THE NEW EUROPE
In the Central Zone of nations we find that the Magyars, Finns, Roumanians, Bulgars, part of the Serbians (those of the kingdom of Serbia and of Montenegro), the Greeks, Albanians, Turks, are already free, and in their case the only question that remains is how to render their liberty inviolable and how to consolidate the whole of each separate nation. There are three nations, however, which have not yet attained their freedom: the Poles, Czecho-Slovaks, and the Southern Slavs of Austria-Hungary. All these three nations have for a long time been making efforts to attain freedom and unity. They are, indeed, the biggest nations of the Central Zone; all three were free and independent in the past, all three possess a remarkable history, all three have done much towards the development of the civilisation of Europe. The general level of education of the Southern Slavs and Poles is progressing rapidly in spite of unfavourable conditions, while the Czechs yield in no respect to the Germans as regards general education; and. lastly, all three nations would be economically self-sufficient. Why then should they not be free? Why should even the Albanians, who are devoid as yet of any European culture, be free before them?
The peculiar internal interdependence of these three Slav nations results from their geographical position and political constellation. All three are fighting against their common enemy, and therefore their respective fates are naturally connected. We have already seen, in the past, that the crippling of Bohemia by Austria was closely followed by the downfall of Poland; while the fall of the Southern Slavs under the attacks of Turkey was a fundamental cause for the formation of an alliance between Bohemia, Austria, and Hungary. In modern times all these three nations have often advanced hand in hand. I need only mention the Slavonic Congress at Prague in 1848, in which the Poles (even the Poles of Posnania) and the Southern Slavs unanimously took part; while in the Austrian Parliament the Czechs moved in accord with the Southern Slavs, and, indeed, with the Poles also, in spite of the attempt of Vienna to separate these three nationalities by granting them various concessions.
A more exhaustive treatise would involve an historical analysis not only of these three Slav nations, but of all the other nations of the Central Zone; each of those nations
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