The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. EXIT AUSTRIA-HUNGARY.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 195, 16 August 1918, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

EXIT AUSTRIA-HUNGARY.

For the cause that lacks assistance. For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance. And the good that ice can do.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 16, 1918

During the course of a great war the natural tendency of people in general is to over-estimate the importance of military sucee__cs or failures, and largely to ignore the significance of political events, even though these may make a profound difference to the international outlook on both sides, and tbe prospects of success or failure. For these reasons we need hardly expect that public opinion will be inclined to attach due weight, nt first sight, to the announcement that the. British Government lias formally declared its recognition of the Czechoslovaks .lean allied nation, and has acknowledged tbe right of the Czechoslovak National

Council "as the present trustee of the future Czecho-Slovak Government," to exercise authority over the national armies. Yet when this remarkable statement is carefully analysed and interpreted, it appears in ik, true light as a sentence of dismemberment und destruction pronounced by Britain against the Austro-Hnngarian Empire. It moans that in t_ie eyes of the British Government and people—and. we may fairly assume, in the eyes of France and Italy and tho United States—tho Czecho-Slovaka, after the war, are to become a free, independent, and autonomous nation; in other words, that ten million- of the suhject races so long oppressed by AustroMagyar tyranny are to be liberated from age-long servitude, and are no longer to form part and parcel of that anomalous and indefensible political system imposed on the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe by the Dual Monarchy.

Before considering the ultimate consequences -which must ensue from this

momentous and decisive stop, we may refer briefly tr\ the gTcat political importanec of the Czeeho-Slovak movement and the effects that it has produced during the course of the war. The northern section of tho Slav family, inhabiting Bohemia, Moravia, and portions of Hungary, have always possessed a full share of that spirit of patriotic nationalism and that love of independence and freedom which characterise the whole Slav race. For centuries these Czccho-Slovaks have groaned beneath Teutonic tyranny, which has been rendered the more intolerable by their consciousness of a great historic. pastBohemia was a strong and prosperous and civilised State before the Hapsburg monarchy reached the rank of a. great Power; and its people have never submitted tamely to their hated masters. It was only by playing off one section of his subjects against another that Francis Joseph succeeded for half a century in maintaining the equilibrium of his illbalanced empire.; and when the war broke out, the Czecho-Slovaks, like the Jugoslavs, realised at once that it. marked the culminating point of 'he secular struggle between Slav and Teuton. Throughout the war they have done everything in tlieir power to vindicate their own claims to freedom and to aid the Allies. We have, referred on many previous occasions to the wholesale desertion of Czech and Slovak regiments in Russia and Italy, and tbe formation of Czecbo-Slovak fighting units, and 'finally of a -whole, separate, army corps in France: while it is no exaggeration to say that the Czecho-Slovak forces in Russia, prisoners and deserters combined, have proved tho only serious obstacle to Germ.-vny's great scheme for the absorption and exploitation of all that is left of the once powerful Russian Empire.

Naturally, the bold and persistent efforts of the Czecho-Slovaks to gain their liberty have aroused furious resentment on tbe part of their Austro-Magya r masters, and since the outbreak of the war .. veritable reign of terror has been established and maintained in Bohemia and Moravia. A few months ago the Czecbo-Slovak Socialists submitted a statement of the nationalist casn to a British Labour conference, and in this document it was pointed out that "the Austrian autocrats have not hesitated to use tbe most tiarbaroua methods to suppress every movement of their Slav subjects aiming at freedom or democracy." Thousands of Czecho-Slovaks have been imprisoned on mere suspicion without trial, many have been sentenced to death by military tribunals without being allowed to call evidence on tbeir own behalf. "The "brutalities perpetrated by the Austrians and Magyars in Galicia and Bohemia are no less appalling than the crimes committed in Poland and Belgium," and the nuiriber of persons hanged in Galicia alone is given on credible, authority at 60,000. As a natural result all the prominent and influential leaders of the Czecbo-Slovak movement have been driven from their country. But they bavo organised abroad a National League and Council, which hue now been formally recognised by Britain, and has been in effect accepted by the rest of tlie Allies as the, rightful representative, and mouthpiece, of the. whole Czecho-Slovak nation; and tho Pr_sidi.nt of this organisation is that Professor Masaryk whose, comments on this new development appear in our I cable columns to-day.

Of Professor Masaryk it should be said here, that lie has long been one. of the. ablest public men in the Dual Monarchy, and that for over forty years be lias bravely maintained the cause of the Northern Slavs, and uphold their demand for liberty and independence, A j

linguist with a great international reputation, a political essayist of singular ability and force, and gifted with a remarkable instinct for parliamentary tactics, Professor Masaryk has long been a prominent figure in the Austrian Reichsrath; and it was chiefly through his efforts that the Austrian Foreign Office was publicly convicted, at tbe Agram and Friodjung trials, of having deliberately forged documents to establish the alleged complicity of the Slavo-nian-Croatian deputies and other leading Southern Slavs in the Jugoslav propaganda, of which Serbia waa the centre before the war began. Professor Masaryk has thus long been a " marked man" in Austria; and nothing has demonstrated bis value to the Slav movement more, effectually than his vigorous and finally successful efforts to induce Britain to recognise the Cfcecho-Slovaks aa an independent nationality, and his prompt appreciation of the vitally important consequencea that this step involves. For Professor Masaryk, like all the Northern and -.outhern Slavs who have studied the problem carefully, has always maintained that the only possible outcome of the war must be the dismemberment of the Austro-Magyar Empire; and this result is certainly implied in the course that Britain has now resolved to take. For if Bobomia and Moravia, and portions of Hungary and Galicia are to bo erected into a Czechoslovak State on nationalist lines, bow can the Allies refuse to apply the same principle to tbe. Jugoslavs and the Poles? I" y an inevitable logical inference > led to the conclusion that in fighting for

" the liberation of subject nationalities" ' —the declared object of Britain and Franco and Italy and tha United States —the Allies are committed not only to the emancipation of the Northern and Southern Slavs, but also to a policy i which must of necessity involve the com-1 plete disintegration and dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. j