Page:Edvard Beneš – Bohemia's case for independence.pdf/58

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
44
BOHEMIA'S CASE FOR INDEPENDENCE

was already beginning to threaten the Magyar domination; they were insisting on universal suffrage, which would have completely deprived the Magyars of their predominance. For the Magyars there was only one possible solution of all these problems: that was a victorious war. Accordingly, when the Crown Council in July 1914 decided on the declaration of war with Serbia, it was Tisza and the Magyar nobles who gave the decisive vote.

One need not further be surprised at the actual part they played, for it is they who are "the third great culprits" of this war.

When the day of punishment, which will certainly come, strikes the great criminals of this war, the Germans, Europe must not target their most faithful associates, the Magyars. Not only Austria must be dismembered, but else, and above all, Hungary, according to the principle of nationality. The Magyars and Germans must be separated and limited to the territory inhabited by them, and the Slavs delivered from their intolerable hegemony.