Page:Czecho-Slovaks (1917).djvu/24

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24
THE CZECHO-SLOVAKS

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. 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. Of all the nations to be liberated the Czechs are the most distant, the most deeply engulfed in “Mittel-Europa,” and yet they do not doubt that for them also the hour of liberation will come in this war. They firmly believe, as the Austrian officials put it in their indictment of Dr. Kramarzh, that theirs will be a glorious lot when the nation “rises out of darkness and humiliation to new life,” and that “after the catastrophe to which this war must lead, the Czech nation will be able to develop its strength, unity, and organisation.”


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