Page:Bohemia under Hapsburg misrule (1915).pdf/16

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12
PREFACE

the government of which rested on the mediæval idea that one white race was superior to another white race, is doomed to perish. Austria needed a crushing blow from without, such as a lost war, to send toppling the ramshackle structure that has menaced for so long a time the security of the Slavic inhabitants. For, though rent by internal discord, the monarchy obviously lacked forces powerful enough to effect its own redemption. If the Teutonic forces are beaten, the logical sequel will be the breakdown of the Germanic hegemony and a corresponding rise of Slavism. With Poland resuscitated and Serbia strengthened, Vienna, it is certain, will be powerless to hold the Bohemians down.

But no matter what may happen, whether Austria-Hungary will remain Hapsburg, whether the Allies will impose their will on her destiny, or whether the Russians will become the masters of the North Slavs, let us hope that the future mapmakers will not be military conquerors, as was the case at the Congress of Vienna in 1814, or statesmen of the Bismarck type, who, at the Berlin Congress in 1878, were determined to separate the people of one race, instead of uniting them. Let the map-makers be ethnologists who will, wherever practicable, deliminate boundaries according to racial, not political lines, giving German territory