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outlet to the sea. The Danube will connect the Czecho-Slovaks with their friends the Yugoslavs and Rumanians in the South. Austria and Hungary, reduced to their proper racial boundaries will number about 8 million each, and will be in a hopeless strategic and economic position. This settlement will shatter for ever the German plans of Central Europe and Berlin-Bagdad.
The realisation of these Pan-German plans, based on the preservation of Austria-Hungary as Germany’s bridge to the East, would give Germany the power to dominate over the whole of Central Europe, the Balkans and Turkey, and would directly threaten Egypt, India and the very existence of the British Empire. These plans cannot be frustrated unless the Czecho-Slovaks are fully liberated. With the cause of Bohemia, the cause of Great Britain will either fall or triumph. Without an independent Bohemia there also can be no truly independent Poland, Rumania or Yugoslavia, while if the Czecho-Slovaks are liberated, they will form the centre and the head of the anti-German barrier in Central Europe, which alone will arrest the German “Drang nach Osten,” and secure the Slav and Latin nations a free national existence in mutual co-operation and for the benefit of peace, democracy and humanity.
