Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk

“ The biggest states have been unable to resist small but determined nations, whose spirit is expressed in the famous words of the Bohemian patriot, Dr. Rieger: "We won't give in!"
The physical, mental and moral qualities of smaller nations are just as good as those of their greater neighbours and oppressors. Are the Serbians less brave than the Austrian-Germans? the Czechs less energetic and strenuous for having conserved and strengthened their nationality against the Germans? Denmark is probably the most cultured country in Europe, Bohemia has fewer illiterates than the Austrian-Germans. ”

“ Free Poland, Bohemia, and Serbo-Croatia would be so-called buffer states, their organisation would facilitate and promote the formation of a Magyar state, of Greater Roumania, of Bulgaria, Greece and the rest of the smaller nations. If this horrible war, with its countless victims, has any meaning, it can only be found in the liberation of the small nations who are menaced by Germany's eagerness for conquest and her thirst for the dominion of Asia. ”

“ History shows that since the eighteenth century the principle of Nationality has grown stronger, and received more and more political recognition. National individualities, their language and culture have steadily gained ground all over Europe, and linguistic rights have been gradually codified. These rights have been and still are advocated by Italy, by the Austro-Hungarian and Balkan nations; they are advocated by Germany herself. How then can Germany or any other nation claim for herself this right and at the same time refuse it to others. ”

“ I am no blind follower of Rousseau or mere admirer of the primitive stages of culture, but it is a very great disability not to accept the various forms and degrees of culture as represented by the many nations and parts of nations, and not to understand that each nation must work out its culture alone and independently, and not simply take that of another nation, even if it be called a higher culture. ”

“ Bohemia is a part of Austria-Hungary, but, nevertheless, the Czecho-Slovaks are working and even fighting for and with the Allies. The peculiar passive revolution of Bohemia is now known to the whole world, though the Austro-Hungarian and German Censors for a long time succeeded in suppressing the facts and in spreading false news about the unity and loyalty of all the Austro-Hungarian nations. Europe now knows what it means when all the leading politicians and writers of Bohemia, and thousands of men and women of all classes, are imprisoned, and many even sentenced to death ”

“ Palacký, our great Bohemian historian, exhorted his nation to treble and even to increase ten-fold its labours; small nations are indeed nations of workers. In a smaller community there is a more intensive inter-communion of men, ideas and feelings; people know each other, they can more easily be united, though of course this intimacy also has its drawbacks, Dr. Fisher, the Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield University, in his essay on the value of small states, brings out the fact that democracy, the direct participation of the people in the government, can be better developed in small states. ”

“ No honest man can avoid thinking about the War; science, according to a French thinker who was the living antithesis to militarism and even to politics, has to foresee, to know beforehand, to antipate the future. The man of science does not give up his patriotism; but that patriotism cannot be blind or dumb; it must proclaim what he has found to be the truth. The highest aim of science is to understand the aims of life and to find the right means of realizing these aims. ”

“ Great Britain protecting the liberty of Belgium was led by the right feeling of justice; all nations, especially the unfree, appreciated the noble decision of the English nation; the fact that Great Britain in protecting Belgium protects herself and Asia, does not impair her merit. Justice is not only noble, it is quite sensible and useful too.
I will conclude with a confession. I prepared this lecture at the very moment when Serbia was about to be attacked by Germany and her baggage-porters, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria. ”

“ The Prussian Germans, the Turks and Austria's royal agent in Bulgaria accept the Habsburgs, because they pursue the same antiquated dynastic aims; but if Europe is to be regenerated this immoral and obsolete tradition be finally overcome. The Allies, if we may judge from their answer to President Wilson, understand this. The great question is how their aims can be realised. There is only one way: victory on the battlefield can alone secure the victory of truth and humanity. Truth and humanity in the abstract are not victorious, if men and nations do not defend and protect them. ”

“ Italy, Serbia, Roumania are fighting as part of the great alliance against the Central Powers. Can the Czechs and Slovaks, as parts of Austria-Hungary, be treated on the same terms? It is just the inclusion of this point in their political programme which proves that the Allies have grasped the European situation; that they perfectly understand the part which Pan-germanism plays in the war, and that they are aware of the significance of Austria-Hungary for Germany, and, therefore, for Bohemia and Slovakia. ”

“ If we take one of the few better ethnological maps of Europe—alas, a German one—we find sixty-two nations or nationalities. In other words, in Europe we have more than twice as many nations as states, and that means that the existing states are nationally minced, and that states must be composed of more than one nation. And that means further that there are in Europe far more dependent than independent nations; only seventeen nations are independent, or rather possess their own state organizations; but portions even of these independent nations are dependent upon other states. ”

“ True nationalism is not opposed to internationalism, but we abhor those nationalist jingoes who in the name of nationalism oppress other nations, and we reject that form of internationalism and cosmopolitanism, which in fact recognizes only one—its own nation—and oppresses the others. ”

“ The national ideals of Bohemia and her Reformation are unrealisable in Austria-Hungary, where the organisation of Brute Force secures to the minority the means of exploiting the majority. Bohemia can never accept the ideal of Prussia and Germany, which would enslave the world by military drill and Machiavellian misuse of science and culture. ”

“ But law and justice cannot be affected by material force or so-called historical necessities. Bohemia has been struggling against Austria-Hungary since 1867, and with the same right she continues her fight in this war. The Habsburgs have forfeited their rights in regard to Bohemia by their repeated and almost continuous treachery. Not the Czechs alone, but no nation can trust or accept Austro-Hungarian policy, for it is the policy of a single family, and only the advocates of mediaeval theocracy and absolutism can prefer the rights of one family to the rights of ten nations. ”

“ The conditions of political independence for smaller states are the same as for the bigger ones. Small and big states have the same natural frontiers: mountain-chains (the Pyrenees—the Bohemian mountains) , great rivers, etc. The big and almost all small states are on the sea; only Switzerland and Serbia are land-locked, but then it is just Switzerland which provides eloquent proof that a small state can flourish without a coast line. Many of the smaller nations (Czechs, Magyars, etc.) are without the sea. ”

“ How strong and how far-reaching national feeling and ideas have become in modern times, is proved by the revival of oppressed nationalities in all states. The Renaissance of the Bohemian nation is a specially striking instance, and a confirmation of the general national principle. The social unit of conscious nations, breaking the all-comprising social unit, the old state being the organ of political and military conquest. The function of the state changed, therefore, and changed in accordance with the development of culture. ”

“ The period during which the new Luxemburg dynasty linked Bohemia to the Empire and the French West coincided with a Czech literary revival which repudiated the influx of unwonted luxury and refinement, and was brought home to the masses of the nation by able preachers. The University of Prague, founded by Charles IV. in 1349, became the centre of culture for Bohemia and her neighbours. John Hus and his noble friend, Jerome of Prague, became the great torchbearers of the Reformation. Their death inflamed the whole Bohemian nation against Rome and the treacherous Emperor Sigismund. ”

“ III.
7.—Smaller and Small National States could exist very well; in fact, they do exist—out of the twenty-eight states at the very most seven can be classified as great or greater; in other words, the small states outnumber the great by three to one. On a basis of mere size then we are not surprised to hear that there is only one great state, only one great nation entitled to world-power. ”

“ The fight for Right has been waged by the Czechs ever since they settled in Central Europe. For centuries they had to hold their own against Germany, Habsburg Austria and the Magyars; and, since Dualism was established, they have had to face Austria and Hungary united with Prussia-Germany. Bohemia has not been conquered by Austria—she joined Austria and Hungary as par inter pares; she is legally just as independent a State as Hungary, and by the same right. ”

“ The German extreme nationalists have no right to condemn France and other countries in which the increase of the population is slower than in Germany. For not merely is the birth-rate falling in Germany also, but it should be remembered that the overwhelming majority of German economists accept in their theory of population the leading ideas of Malthus, and are not inclined to see in this precipitate augmentation of the population an undoubted proof of physical and moral vigour. ”

“ The great cities in big states are a remedy against indefinite expansion. I will not conceal the fact that small nations also can be decoyed by tempting imperialist ideals; notable instances are the Magyars, and perhaps the Bulgarians. The poet Kollar, the great apostle of humanity and national reciprocity, rightly observed that small nations can be very intolerant.
The German Imperialists often tell us that small nations cannot produce great men; great men require, we are told, a great environment, the communion of many and great spirits. ”

“ History shows that national states develop in Europe. And History is in favour not only of big, but also of medium-sized and small national states.
History is in favour of all individuals, of individualism in general; nations are natural organisations of homogeneous individuals, and states being more artificial organisations, are more and more adapted to the nations. So general is this tendency that the numerical strength of the nations does not play a decisive part. ”

“ The East of Europe offers quite a different spectacle. There we have one great nation—in fact the largest nation in Europe, the rest are all smaller and small nations, some few possessing independent states of their own. But in Eastern Europe—and this applies especially to Russia—we have a very great variety of national and racial fragments. ”

“ It is a matter of course that there are different degrees and forms of independence. Sovereignty is relative, for the economic and cultural interdependency of all nations is growing. Even the greatest states are dependent on other states; the Triple Alliance and Triple Entente are the very proof of it. Europe is getting more and more federalised and organized. And it is in this given situation and development that the small nations reclaim the right of being peaceably inserted in the growing organisation of Europe. ”

“ Let the smaller nations be free, do not interfere, leave them alone, and these drawbacks will soon disappear.
But small nations have also some advantages over greater nations; both drawbacks and advantages are relative.
A smaller nation develops a certain many-sidedness; every individual force and talent is valued and used, labour and effort and indeed the whole working system are intensified. It is a well known fact that the lands of small farmers produce relatively much more than do large estates. The whole nation is, so to speak, well-kneaded. ”

“ Bohemia, as a Slav country, has a peculiar geographical and ethnographical position in the midst of Europe. Lying farther west than the rest of the Slavs, it forms a barrier against Germany and a wedge between German lands. Since the seventh century the Bohemian nation has been able to resist Germany’s push towards the east and south ”

“ And Europe, I hope, also realizes the awful moral situation of a nation which wholly sympathizes with the Allies, but whose sons, by the mere mechanical organization of militarism, are forced to fight against those whom they consider as Allies, and whom they love as brethren! ”

“ On the other hand, the small nations must not try to imitate the great; they must be satisfied to go their own way.
8.—Pleading for the independence of small nations, I am not ignorant of the sophistical objections masquerading as arguments, that the Lapps cannot form a state and the Kalmucks cannot have a university. The question is, whether nations, conscious of their nationality, and proving the possibility of political independence by their economic and cultural progress, and by their claims and efforts for liberty, can be independent. ”

“ In this zone the smaller nations are continually striving and fighting for liberty and independence. It is this zone which has confronted the statesmen of Europe with the problem of Small Nations; and it is the Allies more especially whom this war is forcing to apply themselves to its solution.
The nations of this danger-zone have been free, but deprived of their independence; some are highly cultivated and their extent is considerable, they are the greatest among the small nations. ”