Bohemia and Alsace
In our otherwise fairly detailed report of the Polish debate of 9 November in the Austrian Parliament, we did not do full justice to one remarkable incident-for the very simple reason that it was slurred over in the German-Austrian newspapers upon which we depended for a report of the speeches.
Mr. Stanek, the president of the Czech Parliamentary Club, in the course of his speech recited, amid the approval of his colleagues, the text of the protest drawn up by the Czech deputies in the Diet of Bohemia in 1870 against Germany’s intention of annexing Alsace-Lorraine. The essential passage runs as follows: “The Czech nation cannot but express its most ardent sympathy to that noble and glorious France who to-day is defending her independence and the national soil, who has deserved so well of civilisation and to whom we owe the greatest progress realised in the principles of humanity and liberty. The Czech nation is convinced that such a humiliation as the snatching of a fragment of its territory from an illustrious and heroic nation, full of just national pride, would be an inexhaustible source of new wars, and consequently of new injuries to humanity and civilisation. The Czech people is a small people, but its soul and its silence are not small. It would blush to suggest by its silence that it approves of injustice, or dares not protest against it. It is in this spirit that the Czech nation throws itself into action, ready for all the sacrifices which its conscience may dictate. Even if its appeal should prove useless, it would at least have the satisfaction of having done its duty at a critical moment, by bearing witness to truth, right, and the cause of the liberty of peoples.”
That the accredited representative of the Czech nation should have compelled the German deputies of the Reichsrat to listen to this praise of France at the very moment when French troops were about to range themselves against Austria on the Piave, is an act upon which all comment of ours would be superfluous.
This work was published in 1917 and is anonymous or pseudonymous due to unknown authorship. It is in the public domain in the United States as well as countries and areas where the copyright terms of anonymous or pseudonymous works are 106 years or less since publication.
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