Page:The heart of Europe; an address delivered by Charles Pergler in Washington, December 11, 1916, at a conference of oppressed or dependent nationalities (IA heartofeuropeadd00pergrich).pdf/28

as to say that in any event Austria has nothing to lose, because with the growth of Slav nationalities in Austria she is doomed to destruction any way, and that in a world war she may have a chance to save herself. He says almost literally that a sudden catastrophe is preferable to terror without end. In reading and thinking of these astonishing documents, we must of course realize that when these writers and speakers deal with the question of the destruction of Austria, they fear the destruction of German privileges and German domination in Austria; for it is well known that the utmost the Slavs within Austria ever demanded were equal rights, and that the Germans were unwilling to concede this moderate demand. The Bohemian white sheet of paper had become proverbial in Austrian politics, and Bohemian leading statesmen told the Germans time and again to place on that sheet of paper all their demands as to the rights Germans should enjoy in Austria, and that Bohemians will have no objections to these, provided that the Bohemians have and enjoy the same rights in their own native land. Only the other day, in discussing the entry of Roumania into the war, the Pesti Hirlap, an influential Budapest paper, declared that Austria-Hungary must decide between Slavism and Germanism—this in an empire, the majority of which is Slav. I firmly believe that this war will end with victory for the Allies. A temporary truce, called a peace, may be patched up, but if so, we shall simply be confronted with a series of spasmodic struggles, resembling the Napoleonic wars of more than a century ago, and the ultimate outcome will be that