The Germans protest that they have educated themselves beyond the point where race is everything and cannot at this time of day be expected to return to first principles. It is of course tenable that the variety of parties into which the Germans are split up argues an advanced and broad political intelligence. At the same time it makes a poor barrier against . the impact of a race that subordinates every thing to a single practical end; and unless the Germans are prepared to see a great part of their old ascendency pass away, they must be ready to drop take up the issue that has been forced upon them and meet their antagonists with weapons not necessarily of their own choosing. In other words, they need simplifying if they are to combat the Czechs successfully. As it is, the Czechs for the last 50 years have been slowly driving them to the wall. City after city has fallen into their hands; Prague and Pilsen, that only a quarter of a century ago were German in tongue and senti ment, are now Slavonized down to their very street names. And in politics and industry as well as music and literature and the lighter arts, the past hundred years have seen. the Czechs advance in a quite wonderful fashion. They have long ceased to fear the Germans, and with the disappearance of fear comes naturally the claim to equality. Moreover, the Czechs have a strong historical case. Four hundred years ago what are now the Crown-lands of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia formed the Czech kingdom of Saint Vacslav; and what is now Hungary was then the kingdom of Saint Stephen.. The Czechs offered their crown in 1526 to the Haps burgs, at the same time, for the same reasons and on the same conditions as the Magyars; stipulating only that they should retain their old rights of self-government. This contract, together with the Pragmatic Sanction, was the legal basis of the Hungarian rebellion of 1848. The Czechs still use it to point the justice of their demands for a resurrection of Saint Vac slav's kingdom, maintaining that their case is on all fours with that of Hungary, rests on the same documents and is supported by the same coronation oaths. The Hapsburgs never quite lived up to their side of the agreement. They allowed the Turks to overrun Hungary at will, and when the Reformation came and the Czechs gathered round John Huss, they stamped out the heresy in blood and established a strong German colony along the northern borders of Bohemia for the protection of the faith and the suppression of the natives. The Czechs have kept their native tongue alive, and just across their borders are their kinsmen of the Russian empire. The card of Russian sympathy is often played, and after every fresh frustration of their national hopes follows the spectacle of 5,500,000 Czechs cautiously sounding the Tsar's instinct.* It is this that lends color to the common charge that the Czechs are disloyal, hut it is to be noticed that when the situation is reversed and the Emperor makes even the shortest step toward Home Rule, the Germans at once adopt their opponents' tactics, throw themselves into the arms of their Prussian brethren, and vow that sooner than stay and be swamped by a hated and inferior race, they would willingly exchange the Hapsburgs for the Hohenzollerns and enroll themselves among Kaiser Wilhelm's subjects. The suspicion can not be avoided that these dramatics are at bot tom intended for home consumption and that the tune would be quickly changed if the Tsar or Kaiser were to listen too seriously.
The whole history of the dual monarchy goes to show that real consolidation and unity can be effected only by the seemingly para doxical method of allowing each nationality the widest possible freedom. Justice toward and equal treatment of all races is the only sure road to peace and permanency. It is a hard one
for the Germans to tread, for it means the over throw of an ascendency once paramount in every corner of the realm; but unless universal suffrage brings to the front an entirely new set of problems, trod it must be. The interplay of these racial ambitions has been complicated, sometimes retarded and sometimes acutely em phasized by a hundred differences of religious, economic and purely political interests, all of which have representatives in the Reichsrath. They act upon one another under the shadow of the racial issues in a way that no foreigner can disentangle. The confusion of the country is worthily reproduced in the 15 distinct parties and the seven or eight languages that crop up in the Vienna Parliament. Austria-Hungary is a polyglot chaos in which even Austrians do not profess to see more than a half light. The prophecies of disruption may therefore appear at least plausible. But it is one of the many paradoxes of the dual monarchy that it seems unable to break up. In part it is protected by the very diversity and number of the antago nisms it is obliged to house. A more visible bond of union is the army, in which all must serve, which is of all races and creeds, and therefore of none, and the atmosphere of which is broadly and impressively imperial. What its actual effectiveness will prove to be like, should it ever be tested, is one of the most interesting military problems of the day. The only force with which it can be compared in the excellence of its units and the variety of its nationalities and tongues is the allied army that rescued the Pekin legations; and the parallel is not altogether hopeful. A polyglot army must of necessity be to some extent a disorganized army, and while the forces of the dual monarchy use German as the language of military command, the rank and file and the bulk of the officers retain their own speech for general purposes. The heterogeneous character of its composition has had a steadying influence on the internal struggles of the dual monarchy, however much it may hamper its efficiency on the battlefield. The army has kept itself largely aloof from politics, and though the Czechs did once attempt to transfer the racial bitterness to the parade ground by answering the roll-call in their own tongue, a sharp rebuke from the Emperor was enough to bring them to reason.
A second and equally powerful bond of union has been the monarchy. Not only is it accepted everywhere, but the idea of upsetting it in favor of any other form of government has never yet been broached. Even the irrecon cilables, who would like to see the Ausgleich abolished and Hungary direct her own fiscal policy,— a quite possible development,— and manage her own foreign affairs, still do not propose to sever the personal tie that binds the two countries. And not only is the mon archy secure in the affections of the people, but the dynasty is equally popular. So long as there is a throne it is not conceivable that any one but a Hapsburg should occupy it. This two-fold devotion to monarchy and to the dynasty was greatly strengthened, partly by the breakdown of parliamentary government and weariness which made the people look to the throne as an escape from the turmoil and wranglings of small groups, and partly through the patience and wisdom, the sterling fair ness and competency of the late Emperor Francis Joseph, as well as the ghastly tragedies of his private life. What the Czechs and the other races want, is the same independence as the Magyars possess, but such independence is as inconsistent with Russian as with German domination. It is against their interests to break away from the Hapsburgs.