Lewis Bernstein Namier

“ All over the world the Czechs have, by all means at their disposal, fought and counteracted the plots and rancours of their Magyar and German enemies. If at the end of this war the Czecho-Slovak nation attains its liberty and an open road to a new greatness and glory, no one will be able to say that this comes to them as a gift and that they had not done enough to deserve it. They are working and fighting in the best spirit of a modern democracy, without narrow calculation of sacrifice and immediate reward. ”

“ When once a free Bohemian land emerges in the heart of Central Europe we shall know that the flood of German-Magyar aggression is receding, never to rise again. For the Powers which establish Bohemian independence will by that very act be united in the future against a possible recrudescence of German Imperialism. There is not a single State the Allies whose interests clash with those among of the Czech nation. To all of them the freedom of Bohemia will be a safeguard against a new German advance and a barometer of German pressure. ”

“ Now Austria has become worse than a jail to the Czechs, worse even than a slave-driver. It has driven them not into slavery, but into fratricide. When Czech regiments were first marched against Russia and Serbia, all past bonds between Austria and the Czech nation were broken for ever. There are words on which one does not go back, and there are facts which can never be undone. Not even centuries can erase the memories of the war into which the Czecho-Slovaks have been driven, contrary to their will, under the command of their bitterest enemies—the Germans and the Magyars. ”

“ And the eminent Czech statesman who now leads the Czecho-Slovak movement for independence, Professor Masaryk, is himself by birth a Slovak.
In certain ways the Czech nation, as we may call them for short, is unique among the Slavs. It is the only Slav nation that has survived in the very heart of Central Europe, and this is the very reason why it has become the special mark of German hatred and why the Germans have singled it out for the most relentless and untiring attacks. In the early Middle Ages the whole of what we might call the European Middle East was inhabited by Slavs. ”

“ Unaided, entirely by its own strength, the Czech nation has survived the trials of centuries; and yet by the logic of history the common war-aim of all those who fight on the side of the Entente is now closely bound up with the cause of this most isolated of nations. The international position of Bohemia after the war will be the truest test of victory.
The war broke out over an attempt on the part of the Central States to lay down the law to Europe on a question in which the interests of other nations were known to be involved. ”

“ If attachment to Austria is the dominant feeling among the Czechs, why were not those whom the Czech nation had chosen for its spokesmen allowed to voice its feelings? Of all the belligerent countries Austria is the only one which has failed to convoke its Parliament, and it was repeatedly admitted that the reason why it was not possible to convoke Parliament was the fear lest the Czechs should speak out. Their true feelings were only too well known to the Austrian Government; one after another the Czech leaders were sent to prison or driven into exile. ”

“ Arising firm and clear over the storm of battle, the watchword “Mittel-Europa,” which expresses the vision of ages and continents, has transmuted blustering passion into the fixed consciousness of an inexorable issue. ”

“ This must be said about the Czechs, that they take always and everywhere the widest view of the interests of the Entente, and, living in the very centre of “Mittel-Europa,” in the very depths of the German-Magyar jail, they do not mind on which front they fight and in conjunction with which Power. They know that the battle-front is one and that victory and defeat will be common to all. Nor does any other nation bear a more signal testimony to the belief in the power and final victory of the Entente. ”

“ A nation, which towards the end of the eighteenth century had been practically extinct, became a power by the middle of the nineteenth century. With the stubbornness of peasants and the zeal of pioneers the apostles of the Czech nationality worked for the uplifting of their people. The fruit of their labours was a renaissance almost without parallel in the history of the world. Beginning with the midddle of the nineteenth century, they have held, as to wealth and education, the first place among the nationalities of Austria-Hungary. ”

“ But James I., with an insular aloofness, a pharisaic honesty and a political blindness not yet altogether extinct in these islands, was busy studying the constitution of Bohemia, and the rights and wrongs of the case, whilst the rebels were succumbing in the desperate, unequal battle on the White Mountain. Never has so great a disaster befallen any other civilised nation. ”

“ Never again in history are the Czechs to find themselves in the position of mute victims driven into a death dishonourable for men, into a death of slaves fighting for the maintenance of slavery. The Hapsburgs have crossed the Rubicon on their way to Berlin; there can be no comity in the future between the Czechs and the Hapsburgs. ”

“ As for the races of the unredeemed lands, their very existence is imperilled by the basic requirements of Central European Union; not even the very modest measure of national self-government, such as was allowed to them in Austria before the war, will be tolerated anywhere in “Mittel-Europa,” once they have been an issue in an armed conflict. ”

“ Why, the idea of that happy new Austria had been for generations the dream of the Czech leaders. Palacky proclaimed it in 1848. Dr. Kramarzh, now a martyr for the Czech cause, was still upholding it half a century later. The Czech nation, which was every day gaining in strength and importance, did not aim at the breaking up of the Hapsburg Monarchy. If ever a nation has given a fair chance to a Government, the Czechs have given it to the Government of Vienna. ”

“ These words, spoken by the martyr on his trial, have remained the programme of the Czecho-Slovak nation.
In their peculiar position they, an isolated Slav body in the midst of their bitter enemies, came to recognise earlier than any other European nation some of the deepest truths of liberty. “L’homme est un apprenti, la douleur est son maître, et nul ne se connaît tant qu’il n’a pas souffert,” says Alfred de Musset. But then “who increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” The Czechs became the forerunners of Europe and suffered the usual fate of the forerunner. ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1960, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 63 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works. ”

“ The vision of a great empire in Central Africa has faded into the background, except in the minds of a small minority, and allusions to the lost colonies are rare and perfunctory. As regards Russian Poland, most Germans would probably be prepared to accept any solution which would leave and guarantee to Prussia the possession of her present Polish provinces. ”

“ Why should they fight their best friends, the Prussians, the supporters of government based on violence? In 1879 the Dual System of German-Magyar rule over all the other races of the Monarchy (except the Poles) found its final logical expression in an alliance between Austria-Hungary and the new German Empire. The seeds were sown of the present war. Again and again the Czechs, seeing the spectre of the approaching catastrophe, implored the Hapsburgs not to compromise the future of their Monarchy by aggressive, adventurous plots. ”

“ They know that liberty is not possible for them or cannot prove durable without the liberty of other sister nations and, foremost, of the Jugo-Slavs and Poles. But where they themselves hold the line they have decided to hold it strongly and with united forces. Everywhere in the world where the Czechs and Slovaks have created their own organisations the two groups have during this war acted together—in the United States, in South America, in Great Britain, France, and Russia, everywhere where on foreign soil they can work freely for the foundation of their future State. ”

“ How do they dare to maintain that the Czechs “do not want to be liberated”? The war is for the Hapsburg Monarchy not merely external, it is also a war on its submerged nationalities. The Czechs do not complain. War it is between them and the Germans and Magyars. ”

“ Of the Czechs who at the outbreak of the war found themselves on neutral ground or in the States of the Entente, or who were able to escape from Austria afterwards, almost every man of military age is doing his duty. There are Czechs fighting in the French army—they have specially distinguished themselves on the Somme in the Foreign Legion. There are Czechs serving in the British army—some of them have been put into the artillery, which in itself is the greatest sign of confidence that can be shown to men who nominally are “alien enemies.” ”

“ With the utmost savagery the Austrian-Germans under Hapsburg and Jesuit leadership uprooted the Czech aristocracy and landed gentry, and filled their places with foreign adventurers, who ever since have insulted the country in which they live by considering themselves its peers and owners. The Czech nation lost all its educated classes and practically ceased to exist. ”

“ They are an old nation which has engraved its history deep in the annals of Europe, and when the question is asked about them, the vision of the future can be substantiated by the facts of the past.
The first question that people ask on seeing that hyphenated name of a nation is whether they are one people or two. ”

“ Some writers on international politics, who now advise the Czechs to seek their happiness in a free and just Hapsburg monarchy, are surely indulging in the pursuit of an ideal for which the lessons of history provide no support. ”

“ The Hapsburgs, as is their habit, soon broke their faith and tried to enforce centralisation in the State and counter-reformation in religion. The Czechs rose up in revolt in 1618 and lit the fire of the Thirty Years’ War. The war which ushered in modern Europe seemed to sound the death-knell of the Czech nation, which in 1620 suffered the disastrous defeat on the White Mountain. ”

“ Kramarzh—there was a time when he was considered a likely candidate for the post of Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister—where a man of such standing is condemned to death without a single act of high treason being proved against him, the fate which awaits or befalls other people can easily be imagined. There is not a single prominent Bohemian national leader left free to speak in Austria ”

“ The growing consciousness of nationalism in religion was one of the mainsprings of the Reformation, the Reformation being among other things the protest of the European nationalities attaining full consciousness of their own individuality, against the inherited universality of Rome. ”

“ The services rendered by them, especially to Serbia during the two Austrian invasions, and to Russia during the Galician campaign of 1914 and during the summer campaign of 1916, can hardly be exaggerated. With their thorough knowledge of the Austrian army, and in view of the very high level of their education, they form everywhere a most valuable element in the intelligence service. ”