely he either intervenes through the chairman and asks him to be moderate or dismisses the meeting.
These regulations, I again remind the reader, were in force in peace time. It is easy to see how an extension of them effectually checks attempts of the Czechs (Bohemians) and other peoples to legislate themselves into a little freedom.
When I came to England early in the war from Austria-Hungary and Germany I heard many expressions of hope that the discontented races in the Empire of Francis Joseph would rebel, and later expressions of surprise that they did not. Englishmen held the opinion that such races would be decidedly averse from fighting for the Hapsburgs. The opinion was correct, and nobody knew this better than the Hapsburgs themselves.
Like the German Government in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, the Austrian Government has endeavored to mislead public
- ↑ Reprinted from Mr. Curtin’s book “The Land of Deepening Shadow”, by permission of Geo. H. Doran Co.
