Topic Five - Reading Two
THE PROBLEM OF MINORITIES
In some degree our foreign policy is determined by regard for our racial minorities. Save in the smallest States such minorities exist, inasmuch as a strictly ethnographical delimitation of frontiers is impracticable. Nationality, as expressed in terms of race, played little or no part in the formation of the majority of existing States. Indeed, the principle of nationality acquired State-creative power only in the modern era and, even then, it was not alone decisive.
No two minority questions are alike. Each presents peculiarities of its own. Our German minority in Czechoslovakia is a case in point. It is comparatively large, for it numbers three millions out of a total population of thirteen. Eleven European States count fewer than three million inhabitants. Our Germans are, moreover, mature in culture and are economically, industrially and financially strong. Politically, they suffer from the drawback that, under Austria, the Vienna Government looked after them to such an extent that their own political sense was not whetted. But at their back stands the great German people, and they are neighbors of Austria who is a neighbor of Germany.
Our claim that the German minority should remain with us based on our historic right and on the fact that the Germans of Bohemia never attached value to union with Germany while
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they were under Austrian rule, or even in the time of the Bohemian Kingdom. It was modern pan-German propaganda that first gained adherents among them. During the war they sided with Austria and Germany against us. After the war, and particularly after the revolution in Prague, they sought to organize their own territory politically, but the very attempt proved the impossibility of coordinating their scattered and disconnected regions under one administration. The fact that they set up a variety of German units speaks for itself.
A Czech proposal, which was taken into consideration at the Peace Conference, was once made to cede a part of German Bohemia to Germany. The idea of delimiting the new States as far as possible according to nationality had no lack of supporters in England and America. Yet, on mature reflection, many political men with whom I discussed it, recognized that the discontinuity of important sections of our German territory, no less than its economic interests, told in favor of our historic right; and, at the Peace Conference, these considerations prevailed. Soberly judged, it is to the interest of our Germans themselves that there should be more rather than fewer of them among us. Were we to cede one and a half or even two millions of them to Germany, the remaining million would have far greater reason to fear Czechization than the three millions fear it now. And, if we consider the position between us and our Germans as it was under Austria and as the pan-Germans would like to have it to-day, the question arises whether it is fairer that a fragment of: the German people should remain in a non-German State or that the whole Czechoslovak people should live in a German State. The authority of President Wilson and the principle of self-determination have been invoked by our own Germans as well as by those of Austria. True, "self-determination" was not recognized in Germany, nor did Austrian Germans like Dr. Lammasch, Dr. Redlich, and others admit it, not to mention Czernin and other Austro-Hungarian Ministers. Before the war our people, too, proclaimed it; but, in point of fact, it has never been clearly defined. Does it apply only to a whole people or is it
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valid also for sections of a people? A minority, even a big minority, is not a nation. Nor does "self-determination" carry with it an unconditional right to political independence. Our Germans may "determine" to remain with us, as the Swiss Germans have "determined" to stay outside Germany. Individual rights are not the sole governing factors in the question whether a whole, or parts of a whole, shall be independent; the rights of others enter into it, economic rights no less than the claims of race and tongue; and in our case, Czech rights as well as German, and considerations of reciprocal advantage, especially in the economic sphere.
Hence it was urged at the Peace Conference that to exclude the German minority from Bohemia would damage the Czech majority--a decision the more warranted because the German people in general derives great political benefit, greater than it would if it were wholly united, from the circumstance that a notable part of it lives outside Germany proper, forming an independent State in Austria, holding a preponderant position in Switzerland, and possessing minorities in Czechoslovakia and elsewhere. Even since the war a number of German political men and historians have, indeed, proved that, from the standpoint of culture, the German people gains by its membership of different States. The same reasoning applies to the French--in France, Belgium and Switzerland--and to the English. Naturally, the Germans outside Germany are entitled to political freedom and to a due share in the administration of the States to which they belong. Those States, for their part, are entitled to demand that their German citizens shall not be an aggressive vanguard, as the pan-Germans would have them be, and that they should make up their minds to work together in peace with the peoples among whom they have lived for centuries and to whom they are bound by ties material and spiritual.
Our Germans, as I pointed out in my first Presidential Message, originally came to us as colonists; and the significance of this German colonization would not be lessened even if it were true that a few Germans were already living in the country. Yet
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this does not mean that, as colonists, our Germans are second-class citizens. They were invited to come by our Kings who guaranteed to them the right to live their own lives in full measure--a weighty circumstance, politically and tactically, for the Germans as well as for us. I, for my part, acknowledge and deliberately adopt the policy of our Premyslide Kings who protected the Germans as a race, though I do not approve of the Germanophil leanings of some of the Premyslides. I have nothing against the association of the name "Premyslide"--which, from our verb "premysliti," means "thoughtful"--with the Greek Prometheus, but rather perceive in the name of our first dynasty a reminder that our whole policy, not alone in regard to the Germans, must be well-pondered, thoroughly thought out or, as Havlicek demanded, reasonable and upright. The settlement of the conflict between us and our Germans will be a great political deed, for it implies the solution of a question centuries old, the ordering of our relationship to a large section of the German people and, through it, to the German people as a whole. To this end our Germans must de-Austrianize themselves and get rid of the old habit of mastery and privilege.
Politically, the Germans are the most important of our minorities, and their acceptance of our Republic will simplify all the other minority questions. Alongside of the Germans we have a few Poles, more Little Russians (in Slovakia) and still more Magyars. To them also the rule applies that the rights of race must be safeguarded. Local self-government and proportional representation may, in a democratic State, serve this purpose well. Each minority, too, must have elementary and secondary schools of its own. In civilized Europe the number of high schools and universities is now determined by a definite ratio to population and educational needs. In Germany there are approximately one university for every three million and a technical high school for every six million inhabitants. In Czechoslovakia three million Germans have a university and two technical high schools.
For us, who live in a country racially mixed and so curiously situated in the center of Europe, the language question is of
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great moment, politically and educationally. The official language in a multi-lingual State must be determined by the requirements of the people and by the smooth working of the administration. The State exists for the people, not the people for the State. As a political entity and a unitary organization, our State and its army will use the Czech or Slovak language in accordance with the democratic principle that the majority decides. But, while the State will be Czechoslovak, its racial character cannot be settled by the official language alone. National character does not depend solely on language; and the national character of our State must be based upon the quality of a comprehensive educational policy consistently pursued. Before the war I took part in the controversy upon the question whether the authorities should be unilingual or bi-lingual. In present circumstances I think it more practical that they should be bi-lingual though, during the transition period, it may be better, in some bi-lingual offices, that officials should work in one language only. Experience will presently show whether a unilingual system is feasible. In practice the question is one of knowing the languages spoken in the country. It is in the interest of racial minorities to learn the State language, but it is also in the interest of the majority to be able to speak the languages of the minorities, especially that of the biggest minority. The teaching of languages in the schools will be arranged on this basis. The German language is politically important for us. Our officials must know it, and know it well so as to understand even popular dialects. German is a world-language; and, if only on this account, is valuable as a means of education and culture. German must be taught in the Czech and Slovak secondary schools and in the higher classes of the elementary schools. In the corresponding German schools, Czech must be taught. In Slovakia an analogous rule applies, though perhaps to a more limited extent, to Slovak and Magyar. Time and experience will show whether the learning of these languages should be made compulsory or not. It must be remembered, if the complexity of our language question is to be understood, that in addition to
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our home languages we need Latin and Greek in our Classical high schools besides a knowledge of French and English, Russian and Italian. If they are true sons of Comenius, our pedagogues will have to simplify and to perfect our methods of teaching, so that the learning of languages may be made as easy as possible.
Chauvinism is nowhere justified, least of all in our country. A noteworthy fact, which I often mention to Germans and foreigners as characteristic of our people and of our revolution, is that despite all the Austrian acts of oppression during the war and the intolerant demeanor of a large number of our Germans, no violence was done to the Germans in Prague or elsewhere on October 28, 1918. So filled were our folk with the positive idea of creating a State that they thought no evil and took no reprisals. One or two excesses on the part of individuals prove nothing to the contrary. From the first, the leaders of the revolution wished the Germans to cooperate with them; and, at the Geneva Conference between the delegates of the Prague National Committee and Dr. Benes a proposal was adopted without discussion, as something self-evident, that a German Minister should be included in the Government. In a democracy it is obviously the right of every party to share in the administration of the State as soon as it recognizes the policy of the State and the State itself. Nay, it is its duty to share in it. I know further that the National Committee in Prague simultaneously negotiated with the Germans and sought to gain their goodwill. The Germans affirm that the Lord Lieutenant of Bohemia, Count Coudenhove, was asked on October 29 to join the National Committee as a German representative. In the same spirit our National Committee at Brno, or Brunn, promised the military command in Moravia to invite two Germans to join it. After the revolution, the Czech leaders offered to set up a special Department of State for German affairs--a conciliatory and far-sighted step.
Chauvinism, that is to say, political, religious, racial or class intolerance, has, as history proves, wrought the downfall of all States. A modern Portuguese historian whose name I forget but whom I read in London, shows convincingly that chauvinistic
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imperialism wrecked the Portuguese World-Empire. The same lesson is taught by the fall of Austria and Hungary, Prussia-Germany and Russia--they who take the sword shall perish by the sword. We shall solve our own problem aright if we comprehend that the more humane we are the more national we shall be. The relationship between the nation and mankind, between nationality and internationality, between nationalism and humaneness of feeling is not that mankind as a whole and internationalism and humaneness are something apart from, against or above the nation and nationality, but that nations are the natural organs of mankind. The new order in Europe, the creation of new States, has shorn nationalism of its negative character by setting oppressed peoples on their own feet. To a positive nationalism, one that seeks to raise a nation by intensive work, none can demur. Chauvinism, racial or national intolerance, not love of one's own people, is the foe of nations and of humanity. Love of one's own nation does not entail non-love of other nations.
It is natural that, as a general rule, nationality should be determined by language, for language is an expression, albeit not the only expression of the national spirit. Since the eighteenth century, students of nationality have recognized that it is expressed rather in the whole of a nation's intellectual effort and culture. Conscious fostering of nationality implies therefore a comprehensive policy of culture and education. Literature and art, philosophy and science, legislation and the State, politics and administration, moral, religious and intellectual style, have to be national. Now that we have won political independence and are masters of our fate, a policy conceived in the days of our bondage can no longer suffice. Emphasis was then laid upon our linguistic claims. Now our national program must embrace the whole domain of culture. To the synthesis of culture towards which educated Europe is now striving, I have already referred. It is in countries of mixed race that this synthesis can best begin; and to all racial minorities among educated peoples a weighty and honorable task is thus assigned.
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