Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/30
for the new states to come to an agreement in economic matters. We are on the best of terms with Roumania, Jugoslavia and Poland, we shall need each other’s help, and mutual trust is fundamentally in our own interests. As regards Austrians and Magyars, we should like to establish a basis for friendly relations with them, but that depends exclusively upon them.”
Even the Viennese Social Democratic “Arbeiter Zeitung” does not believe in a Danubian Federation, for it recently stated that all ideas relating to such an arrangement are nothing but a childish utopia.
Leaving aside the utter practical impossibility of a Danubian Federation, let us see whether Central Europe in its present form is really “Balkanised,” and whether it constitutes a greater danger to future peace than the old Hapsburg Monarchy.
There is no “Balkanisation” of Central Europe in the proper sense of the term. The creation of the national states does not in itself entail “Balkanisation.” On the contrary, the revival of old historical units such as Poland and Czechoslovakia, and the completion of the national unity of other states such as Roumania, Jugoslavia, by the incorporation of their irredentist minorities, have not Balkanised, but rather debalkanised the whole of Central Europe. It has obliterated the Austro-Hungarian anomaly, which could not hold together any longer. Moreover the new outlook in Central Europe implies nothing else than the logical application of the principles of self-determination which constituted one of the primary war-aims of the Allies.
The existence of such unnatural organisms as Austria-Hungary and Turkey was, indeed, a permanent menace to the peace of Europe. The Habsburg Monarchy was incompatible with the people’s right to scelf-determination. It was a “survival of medieval times” as President Masaryk once remarked. For excepting the Germans and Magyars who predominated, all the other nations, whether Czechoslovaks, Poles, Roumanians or Jugoslavs, numbering in the aggregate about 30 millions, were longing to break away from it, and no force could have kept them permanently under the foreign yoke.
These 30 millions are now living in freedom under their own national sovereignty. But owing to their secession, the formerly predominant Austro-Germans are, no doubt, placed in a relatively unfavourable economic position, inasmuch as they, especially in Vienna, had grown accustomed to living at the expense of the wealth and industry of the subject races. Hence their complaint that their position is intolerable. It is, nevertheless, a fact that the existence of Austria-Hungary through the centuries as such has left many economic interests and ties among the nations once composing it. A close economic co-operation, such as is outlined in the above—quoted interview with President Masaryk, is therefore desirable. An economic co-operation among the Czechoslovaks, Jugoslavs and Roumanians appears to have been already arranged for, and if the Austrians and Magyars will renounce their claim to preferential treatment, not one of the: former Austro-Hungarian nations will be found unwilling to co-operate with them.
In, order, however, to prevent any possible “Balkanisation” of Central Europe the policy of the great European Powers should consist in facilitating the consolidation of the new states, while suppressing the principal causes of disagreement among them; in helping those states by every possible form of economic and moral support to ease their internal difficulties and arrive at a peaceful solution of their differences on a sound economic and ethnographic basis. Moreover, it is necessary to inspire the new states with a common political idea and to rally them around a new central organism which must be logical and carefully conceived.
In order to carry out all these plans, it will, of course, be necessary to discover a really practical basis of action. This must be looked for among such of the new states as by virtue of their geographical position, economic resources, stability of administration, and their high degree of civilisation would be best capable of constituting the pivot of the Central European group. The Czechoslovaks who by their attitude during the war have proved their capacity to become perhaps the strongest factor in new Central Europe, will form the nucleus for a large conglomeration of states extending from Danzig to Matapan and capable of acting as a powerful barrier against an aggressive Germany, as well as against the possible development of disintegrating forces from the East.