Page:Edvard Beneš – Bohemia's case for independence.pdf/56

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42
BOHEMIA'S CASE FOR INDEPENDENCE

nations; thus, helped by old tradition, they easily gained sympathies in England and France.

All we have experienceed since 1848 has given us good reason for fear. There were never worse oppressors than the Magyars. It would need columns to detail all that the Slovaks have suffered under the yoke of the Magyars. Everything was refused them; political rights, rights to found schools, freedom to use their own language. There are hardly any elementary Slovak schools, and no secondary or high schools. Liberty of the Press does not exist, and it would be difiicult to-day to find a single Slovak publicist who, having openly worked for the Slovak cause, has not several times made acquaintance with Magyar prisons. The three million Slovaks are represented by only three members in the Parliament at Budapest. Hungary still lives under an Oriental régime. Lack of space alone prevents me from recounting the long series of cruelties committed by the Magyars against the Slovaks and Yugo-Slavs.

For more than half a century they have employed every means to Magyarise the Slovaks. In certain districts they succeeded. They still persist in the attempt, for they feel that their domination is being menaced by the political, economical, and intellectual progress of the Czechs. The dualism which was to crush at the same time the Czechs and the Slovaks is their work. Whenever the