Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/267

The frame-work is something like this: At the outbreak of war the late Emperor surrendered a part of his authority as a ruler to the military staff, whose main representatives, in addition to the commander-in-chief, Archduke Friedrich, were Conrad von Hotzendorf, Marshall Metzger and Colonels Slameczka and Gregori. The general staff applied its watchful eye not only to the enemy outside, but, as is of course natural, also to the mischief-makers within. And then was made that tragic error which had far-reaching results.

In the erroneous supposition that, when war was declared against the only three foreign Slav states, Austria-Hungary, a group of states with a majority of Slav races, would not meet with assent to, and appropriate enthusiasm for war among its Slav majority, although that majority, as the mobilization showed, loyally rendered unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,—the general staff began to look with mistrust upon the Slav nationalities, later also upon its Italian subjects and later still upon the Roumanians, and blaming the former civilian administration,—it existed only in name. Having become the obedient helper of the military authorities during the war,—for lax patriotic training, defectively inculcated Austrianism, tolerated particularism, careless lenience in dynastic and religious affairs, blindness towards all kinds of centrifugal tendencies, it undertook this training itself, and desired to carry it out in the military manner, quickly and thoroughly.

Certainly, one other circumstance was very significant in its eyes. In the German Reichstag, Bethmann-Hollweg made a speech in which he referred to “the reckoning between the Germanic and Slavonic races”, a phrase to which no contradiction was forthcoming from Austria, with its Slav majority. The three Counts, Tisza, Berchtold and Sturgkh, were silent; silent too were the nationalities fighting beneath the two-headed eagle against the Russians, Serbs, and Montenegrins,—and this silence must have been noticed by the military authorities,—again an erroneous supposition which accentuated the tragic error; the leading Counts had probably overlooked the Chancellor’s remark and the Austrian nations could not become articulate,—there was no Parliament, there was no public platform. But this silence was regarded as malice and a token of secret hostility towards the position of the Empire.

And so the patriotic training began. In the kingdom of Bohemia, in Galicia, in Croatia, Dalmatia, everywhere the military showed the civilian administration what it had neglected, and how things ought to be done. A new spirit was introduced into the schools and among the teachers. Reading-books which contained a reference to the kingdom of Bohemia were confiscated; the emblems of the territories of the Bohemian crown,—confiscated; national colours, whether on clothes, on match-boxes, on bags of confectionery, forbidden; popular tunes and national songs, as ancient and innocent as the livelong day, were forbidden; collections of songs were seized, books, old miscellanies, verse, prose were also seized; newspapers appeared full of blank spaces, and published articles, supplied to them by the police; they had to publish them too, in a prominent spot under pain of immediate suppression; and they appeared, only to be suppressed in the end after all; suspicious people,—oh, the gallant governors, the gendarmes and the Government police had a tremendous amount of work to do then!—were taken away and interned in concentration camps; recruits had a Uriah-like p. v. (Politisch verdachtig^[1]) inscribed on their military papers and those two letters ensured their bearers a continual strict control and other agreeable attentions upon all battle-fronts, whether in Russia, in Serbia, in Roumania, in Italy; people of all classes and ranks lived under continual police observation; taverns, cafes, theatres, public places swarmed with police spies, and espionage penetrated even into families; there was a deluge of anonymous accusations on all sides, and as a result of them, cross-examinations, domiciliary searches, arrests and imprisonments took place; childish leaflets were, heaven alone knows how, circulated among the peaceful population, and it fared ill with anyone of whom it could be proved that he had possessed, read or even looked at anything of the kind.

All civilian rights were suspended. There were no personal liberties, there were no constitutional liberties. There were only military tribunals and they worked as they were obliged to work. Czech people were tried and sentenced by judges who did not know a single word of Czech; nobody was safe either by day or night. There was a deluge of halters, life-long terms of imprisonment, hundreds and hundreds of years of jail, confiscation of property; those who were locked up included women, students, female clerks, authors, members of parliament, bank managers, officials of the most diverse branches, grocers, workmen, journalists, clergymen of all denominations. Everybody was under suspicion, the whole nation was under suspicion.

A sultry stillness settled upon the whole kingdom of Bohemia. Cowards began to accommodate themselves to the prevailing conditions, and met the rule of terror halfway. At Prague anecdotes and jokes came into being, and with the rapidity of light they sped through Bohemia and Moravia, conjuring up smiles from the faces of a nation which had become unaccustomed to mirth. Slowly but firmly there developed a feeling of national solidarity, an instinct for national honour and national justice, and joyous