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Europe. It is not, of course, the dismemberment of a nation, for Austria is not a nation, but a conglomeration of nations, or, as the Czech deputy Stransky put it in the Austrian Reichsrat in June 1918, “a century old crime against the liberties of mankind, a hideous dream, a load of tyranny, a nightmare and nothing else; it is a State without patriots and without patriotism, a constitutional Monarchy without a Constitution and without a throne.” The British declaration means an end to this hideous dream. It is the death warrant of the Dual Monarchy. Austria-Hungary does not exist any more, except by name. Her collapse is merely a matter of time.
Who are the Czecho-Slovaks?
The term Czecho-Slovaks comprises two branches of the same nation: the seven million Czechs (pronounced Tchecks) of Bohemia, Moravia and Austrian Silesia, and the three million Slovaks of Slovensko in Upper Hungary, who speak a dialect of Czech. On the North West, West and South-West, they are surrounded by the Germans of Prussian Silesia, Saxony, Bavaria and Austria. On the South-East they border on the Magyars, who are the descendants of the Huns, and who invaded the present Hungary in the 10th century, thereby separating the Northern Slavs (Poles and Czecho-Slovaks) from the Southern Slavs (Serbo-Croats and Slovenes). Only on the Eastern half of their Northern frontier do the Czecho-Slovaks border on a friendly race, the Poles, who speak a
