Page:Edvard Beneš – Bohemia's case for independence.pdf/41

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CZECHO-SLOVAKS AND HABSBURGS
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more pronounced than anywhere else, and where consequently the liberal revolutionaries were quite disposed to accept help from outside.

Since the fall of Napoleon ideas relating to the rights of nations had not ceased to occupy the public mind; the desire for a national, homegeneous State, which is the very foundation of the regeneration of the Slavs in Austria, inspired the German patriots themselves, and the same inspiration was kindled as well in Greece, Belgium, and Italy. This movement in Germany, therefore, reflected the general situation in Europe. But this dream of a Greater Germany entirely lost its original form, and, if realised, would have been contrary to the principles which gave it birth.

In fact the Pan-Germans of Frankfort wished to include in the new and Greater Germany all the countries which were classed by the Vienna Congress in 1815 in the German Confederation, countries which by their history and traditions were completely foreign to Germany, and of which the majority of the population were Slav or Italian. By this are meant principally Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Carniola, and the Littoral (Dalmatian Coast), not to mention Venetia and Italian Lombardy, which were working for the realisation of Italian national unity. The non-German population of these countries could not possibly