Toward a New Central Europe

DANUBIAN FEDERATION

F. O. MIKSCHE

Statesmen in Favor of a Federal Solution

NO responsible statesman has ever questioned the importance of unity in the Danube Basin for European stability. The following quotations have been selected from the large number of declarations on record:

"The Austrian Monarchy is a combination of ill-assorted States. Such a power is necessarily weak, but it is an adequate bulwark against the barbarians and a necessary one. In the future the Habsburg Empire will stand with its back towards Europe and its front to the East, thus protecting Western civilization from the aggression of Russia."
(Talleyrand to .Napoleon, on the 17th October, 1805, before the battle of Austerlitz.)

"What should be put in that space in Europe which is occupied now by the Austrian State, from Tyrol to the Bukovina? New formations in that region would be of a permanently revolutionary character . . ."
(Bismarck, ill 1866, on the eve of the Peace of Nikolsburg.)

"If Austria did not exist she would have to be invented. The disintegration of the Austrian State into small republics would be an invitation to German and Russian imperialism."
(Frantisek Palacky, Czech historian, in 1848. Palacky is generally considered in Bohemia to be the father of the Czech nation', but is unfortunately less famous in the West than T, G. Masaryk.)

"The other possible course for the Peace Conference of 1919 would have been to decide that this well-balanced economic territory, with its unified system of money and credit and communications, should remain an entity formed from components enjoying national autonomy within a federal constitution."
(The late Dr. Karl Renner, President of Austria, in the American quarterly review, Foreign Affairs July, 1948.)

"A federation would considerably improve conditions. It would be within the strategic triangle of Europe formed by Budapest, Vienna and Prague. It would combine those nations living in the Danubian Basin formed by the Carpathians, the Sudeten Mountains and the

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Alps. Only by solving the Danubian problem can the peace of Europe be established."
(The late Pal Teleki, Prime Minister of Hungary, in a message on the eve of his suicide on the 2nd April, 1941. See Transylvania, by L. Cornish, published in Philadelphia in 1947. p. 166.)

"A federalized Central Europe is one of the absolute necessities of a new post-war order. It is the only possible organization which in that region can preserve the principles of national and individual liberty and ordered freedom."
(The late Dr. .Milan Hodza, Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia in 193S in his book: Federation in Central Europe, London, 1942.)

"Federalism honestly applied is in the interest of Czechs, and Hungarians, Austrians and Slovaks. It is one of their most vital interests. Benes' and Masaryk's democracy broke down because it was not a Christian democracy but a purely mechanical one."
(Peter Privadok, Secretary General of the Slovak National Council, in Hungaria, 11th January, 1952,)

"The second cardinal tragedy was the complete break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire by the treaties of St. Germain and Trianon. For centuries this surviving embodiment of the Holy Roman Empire had afforded a common life, with advantages in trade and security, to a large number of peoples none of whom in our own times had the strength or vitality to stand by themselves in the face of pressure from a revivified Germany or Russia."
(Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm, London, 1946.)

"It may be that closer relations among the Danubian States will once again emerge as a stabilizing influence in this part of Europe. The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was a calamity of peace. It the countries that formed it could one day find some arrangement that would allow them to work together again in happy association, how welcome this would be."
(Anthony Eden, in the New York Times, 6th October, 1950.)

"The spirit of federalism, the future organization of the world in political respect, will play an important role. In the same measure it safeguards the natural and healthy life of human communities in bringing about the greatest welfare of all mankind. I wish you great success in your labor and God give you light and assistance."
(Pope Pius XII, to the members of the Congress of World Federalists, held in Rome, April, 1951.)

"In America and elsewhere it was hard to convince people that it would be necessary to break up Austria-Hungary. Austria was generally looked upon as a counterpoise to Germany, as a necessary organization of small peoples and odds and ends of peoples, and as a safeguard against balkanization. I feared that we might achieve nothing if the war ended quickly. If it were protracted we might have more time for propaganda."
(T. G. Masaryk, The Making of a State. London, Allen & Unwin, 1929.)

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Federalism in Multinational Regions

There have been many changes in the Danube Basin since 1918, but the problems of the area are still basically the same. Experience has shown that small sovereign states soon become fiercely antagonistic in regions where the peoples are intermingled and the political frontiers do not coincide with the ethnical ones; also, they are frequently used as pawns in the game of Great Power rivalry. In a multinational area it is difficult to define the territory of a people, and the inevitable claims and counterclaims between non-cooperating states in such an area lead to irredentism, border disputes, forced assimilation, and the massacre and deportation of thousands of innocent victims - millions in the recent cases of Poland and Czechoslovakia. International anarchy reigns until a Great Power intervenes and "creates order,'. In the collision between democracy and nationalism the latter, unless checked by federalism, overpowers and destroys the former. Democracy alone is not a sufficient safeguard against excessive nationalism, and may even multiply its evils by misusing majority rule; in fact democracy usually resorts to majority rule in the interest of one people in multinational areas divided into sovereign states, and at the turning point, when the oppressed minorities revolt it becomes a dictatorship. Consequently the nationalistic form of democracy not only destroys the cultural life of the common homeland and plunges millions of its peoples into misery, it also destroys its own political system and opens the way for the intervention of foreign powers. All this was clearly illustrated by the case of Czechoslovakia, which might properly be considered a prototype of such developments. Even democraticallyminded Czech statesmen, because of their antifederalist nationalism agreed with the expulsion of millions of their fellow citizens, an act which violated the basic principles of democracy.

Before 1918 Czechs and Sudeten Germans shared the government of Bohemia, and in Slovakia the Hungarians dominated the Slovaks; after 1919 Czechs secured the dominant positions in both Bohemia and Slovakia, and held them until 1939, when the minorities revolted and Slovakia became independent. After the war, in 1945, the Czechs returned to power and violently expelled the non-Slavic minorities the principal sufferers being the 3.3 million Sudeten Germans. This expulsion of the most anti-Russian elements of the population made the subsequent seizure of power by the communists, in 1948, much more easy than it would otherwise have been; and led to the shackling of the Czech people in the chains of a new slavery. In Central Europe small sovereign states are and always will be unable to guarantee the rights of national and religious minorities, which can only be secured by sincere acceptance of the principle of federation. The promises of exiled statesmen that this will not be so in the future cannot be trusted; the system is faulty, and even politicians who are liberal and benevolent in outlook are subject to the pressure of nationalistic

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public opinion and are almost driven to commit injustices, whereas only justice can ensure peace. The freedom and security of small nations can only be guaranteed by their inclusion in a federation which confers common citizenship on all its inhabitants.

It must be emphasized that an attempt to organize a Central European federation on too big a scale would be a mistake which could easily end in frustration and failure. A federation stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea and the Adriatic could not be expected to have the necessary stability, because the widely differing peoples inhabiting the region - Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Czechs, Hungarians, Slovaks, Croats, Serbs, etc. - have no common historical, economic, cultural, psychological or geographical background, but there is reason to believe that something of this sort is in the minds of the Poles. It may be, however, that Poland will one day have serious difficulties - with Germany over the Oder frontier line, and with the Ukrainians over East Galicia. These matters do not concern the peoples of the Danube Basin, but if their countries entered into a federation with Poland they would inevitably become involved in them. Even under the Habsburg Monarchy the Polish provinces were to a great extent isolated, because they were separated from the Danube Basin by the Carpathians, and the two regions had little in common either economically or culturally. Another important reason for not attempting federation on too large a scale in the first place is the probability that a federation which included Poland would not be joined by Austria. For economic reasons Austria, as it was fashioned in 1919, cannot remain independent for very long and must eventually either join a federation or enter into a new Anschluss with Germany, and if the Germans got back to Vienna the political order of the entire Danubian region would be jeopardized, and German pressure on the whole of South Eastern Europe, especially the Balkan Peninsula and Rumania, would become overwhelming. Only the inclusion of Austria in a Danubian federation would avert the danger of such developments, which could not fail to have an adverse effect on relations between Germany and the Western nations, particularly France. There are strong reasons for believing that some Polish politicians are trying to persuade the Americans that a new Anschluss should be tolerated as compensation to Germany for the loss of her Eastern territories; but Germany needs the sparsely inhabited agricultural territories behind the Oder, not Alpine rocks, to relieve the pressure of surplus population in her Western regions and solve the problem of food production, which is the cause of her present excessive dependence on industrial exports.

How Federation Can Be Achieved

The problem of creating a Central European federation can only be solved in one way, by setting up a limited federation in an area

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where the conditions are favorable, which would act as a nucleus to which neighboring nations would in time adhere. The regions inhabited by the Austrians, Czechs, Hungarians and Slovaks, which are geographically, culturally, psychologically and economically complementary, provide the most favorable conditions for the initial federation. It is a historical fact that these nations united against the Turkish danger in the year 1527, maintained their union until it was destroyed by the Peace Treaties of 1919/20. Both before and after 1919 it was the narrow nationalism and economic selfishness of the ruling political cliques rather than the sentiments of the masses that fostered discord, hatred and oppression; the people were always more disposed to be cooperative than their leaders cared to admit

There is no irreconcilable antagonism between Hungarians, Slovaks, Austrians and Czechs; trouble begins only when the Czechs call themselves 'Czechoslovaks'. It is the support still given by the West to the idea of a Czechoslovak State that complicates the situation in Danubian Europe, and once this support is withdrawn the problem will be much simplified. There are several important reasons why this matter should receive serious consideration. The majority of the Slovaks will never willingly accept their former position or anything resembling it, and without them there can be no Czechoslovakia. The few Slovak emigrants in the West who advocate the idea of a unified Czechoslovakia do not represent the views of the Slovak people, at least 80 per cent of whom are fanatically anti-Czech. For the Hungarians the Czechoslovak State represents Czech hegemony in the Danube Basin, and the Austrians also regard it with great hostility. Czechoslovakia does not fit naturally into the framework of the Danube Basin, and can only be kept in place by force.

Although there can be no question of making political decisions contrary to the freely expressed wishes of the peoples affected, it should not be too readily assumed that public opinion is always right. The results of plebiscites and other devices for measuring opinion are often swayed by passing passions, and decisions made under the stress of emotions are seldom wise or durable. Public opinion is largely the creation of propaganda, and propaganda could do an immense amount of good in the Danubian region, if it aimed at canalizing the will of the peoples toward a natural solution of their problems. If they were able to express an opinion today the majority of Austrians and Hungarians would certainly favor a federal solution; and so would the Slovaks, without whom there can be no Czechoslovak State. Exiled politicians claim that the entire Czech people favors the Czechoslovak conception, but this is not true, it is only popular in certain intellectuel and middle class circles which represent only a tiny minority the great majority of industrial workers and peasants are, if anything indifferent. The reconstruction of Czechoslovakia would merely satisfy the ambitions of a handful of Czech nationalists, and it is to be hoped that no one will assume on their behalf the responsibility for

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reviving past conflicts in the Danube Basin. Even if the Czechs were solidly in opposition the projected federation would still correspond with the wishes of the great majority of the Danubian peoples, because the Austrians, Hungarians and Slovaks together total 22 million, against only about 6.5 million Czechs.

If the West really wants to remedy its past mistakes it cannot begin too soon.

To sum up: There are no differences between Austrians on the one hand and either Czechs or Slovaks on the other, and the Hungarian-Czech and Czech-Slovak antagonisms would disappear if the West ceased to support the idea of a Czechoslovak State. The following problems would then remain to be settled by the Danubian nations:

1.) The frontier question between Slovakia and Hungary. Within the framework of a federation this would be a matter of settling an internal line of demarcation, rather similar to that between two cantons in Switzerland, and it should not be difficult to agree on a division which placed the majority of inhabitants of each nationality under the administration of their compatriots.

2. ) The problem of Ruthenia, or the Sub-Carpathian Ukraine. The northern frontier of a Danubian federation can only lie along its natural line, the Carpathians, if Ruthenia is included in the federation. This region belonged to Hungary for a thousand years, and was inhabited by 450,000 Ukrainians, but the Treaties of 1919/20 gave it to Czechoslovakia. A promise of provincial autonomy for Ruthenia within the Czechoslovak State was broken by the Prague government. By agreement between Prague and Moscow, Ruthenia was ceded to the Soviet Union in 1945, and was added to the Ukrainian S.S.R.; the majority of the original inhabitants have since been banished into the interior of the Soviet Empire.

To attach Ruthenia to the Ukraine - either the present Soviet Ukraine or a future independent Ukrainian Republic - is to bring a historically foreign element into the geopolitically clearly defined Danube Basin, and there are other reasons why it should be part of a Danubian Federation. From the Ukrainian point of view Ruthenia lies on the far side of the almost unscaleable Carpathians and is as difficult to administer as, for example, a Spanish province across the Pyrenees would be for France. The region is economically dependent on Hungary, and for hundreds of years the inhabitants lived by felling timber in the Carpathian forests in winter, floating it down the river Theiss (Tisza) to Hungary in the spring, and working at the Hungarian harvest in the summer; it was a disaster for them when their country was separated from Hungary in 1919.

In the broadest sense the solution of the Danubian problem depends on blending the various peoples in suitable proportions in a federation. The proposed association would comprise about twentyeight million souls, some twelve million of whom would be Slavs

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(Czechs, Slovaks and Ruthenians) and sixteen million non-Slavs (Austrians and Hungarians). In such a federation, consisting of five autonomous countries - Austria, Bohemia and Moravia, Hungary, Slovakia and Ruthenia - the Czechs, Slovaks and Ruthenians would be a guarantee against Pan-Germanism, and the Austrians and Hungarians against Pan-Slavism. Only in this way can the Slavic nations of the Danube Basin be prevented from falling victims once more to Pan-Slav ideology, and the Austrians and Hungarians be diverted from Pan-Germanism. Only a solution on these lines can restore the internal equilibrium of this vital part of Europe, and make it once more a stabilizing factor in international politics. The decisions made after the First World War can no longer be regarded as a satisfactory foundation for the future, and the ideas on which they were based should be abandoned. The order which was then created lasted only twenty years, and its collapse was a main cause of the Second World War and the catastrophic world situation of today. It should not be forgotten that Czechoslovakia was an international calamity throughout her existence, and that any policy based on false historical foundations can only cause new calamities.

It remains to be seen whether the West will continue to support the ambitions of a few exiled politicians who may or may not represent the wishes and interests of their peoples. It is not surprising t hat many Czech politicians find it easier to make political capital out of the Masaryk legend than to follow an entirely new line, but would it not be advisable to eliminate this myth from Western propaganda and make no more use of names which bear a heavy responsibility fir disrupting the unity of the Danubian region? It is difficult to see how the creation of a new Europe can be assisted by the memory of people whose narrow nationalism had such a baneful influence on the course of history. Politicians of Masaryk's type are very often public dangers, for they rouse peoples to revolt and then fail through weakness to guide the forces they have conjured up in a suitable direction. A new spirit is needed, and the entire Central European problem must be settled on a basis of "what is right?" and not "who is right?"

The creation of a Central European Federation would naturally be beset by many difficulties. It would be necessary for Austria to be raised to a more important position than she has occupied since 1919, which would greatly influence the future of the entire Danube Basin. Austria is the only Danubian country which is relatively free and Vienna is one of the most important advanced posts of the West in Central Europe, but she will only be able to carry on the fight against Bolshevism on the one hand and Pan-Germanism on the other if she is granted a greater measure of justice than she received under the 1919 Treaty of St. Germain. The Western Powers would be well advised to base their future policy in the Danubian region on Vienna and not on a few discredited exiled politicians.

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The often repeated argument that the partition of Czechoslovakia would increase the dislocation in the Danube Basin is unconvincing if it is remembered that such a partition is an essential prerequisite for the creation of a larger political organization. The restoration of the unity of the Danube Basin would not hinder eventual federation of the whole of Europe, on the contrary, it would facilitate it. From whatever viewpoint the problem is regarded, the establishment of a Danubian Federation appears to be the essential first step which must be taken toward the future political reorganization of Central Europe. If MI. Eden's words: "The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was a calamity for peace. If the countries that formed it could one day find some arrangement that would allow them to work together again in happy association, how welcome this would be...', were seriously meant the present policy must be abandoned and a new one adopted.

Political actions should be judged by their results and not by the nationality of those responsible for them, and usually it is at least a generation before the true nature of these results becomes apparent. Viewed from this distance in time it is obvious that Masaryk's "liberation" led to the Balkanization of Central Europe, and that the Treaties of 1919 created a situation incomparably worse than the one they were supposed to remedy. These may seem to be strange words for a Czech to write, but no better ending could be devised for this study than the wise words of another Czech, the famous historian Frantisek Palacky: "If Austria did not exist she would have to be invented."

MAP 2

THE SOLUTION OF THE DANUBIAN PROBLEM

(not shown)

The proposed solution would associate about 28 million souls, some 12 million of whom would be Slavs (Czechs, Slovaks and Ruthenians) and 16 million non-Slavs (Austrians and Hungarians), in a federation consisting of five autonomous countries - Austria, Bohemia and Moravia, Hungary, Slovakia and Ruthenia. The Slav elements would be a guarantee against Pangermanism, and the non-Slavs against Panslavism.

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Toward a New Central Europe