Henri Pozzi, 1935

Pan-Slavism - II. Czechoslovakia and Roumania << Contents >> Appendices: The Hidden Side of the Balkan Pact

Since the downfall of Russia as a Pan-Slav force, the Czech Slavs and the Serb Slavs have assumed the mantle of Pan-Slavism. Each working for their own ends, the Pan-Serbs and the Pan-Slavs of Czechoslovakia, have found themselves heading for a common end. As is always the case in great movements of thought, a man has been found whose mind is a ready vehicle for this new Pan-Slavism. Revealed by the War, Benes, the Czech, has become the centre of the new Pan-Slav dream - the man who has co-ordinated the efforts of Pan-Slavs and given a precise aim to its aspirations.

Benes is a man whom history will without a doubt give credit for being the most clever, the most fanatical servant that Pan-Slavism has ever possessed. He is its Bismarck and its Talleyrand in one, for he seems to have inherited the faults and the qualities of each.

It is under the moral and intellectual standard of this man, this fire-eater Benes, that Belgrade as well as Prague seem to have constituted themselves the heralds of a Great Slavia of To-morrow.

Belgrade has no match for him. Following out their own selfish policy, they are following the dream of Benes almost without realising it. To him belongs the honour of tearing Hungary limb from limb - a dismemberment in which Serbia profited, almost by chance, as truly as did the Czechs.

Hungary has always been an obstacle in the path of the expansion of the Slav domination in Middle Europe and the Balkans. The first objective of the Little Entente was to smash her irrevocably.

This they have done, and Benes is the one man more than any other who has achieved the result that now stands.

All Benes' manoeuvres for the past twenty years have been directed to that end. This it was that inspired the merciless fury which he did not cease to show against his former friends of Budapest and Vienna. It inspired his exaggerated demands at the time of the dismemberment of Hungary, and his obstinacy in demanding Ruthenia--the possession of which was to make Czechoslovakia a neighbour of Soviet Russia and cut Hungary from Poland.

What Russia's military defeats, the Revolution and the accession of Bolshevism have made it impossible for her to attain, Benes, in accord with the Pan-Serbs, whose spirit of imperialism and domination is also his own, has dedicated himself to accomplish.

For fourteen years the scene has unrolled. Step by step Benes' dream is coming true. He willed the destruction of the Hapsburg empire and obtained it from the blindness of the victors; he willed the political domination of Mittel-Europa and the Balkans by seven million Czechs. The fusion into a single economic block of the three associated states of the Little Entente is only the preface to the constitution of this Balkano-Danubian Confederation, directed by Prague, which Benes prophesied in 1917 would be an accomplished fact before twenty years.

The men who do not see the immense peril to peace in the work of Benes are voluntarily blind.

Benes is sole master of Czechoslovakia. President Mazaryk is only a powerless shadow. It was Benes who willed and committed all the violations of justice and right in the Danube valley which render war inevitable, if Europe does not impose a revision. It is he who exacted the annexation of Eastern Hungary and more than a million Hungarians; he who refused to keep the engagements made with the Slovaks; he who refused to recognise the autonomy of Ruthenia accorded to them by the Peace Treaty; he who for fourteen years used his influence at Geneva in order that the complaints of oppressed nationalities should be ignored.

The man has not changed in his ambitions and methods in the last fifteen years, save that his cleverness, his confidence in himself, and his will to dominate have increased with power.

He is ever the proud realist whose unbridled imperialism in willing the future of his country, pushed the paper frontiers of the future Czechoslovakia to Budapest, and even to Berlin.

This junction of the Czech and Serb Slavs is still a thing to be feared. To prevent it there must be maintained between these two groups a Hungary with a Gerrnano-Latin civilisation, and bound by an ancient friendship to a Poland of Catholic and Occidental mentality like her own. In this way only will the bloated creature of Pan-Slavism be kept in check.

I have written this book because politicians and Press are hiding from France the truth of what is preparing for her in the shadows. France must not find herself engaged in another world conflict as the result of a few ambushes prepared and placed by a gang of flattering brigands.

Against the war which is coming again a sole guarantee of peace remains.

Notification must be given to the despotic governments of Pan-Slavism that in no case, under no pretext, will we protect them against the consequences of their errors, nor support them in the injustices for which they are responsible.

Are we going to run our heads into a war like that of twenty years ago to save men whose violence, ambitions and appetites have started it? Are we going to watch all the youth of France butchered to save the Pan-Serb dictatorship or to maintain by force the unity of Czechoslovakia?

Is England prepared to stand by a France who is wedded to a nest of brigands, and who shares all unconsciously their brigandage and the responsibilities of their crimes?

Let the people of France and England cry "Never!"

Sarajevo is enough!

Pan-Slavism - II. Czechoslovakia and Roumania << Contents >> Appendices: The Hidden Side of the Balkan Pact