THE CREATION OF CZECHOSLOVAKIA
Of the new states created by the Paris treaties, Czechoslovakia has had
the most uneventful existence and is by all odds the most flourishing.
In fact, it is the only one of the Succession States to the Hapsburg
Empire whose political and economic life is functioning normally. When
one arrives in Prague, one is immediately struck with the naturalness
of the new régime. It is as if it had always been. And when one goes
to the Burg and visits the offices of the new Government, which has
now been functioning under the control of the same men for nearly
five years, there is no feeling of coming into contact with something
parvenu or inchoate or absurd. Across from the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs workmen are busy on the cathedral. “When was this started?” I
asked. “We have been working on this addition--in reality it is the
main part of the cathedral, you know--for six hundred years.” Nothing
illustrates better the spirit reigning to-day in Czechoslovakia. Freed
from a bad dream, the old Kingdom of Bohemia is taking up once more the
problem of playing an independent rôle in central Europe.
An American in Vienna told me that Czechoslovakia was “a Bologna
sausage impossibly sprawling across the map,” and expressed in no
uncertain terms his belief in the approaching collapse of a country
“without natural frontiers and economic or geographical _raison d’être_
and made up of a congeries of races among which the Czechs are in the
minority.” An Austrian cabinet minister added, “The old racial and
irredentist problems of this part of the world were not solved by the
treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon; they were only transferred from
Vienna to Prague.”
If one considers the question of the viability of Czechoslovakia
from the strict point of view of geography and ethnography, there
would indeed seem to be little hope for the future of this curiously
composite state. Czechoslovakia is long and narrow, and part of her
frontiers are arbitrary. Out of a population of less than 13,000,000,
there are more than 3,000,000 Germans and nearly 1,000,000 Hungarians.
Ruthenians or Ukrainians number 500,000. And there are Jews and some
Poles. Whether the Czechs are outnumbered by “alien races” depends
upon the classification of the two other branches of the Slav family
in the body politic. Are Moravians and Slovaks different people from
the Czechs? Even if they be counted as the same or similar, possessing
common historical traditions, using kindred languages, sharing common
aspirations, and being willing to throw their lot in with the Czechs,
there is a difference in culture--a striking difference. The Slovaks
and the peoples of other regions ceded by Hungary to Czechoslovakia
contain a large percentage of illiterates. The Czechs in the Kingdom of
Bohemia are virtually all literate. The wife of a cabinet minister told
me that she had never in her life met anybody who could not read and
write. What American could say the same?
President Masaryk is a Moravian, and General Stefanik is a Slovak.
These two men, together with Dr. Benes, a Czech, were the leaders
in securing the recognition of Czechoslovak independence, and have
succeeded in retaining the confidence of their people during the
formative years of the new republic. This fact in itself, however, is
not indicative of a real fusion of the Slavic elements. It will be
remembered that even during the war some of the most prominent Austrian
statesmen were Czechs, notably Count Czernin. The Czechs make up 46
per cent of the population of the new state, and even with the Slovaks
amount to only 60 per cent. The two million Slovaks have insisted upon
autonomy from the very beginning of the national life, and only their
cultural inferiority has prevented them from acting as the Croats have
acted in Jugoslavia.
The greatest problem is that of the Germans, who live in a more or
less compact mass in regions contiguous to Germany and Austria. Were
it not for two saving factors in the situation, the natural mountain
frontier separating the Germans of Bohemia from Germany and the
cultural equality of the Czechs with the Germans, the presence in the
body politic of a German _bloc_, comprising 27 per cent of the total
population, would make Czechoslovakia a hopeless proposition. For,
after the collapse of the Central Empires, the Germans of Bohemia
declared themselves united to Austria and opposed to the bitter end
the determination of the Peace Conference to put them under Czech
rule in defiance of the right of self-determination. The Germans form
a separate party in the Czechoslovak parliament, and use their own
language in addressing the chair and in debates. They assert that they
are citizens of Czechoslovakia against their will and that they had no
part in forming the new constitution under which they are governed.
They resent the sudden change of fortune of the Teutonic master race.
Their new position is humiliating.
But powerful material considerations have led them to make the best
of a bad business and to accept the _fait accompli_. Austria is in
a sorry plight, and the condition of Germany is not much better. The
Germans of Czechoslovakia are far better off, although politically
depressed, than Germans in any other part of the world. Comparatively
speaking, the country of which they are now citizens is prosperous,
and they form a large enough element to be able to stand up for their
rights in the new state. The danger to Czechoslovakia of containing so
large a German population will come only when Germany has rehabilitated
herself, or if Austria succeeds in reaching a degree of prosperity
equal to that of Czechoslovakia.
On the other hand, despite the large minorities, Czechoslovakia has an
excellent chance of lasting and, by a steadily increasing prosperity,
making her unwilling citizens content with their lot. Czechoslovakia
is the only new state formed wholly out of the Hapsburg Empire. Prague
does not have the problems of Bucharest, Belgrade, and Warsaw, where
peoples separated through centuries and impregnated with different
cultures and radically divergent political ideals and political
experience have been brought together under a new roof. Not a portion
of the Czechs but all of them have had political education and have
been familiar with suffrage and parliamentary life. The Czechs had
their quota of functionaries in the Hapsburg Empire, which gives
them trained men for government service. Without intending offense,
one might say that the Czechs are the most promising of the newly
emancipated people because they are German-trained in public life,
administration, and education, as well as in business. They possess a
German mentality--in the better sense of that term--and this is the
reason they have made such wonderful progress in five years and present
to the visitor the picture of a state functioning without confusion and
possessing all that makes for durability.
From large portions of Jugoslavia and Rumania it is going to take a
long time to obliterate the four centuries of subjection to Ottoman
rule. Rumania and Poland have elements that remained for centuries
under the Russian yoke. Bohemia was in slavery, but gentle slavery.
The Slavs were discriminated against, it is true, but not in a way
fatal to their cultural or economic development. The country was not
partitioned, and Austrian rule could not be compared with that of
Turkey or Russia. The territories that go to make up Czechoslovakia
shared the prosperity of the last half-century of the Hapsburg
Empire, and they contained--already developed--factories, mines, and
agricultural and forest industries second to none in Europe. Mark
the words “already developed.” When you go to Bucharest or Belgrade
or Warsaw you are told what the people hope to do, and the potential
wealth of the country is impressed upon you. Foreign capital is
essential, and there is the constant anxiety that its introduction
be not accompanied by political subserviency to the great powers
and economic dependence upon them. But at Prague you do not have to
visualize the future. The actual wealth of the country and its existing
machinery for production are sufficient guarantees of its ability
to live alone. Railways do not have to be built: they are already
there. Men do not have to go through the painful stages of learning
parliamentary manners, and officials are not running around madly with
more good will than knowledge. Czechoslovakia is the one going concern
created by the Paris Conference.
In several respects the birth of Czechoslovakia differed from that of
Poland and Jugoslavia and from the formation of Greater Rumania and
Greater Greece.
Alone among the smaller peoples subject to the Central Empires or
influenced by them, the Czechoslovaks from the beginning of the World
War made up their minds that their bread was buttered on the side of
an Entente victory. Unlike the Poles and Jugoslavs, they deserted from
the Austro-Hungarian armies on every occasion, and when they went over
to the Entente they risked being shot for treason if captured when
fighting in the Entente armies. They rendered appreciable services by
this technical disloyalty, and before the end of the war they had under
arms divisions on three battle-fronts and an army in Siberia. Their
leaders who managed to escape from the country burned their bridges
behind them, and those who stayed at home, like Dr. Kramar, first
premier of the new state, almost lost their lives by insisting during
the war upon the resurrection of Bohemia as one of the conditions of
peace.
Added to loyalty to the cause of those to whom they looked for
emancipation was an amazing sense of moderation, unique among the
liberated peoples. Before the emancipation the Czechs were willing to
be guided by the councils of the great powers, and after the liberation
they took a sensible view toward minorities. They did not combat or
attempt to override the decisions of the Peace Conference. Curious as
it was, their new state was spontaneously formed by the recognition of
the Bohemian claims to statehood by Austria just before the collapse,
and by the voluntary adhesion of national councils in Moravia, Silesia,
Slovakia, and Russina to the nucleus of a common government already
formed at Prague. The Prague authorities gained no territory by
conquest, and arms did not have to be used against the German and
Hungarian minorities, whose incorporation in the new state was provided
for by the Treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon.
Rumania based her territorial claims upon a definite agreement with the
Entente Powers, embodied in a secret treaty, which was the price paid
for her intervention. Greece relied upon Premier Venizelos’ skilful
manœuvering in the mazes of Entente Near Eastern diplomacy. The Poles
put their cause in the hands of France from the beginning, and, having
been saved by France at the time of the Bolshevist invasion in 1920,
became more convinced than ever that their salvation lay in listening
to the Quai d’Orsay. The Jugoslav problem was singularly complicated
by the unwillingness of the Pan-Serbs, under Premier Pashitch, to make
up their minds in 1918 whether they wanted a Greater Serbia or a new
state, Jugoslavia, in which old Serbia would lose her identity. The
Czechoslovaks were not compelled and did not feel the inclination to
seek the favor of any one great power or to play one power against
another. Only in the dispute with the Poles over Teschen was there a
momentary embarrassment. In all other questions the Czechoslovaks were
lucky in not having their interest conflict with the ambitions of the
great powers. They made only one serious blunder at Paris, which is
reacting unfavorably against them to-day in Slovakia. That was when
they agreed to include in their new state the island and mainland along
the Danube east of Pressburg (Bratislava). This was awarded to them for
strategic reasons, but they now see that the burden of half a million
Hungarians subjects was too big a price to pay for it.
The success of Czechoslovakia in her foreign policy has been largely
due to the ability and continuity in office of Dr. Benes, a Prague
university professor, and a refugee in Paris during the war, who worked
for years, in the face of every discouragement, to enlist the sympathy
of the Entente Powers in the Czech cause. When the hour of liberation
came, the Czechs had the good sense to keep Benes in Paris as delegate
at the Peace Conference, and to make him minister of foreign affairs.
Dr. Benes established the following basic principles of Czechoslovak
foreign policy: (1) help to Austria and an economic understanding with
Austria; (2) prevention of an attempt on the part of Hungary to upset
the Treaty of Trianon by an alliance with Rumania and Jugoslavia,
the two other beneficiaries of that treaty; (3) steadfast refusal to
become the catspaw of any other power or group of powers in dealings
with Russia; (4) realization of the patent fact that security against
Germany in the future could not be obtained by any particular alliance
but only by the functioning of an all-inclusive society of nations.
The Czechoslovak Government has differentiated clearly between Austria
and Hungary as potential enemies. It has assumed that Italy can be
relied upon never to allow an independent Austria to become a military
menace, and that France is vitally interested in preventing the union
of Austria with Germany. An Austria impotent militarily but still able
to exist independently is what Czechoslovak interests demand, and it
is comforting to realize that two great powers are natural allies in
the attainment of these two objects. Because Italy mounts guard against
a recurrence of Austrian militarism, Czechoslovakia can afford to see
Austria flourish economically. In fact, the prosperity of Austria is an
aim of Czechoslovak foreign policy, in which France can be counted upon
to help, because the union of Austria with Germany would be a calamity
to France and Czechoslovakia alike.
Dr. Benes maintains that the sweeping changes of the Treaty of
St.-Germain were necessary to make possible an absolutely free hand
for former subject peoples in dealing with former masters. It is
as essential to separate Hungary from Austria along the Danube as
it is for the Czechoslovaks to have an outlet to that river. But
Czechoslovakia would be foolish to abuse her freedom of action by
rendering the economic life of Austria intolerable. On the contrary,
the economic and political interests of Czechoslovakia dictate making
every effort to help Austria rehabilitate herself. Through Austria
passes Czechoslovakia’s outlet to the Mediterranean. The two states
are neighbors and must logically trade with each other. Most important
of all, unless life is made tolerable for Austria she will be forced
into union with Germany. And this would menace the very existence of
Czechoslovakia!
The Czechoslovak attitude toward Hungary is quite different from that
toward Austria. No great powers are particularly interested in holding
Hungary down, and Italy is suspected of encouraging Hungary to check
her nightmare of Slavic predominance on the Adriatic. East of the White
Carpathians the Slovaks and the Ruthenians are not accustomed to the
separation from Hungary and not altogether reconciled to it. The Czechs
are not culturally inferior to the Germans; the Slovaks are culturally
inferior to the Hungarians; while Ruthenian loyalty to the new state
cannot be blindly counted upon. A defensive alliance with Rumania and
Jugoslavia to prevent the resurrection of Hungarian military power
was a logical move. A convention was signed with Jugoslavia on August
13, 1920, and when its value was demonstrated by the part it played to
prevent the restoration of Emperor Charles to the throne of Hungary,
Rumania joined the “Little Entente” on April 23, 1921.
Rumania, despite her exposed position, had to enter into the Entente
counter-revolutionary conspiracies against Russia because she depended
upon Entente indorsement to legalize and defend her annexation of
Bessarabia. Greece had gone into the ill fated French military venture
in South Russia because France insisted upon this as the price of
supporting Greek claims to Thrace. Poland allowed herself to be used
from the beginning against the Bolshevists because she was infeudated
to French policy and could look for large territorial gains as a price
of coöperation. But Czechoslovakia, although her spectacular Legion had
done much to help the Allied Powers against the Bolshevists in eastern
Russia and Siberia, refused flatly to keep up hostilities against the
Moscow Soviet, once independence was assured. The new state turned a
deaf ear to all persuasion. The Prague Government went to the length
of following the example of Germany by proclaiming and forcing strict
neutrality when Poland and Soviet Russia were at war. A howl went up in
France in the summer of 1920 when the Czechs took the same stand as
the British High Commissioner at Danzig, and forbade the transit of war
material destined to Poland.
The Czechoslovak Government is frankly anti-Communist and has no
sympathy with the Moscow doctrines. But the Czechoslovaks are not
enemies of the Russians, like the Poles and the Rumanians, and they
consider Bolshevism a temporary misfortune and not a crime for which
the Russians are to be punished and despoiled of territories. Before
the Genoa Conference Dr. Benes notified the Entente Powers and the
United States that Czechoslovakia intended to make an agreement with
Soviet Russia. This was done, notwithstanding French and American
disapproval.
At the time Dr. Benes explained Czechoslovakia’s attitude to me as
follows: “The United States can afford to take the attitude of complete
non-intercourse with Moscow. But we cannot. We have our security to
think of, and we want to be prepared for the trade opportunities that
will open up in the future as Russia becomes stable again. Russia
is one of our most promising markets. We must have a delegation at
Moscow, to know what is going on in Russia, and to be ready for trade
when it offers itself. Our struggle for existence, economically and
politically, is such that we must think of the future and take Russia
into our calculations.”
No country deplores more the weakness of the League of Nations and
is more alarmed over what we might term international anarchy than
Czechoslovakia. With her composite population and her peculiar
geographic position, with impossible frontiers from the strategic point
of view, she is eager for some permanent assurance of international
political stability. There are only about six million Czechs. Even
with the Slovaks, they number scarcely eight millions. Czechoslovakia
could not exist if the Germans of Bohemia went to Germany and the
Hungarians of Slovakia to Hungary. It is natural, then, that security
of frontiers, based upon international agreement rather than upon force
or precarious alliances, is the goal of the Czechoslovak diplomacy.
This explains the move of Dr. Benes at the Genoa Conference in the
summer of 1922, when he tried to get the powers to accept the most
elementary of all principles, that of a universal and binding compact
of non-aggression. The Czechoslovaks, not being able to defend their
state, and fearing to have the defense of the treaties to which they
owe their existence depend upon armies and alliances, have proposed
universal and reciprocal declaration of the sanctity of frontiers, and
want the League of Nations to become an automatic proscriber of any
nation disturbing the _status quo_ of the Paris peace settlement.
When we estimate the chances of long life for so curiously formed a
state as Czechoslovakia, we have no other grounds for assuming its
durability than the adoption of a program like that advocated by Dr.
Benes at Genoa. If the Germans all get together none can prevent them
from snuffing the life out of Czechoslovakia, especially if they are
able to form once more an alliance with Hungary. Italy alone could put
obstacles in the path of such a program, provided there is no world
organization to maintain the frontiers of the Paris treaties.