BOHEMIA AND BAVARIA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 16996, 1 November 1918, Page 4

BOHEMIA AND BAVARIA.

Events are moving rapidly towards the breaking up of the Central Empires into their component parte. Revolts, mutinies, and disaffection are reported from various parts of -.-Hungary, but the most definite step yet taken in the dismemberment of the Dual Monarchy is the bloodless revolution at Prague, which appears to have transformed Bohemia into a republio without active opposition from the Austrian garrisons. It iB improbable that Austria has troops to spare for a conflict,with this new government, and the process of disintegration is already so far advanced that there appears to be little disposition either in Vienna or Buda Pesth to attempt to maintain the unity of the Empire by force or diplomacy. The Germans of Austria and the Magyars of Hungary have made a deliberate choice of separation in preference to accepting the inferior position which would be theirs in a federal empire in which the Slavs had received an equal franchise. A republican Bohemia is the deathblow of the German dream of dominion from the Baltic to the Balkans. It is a wedge driven into the heart of the territory of the Central Empires and as it must ultimately include over eight million Czechs and Slovaks, it will b f e a formidable unit in the series of small, independent states by which Germany and Austria will be ringed after the war. Of less immediate moment, but of great practical interest, is the report that the separatist movement, has spread to Germany, and that Bavarian sentiment is raising its head from the grave in which it has lain for fifty years. Prior to 1860 Bavaria was a rival, and often a bitter enemy, to Prussia. She assumed the role of defender of the smaller states against Prussia and Austria, and her statesmen dreamed of a Bavarian hegemony in South Germany, similar to that of Prussia in the north. In the war of 1806, in spite of Bismarck's efforts to secure her neutrality, Bavaria sided actively with Austria. Of recent years her racial and religious antagonism to Prussia has slumbered, but it is by no means dead. It is impossible at this stage to estimate the strength of the Bavarian movement, h,ut it is beyond doubt that old sores have been reopened, and old bitterness revived by the failure of the criminal adventure into which Prussia has led all the German states.