Paris Peace Conf. 184.01102/7

Professor A. C. Coolidge to the Commission to Negotiate Peace

No. 15

Sirs: I have the honor to report that no question concerning the future of German Austria weighs more on the minds of public men here than does that of the German speaking portions of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia. In the last few days I have heard a number of them hold forth long and eloquently on the subject and shall now try to give the pith of their views, as usual without comment of my own. I append for convenient reference an ordinary uncritical popular map.7

The German-Austrians, including those in Bohemia, accept a new independent Bohemia as a thing they have no power to change even if they had the wish. They regard separation between themselves and the Czechs as final and in many ways do not regret the dissolution of their former partnership. They are many of them willing [Page 234] to admit, with sadness, that the German islands in the middle of a predominantly Czech population must be regarded as lost, but they protest most strongly against the inclusion in the Czecho-Slav state of large blocks of thoroughly German population, and they contest on every ground the Czech arguments in support of such a course. It should be remembered that the German districts in dispute are divided into three separate and not really contiguous portions, namely—southern Bohemia and Moravia, Northern Bohemia and the so-called Sudetenlands of Eastern Bohemia, Northern Moravia and Silesia. Although these all abut on solid blocks of German speaking people, in only one of the three cases are these people in Austria. The other two are in Germany. The same arguments do riot all apply with equal force in the three regions.

I.
The Geographical and Economic Argument. The German Austrians admit the geographical, and to a certain extent, the economic unity of Bohemia (including Moravia), but they do not regard this as sufficient to outweigh other considerations, and they point out that the Czechs, who are so categorical in demanding this unity for Bohemia, refuse to pay the slightest attention to it in their demand for the Slovak territories of Hungary, a state whose natural geographical limits are equally well marked. They also point out that the argument of a natural frontier, though holding for Northern Bohemia and to a lesser extent for the eastern block of German territories in Bohemia, Moravia and Austrian Silesia, does not apply to the German speaking territories in Southern Bohemia and Moravia where there is no physical separation from the provinces of Upper and Lower Austria. The population on the two sides of the boundary is the same and belongs together. Its political separation is a matter of historical accident. The economic unity too of Bohemia, though in part natural, is largely a matter of historical growth and of protective tariffs. It is true that the manufacturing regions furnish the more agricultural central portion with goods and that the center produces food for the manufactories, but the great established Bohemian industries, most of which were founded by Austrians or by German Bohemians are in their hands, rest on a world-wide market, and not on that of their next neighbors. Naturally a division of Bohemia would produce great economic disturbances and cause suffering, just as the breaking up of the Austrian Empire is doing on a much larger scale at the present moment, but this is a transitory evil which has to be endured. The economic life of all these countries will readjust itself in time.
II.
The Historical Argument Here again the German Austrians admit the unity of the Bohemian state, (except for the Eger district which came in much later and whose separate entity was long recognized), though they claim a much greater share in its history and [Page 235] glory than is accorded to them by the Czechs, and here again they point out the analogous case of Hungary, a country that has also had a unified history, and one not without many glories, but is none the less being subjected to partition. They admit too that the Czechs are the older as well as the more numerous population, although there were Germans there at an earlier period, but they declare that it is absurd to regard the Germans who colonized Bohemia some seven or eight hundred years ago and whose descendants have lived there to the present day, as intruders without rights. If one goes back as far as this, where does one stop short of the cave-dwellers? The territory in which the Germans settled was at the time of their coming practically vacant. The Czechs, not being numerous enough really to fill the whole of it, had taken up the central and more fertile parts. German colonists came in with the cordial encouragement of the Bohemian princes, and peopled the poorer lands around the edges, which have been German ever since in their history and their sentiment, although loyal to their country, in whose history and development they have often taken the leading part. Now, however, that a new state is being established on nationalistic principles hostile to themselves, they claim the right of not being forced into it. The German Austrians say that in conformity with their loyal acceptance of President Wilson’s principles of self-determination they now regard historical arguments as no longer of much value. They have not urged them in the question concerning the boundaries between themselves and the Jugoslavs, where also one finds a unity that has lasted several centuries, and they do not feel that they should have weight in the case of Bohemia.

The great argument on which the Germans of Austria and Bohemia rest their case is, as they are never tired of repeating, the principle of self-determination. They declare that they have accepted President Wilson’s fourteen points without qualification and have acted accordingly. When after the cessation of hostilities the Czechs, instead of disarming, called their men to the colors and occupied the German parts of Bohemia, people in those regions were inclined to resist by force. The government of Vienna, however, forbade all such resistance, declaring that the matter could be settled only by the Peace Conference in Paris, and that the Germans of Austria and Bohemia should peaceably await its decision trusting to the justice of their case. They meet the Czech statement that many of the German Bohemians wish to belong to the new state for economic reasons with the reply that in these districts they are willing to submit the matter to a popular vote, provided that vote be taken under an impartial neutral administration. The territory now seized from them by the Czechs is German to the core and has few Czechs in most of it, except in Northern Bohemia where the industrial development of recent years [Page 236] has led to a large influx of Czech workmen. To tear away some three millions of Germans from their fellows and to unite them against their wills to a Czechish population of barely double their numbers would not only be a most flagrant violation of the principles which the Allies and especially the United States have proclaimed as their own and which have been accepted by Austria, but would utterly destroy any hope of a lasting peace. It would create an Austria Irredenta, conquered provinces less contented and harder for the conqueror to assimilate than ever were Alsace and Lorraine, supported as they would be by equally intense regret and sympathy from the country which had lost them. Anything like good relations between the Czecho-Slovak state and its German and Austrian neighbors would be as impossible as they have been for the last century between Germany and France. The German Austrians are now powerless to resist any decision which the Allies and the United States may impose upon them, but a decision which shall place one third of them under the heel of a foreign people who have already begun to take steps to denationalize them will mean an end to any hope of permanent peace in this part of the world. Sooner or later the question must and will come up again, and in the meantime the “Balkanization” of the former territories of Austria will be a source of woe and peril, not only to the territories themselves but to the rest of the world. In the eyes of the German Austrians today the issue is a clear one between the new doctrine of self-determination from which so much is hoped and naked imperialism of the old discredited type.

I have [etc.]

Archibald Cary Coolidge
  1. Map not reproduced.