Declaration of Bohemian Independence.
We place ourselves before the political public at a moment when the retreat of the victorious Russian army is being used by opponents politically against Russia and her Allies. We take the side of the fighting Slav nations and their Allies, without regard to victory or defeat, because right is on their side. The problem which side is right in this fatal war is a question of principle and of political morals, a question which at present no honest and sincere statesman, no conscientious and thinking nation can evade. Yet we are prompted to come forward by warm feelings of Slav union. We wish to express hearty sympathy to our Serbian and Russian brothers and to brother Poles, who are so cruelly afflicted by this war. We believe in the final victory of Slavs and their Allies. We are convinced that this victory will be for the benefit of all Europe and all humanity. This victory will not be checked by anti-Slav treachery of the Bulgarian king and his government.
We shall not discuss the whole situation, created by the war. We shall only explain briefly the position of the Bohemian people, the Czechs, as they call themselves.
The Bohemian nation having by its free choice called to the throne a king of the Hapsburg family, entered into a union with Hungary and German Austria; but the dynasty through gradual centralization and germanization aimed at the construction of a single state with arbitrary government, thus violating its agreement to maintain the internal and external independence of the Bohemian state. The Bohemian people exhausted by the European arid Hapsburg counter-reformation were for a long time unable to withstand the oppression, until the great revival came at the end of the eighteenth century, culminating in the revolution of 1848. The revolution was suppressed, rights conceded to the people of Austria, and principally to the Bohemians, were taken back and absolutism reigned once more, until the disastrous war of 1859 compelled the granting of an imperfect constitutional regime. Magyars obtained from Vienna what they demanded, but all that the Bohemians got were solemn promises, never fulfilled. The Bohemian people, through their representatives, preserved for a long time the attitude of passive opposition, later entered the new parliament, but both in the central parliament and in the diets, demanded their historical rights and a reconstitution of the monarchy on a federalists basis as against the German-Magyar dualism. All attempts to reach an agreement with the empire were frustrated by the rapacity and intolerance of Germans and Magyars.
The present war has intensified the antagonism between the people of Bohemia and the Austro-Hungarian empire. War was declared without the approval of the parliament; every other country participating in the war, has laid the momentous decision before the representatives of the nation, but Vienna government was afraid to listen to the voice of the Austrian peoples, because the majority would have been against the war. The Bohemian representatives would have protested most vigorously; therefore the government did not consult a single Bohemian deputy or leader before taking the momentous step.
The recent history of the Bohemian People shows plainly the great stress, laid by the Bohemians upon the Slav idea. And so in this war, which found the Czechs totally unprepared, just as it did every other peace loving nation, from the very beginning in spite of the incredible terrorism with which every manifestation of the real sentiments of the people was suppressed, sympathy for Russians, Serbians and their Allies was universal. Declarations in favor of Austria were engineered and extorted by the government. Today Bohemian leaders are in jail; an imbecile government enforces obedience by hangings, and Bohemian regiments are decimated, because they spontaneously acted in accordance with the unanimous sentiment of the Bohemian people. The rights of the Bohemian language are ruthlessly violated and curtailed, as the war is going on. Military power overrides all laws and treats the Bohemian lands, and all non-German and non-Magyar districts, as conquered provinces. Bohemian publications are confiscated and suppressed for expressing their opinion, whereas our national enemies are allowed to inveigh against the Bohemian people, and Vienna and Budapest encourage pan-Germanic excesses in
Published originally in November, 1915, and reprinted because of its present-day significance.
