We base this declaration on our historic and natural rights. Since the seventh century, we have existed as an independent State, and it was as an independent State which included Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, that, in 1526, we formed with Austria and Hungary a defensive league against the Turkish menace. In thus federating ourselves, however, we never voluntarily abandoned our rights as an independent State. The Hapsburgs having broken their bond with our nation by the illegal transgression of our rights and by the violation of our constitution which they had sworn to defend, we refuse to continue a part of Austria-Hungary under any form whatsoever. We claim the right of Bohemians to unite themselves with our Slovak brothers of that Slovakia, which, once part of our national territory was torn from the body of our State and attached to the Hungary of the Magyars who, because of their unspeakable violence and oppression of subject nationalities, have lost all moral and human right to govern others.

The world knows the history of our struggle against Hapsburg oppression, intensified and systematized by the 1867 compromise of Austro-Hungarian dualism; that dualism which is nothing less than a shameless organization of conscienceless force, a mere exploitation of a majority by a minority, a conspiracy of the Germans and Magyars against our own nation and the various Slav and Latin nations of the monarchy. The world recognizes the justice of our claims which even the Hapsburgs themselves have not dared deny. Francis Joseph himself recognized in a solemn manner on several occasions the sovereign rights of our nation. Germans and Magyars, however, opposed this recognition, and Austria-Hungary, yielding to the Pan

Germanists and becoming a colony of Germany and the vanguard of Germany's march to the East, provoked, not only the Balkan war but also the great universal conflict which was begun by the Hapsburgs without the consent of the people's representatives.

We cannot and we will not continue to live under the direct or indirect domination of the violators of Belgium, France, and Serbia, the would-be murderers of Russia and Rumania, murderers of thousands of civilians and soldiers of our blood, guilty instruments of numberless and unspeakable crimes committed against humanity in this war by two degenerate and irresponsible dynasties. We do not wish to continue part of a State whose existence nothing justifies, a State, which, refusing to accept the essential principles of modern reorganization remains a purely artificial and immoral structure, a drag on all democratic and social progress. The Hapsburg dynasty, weighed down by its immense heritage of crimes and blunders is a perpetual menace to the peace of the world, and we consider it a duty to civilization to aid in its overthrow and destruction. We reject the sacrilegious assertion that the Hapsburgs and the Hohenzollerns are of divine origin; we refuse to recognize the divinity of the rights of any king. Our nation, by its free will, elected the Hapsburgs to the throne of Bohemia. Our nation, to-day, by the exercise of the same right deposes them from the throne. We hereby declare the Hapsburg dynasty unworthy of governing our nation, and we reject any pretension it may have of ruling the Czecho-Slovak people, and we declare that that people should be henceforth but one people, one nation, free and independent.

We accept the ideal of modern democracy, and shall adhere to it, for it

has been for centuries the ideal of our nation. We accept the American principles, as they have been proclaimed by President Wilson, principles which proclaim a liberated humanity, the real equality of nations, and the truth that a just government requires the consent of the governed. We, the nation of Comenius, can accept nothing less than the principles expressed in the American Declaration of Independence, the principles of Lincoln, and the declarations of the rights of the man and the citizen. For these principles our nation poured forth its blood five hundred years ago during the Hussite wars, it is for these same principles that side by side with the Allies our nation pours forth its blood to-day in Russia, France, and Italy.

We shall foreshadow only the larger lines of the Czecho-Slovak constitution, the definite decision regarding the constitution being the office of representatives legally elected from a free and united people. The CzechoSlovak State will be a republic. It will struggle to keep steadily on a progressive path, it will assure the completest liberty of conscience, science, literature, art, and the press; it will not bind the rights of reunion and petition. The church will be apart from the State. Our democracy will be founded on universal suffrage. Politically, socially, and intellectually, all men will be placed on an equal footing. The rights of the minority will be safe

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guarded by proportional representation. The Government will be of the parliamentary form and will recognize the initiative and the referendum. The permanent army will be replaced by a militia. The Czecho-Slovak nation will accomplish social and economic reforms of great import. Great properties will be divided up to promote colonization; titles of nobility will be abolished; our nation will accept her share of the public debt contracted by Austria before the beginning of the war. We leave the debts due to the war to those who caused it. In reference to foreign affairs, the Czecho-Slovak nation will accept its full share of the task of reorganizing Eastern Europe. This nation accepts in its entirety the social and democratic rights of nationalities, and proclaims its allegiance to the doctrine which urges the public making of treaties and the end of secret diplomacy. Our constitution will establish a just and powerful national government which will exclude all particular privilege and forbid all class legislation. Democracy has overthrown theocratic autocracy; militarism is conquered; democracy is victorious. Humanity will be rebuilt on democratic foundations. The powers of darkness brought to pass the victory of light. The goal to which Humanity has long aspired is in view.

We believe in democracy; we believe in liberty, in liberty forever!

Nor long ago the delegates of the workingmen's federations and unions met at the Winter Circus to unfold their ideas concerning the peace and the economic reorganization of France. We shall confine ourselves to a résumé of the economic and social ideas of the working class, for in regard to the question of peace, the policy of French unionism has been clear. They have pronounced themselves in favor of the League of Nations, of the right of national self-determination, they have spoken against reprisals and have reclaimed with a certain vagueness, perhaps, a full amnesty for all.

Well aware of the rôle played by workmen during the war, and of the task which awaits the working class in the coming epoch, the General Confederation of Labor believes that the workers should be called to share in the debates of the peace conference. 'We claim an official share in the proceedings of the conference,' they say, without specifying whether this simply translates the desire to see a workman or two at the conference or whether beside the other technical experts in finance, in military matters, and in economic law, they wish to see a technical expert in the matter of labor.

The economic programme of the General Confederation is far more complete and precise than its programme of international action. It contains clauses concerning the relations of nations, the international organization of labor, the reorganization of a country's economic life; it dwells on

the rights and the sphere of action of the public power; certain sections deal with the workingman's relation to circumstances born of the war.

The French working classes resolutely set their faces against all economic war and even against all policy of protection; they see in such political action not only the danger of armed conflicts but also the peril of spoliation for themselves. In fact, this free trade policy of the Confederation has been pursued with such merciless logic that it has led to the classic dogmas of political economy; the workers are now for having production internationalized and each country instructed to specialize in that branch of production for which Nature has intended it; thus will be avoided, they declare, 'those deceiving schemes which have hindered that free exchange of goods which Nature makes necessary among

men.'

Without stopping here to reopen the Protection-Free-Trade controversy and without pausing to argue as to whether Nature imposes on Humanity one system or the other, we must realize that the necessity of provisioning ourselves cheaply and quickly will plead in favor of free trade; also let us note in passing that the idea of an allied tariff wall encircling the Central Empires has been seriously shaken by this attitude.

We shall pass on to the next great formula of the workers, 'that the great highways of ocean communication should be open without restriction to ships of all countries.' We are dealing

now with the famous principle of the freedom of the seas, a principle which I personally have never been able to understand. The freedom of the seas has never, as far as I know, been limited for vessels in time of peace; it seems to me useless, therefore, to urge it imperatively as a clause of a future treaty. As for the liberty of the seas in time of war, why should the sea be more open than the earth frontier of the belligerents? No one has yet claimed the freedom of the earth!

The workingmen's programme not only demands free trade; but it also desires to see that trade organized by the common consent of the various States; it foresees the creation of an international bureau of transportation, a kind of court for the division of raw materials, and a universal accord for the exploitation of colonial lands. The programme does not allow complete commercial liberty; it makes allowances for the conditions fostered by the war. For it would seem dangerous to abandon the measures taken by the Allies for the control of raw material; a return to absolute liberty would allow certain countries to retain all their production of raw material or to sell it at so high a price that it would work mischief to others. Moreover, the division of tonnage among the various nations should permit each nation to supply itself regularly.

By the side of these very general problems the programme of the Confederation touches another with international relations, a special problem, that of the employment of foreign workmen.

We have said elsewhere that the French workingman was no hater of the stranger; he merely wishes that his well-being, his scale of living be not lowered by the introduction of foreign labor into French industries.

To-day our workers still claim the right of every man to work freely in every country; they ask, however, that all those working in France, strangers or citizens, be paid the same wages. Moreover, to avoid an invasion of their various trades by foreign workmen whose presence would lead to a lowering of salaries, the Confederation asks that the migrations of workers be placed under the control of a committee composed of various nationalities, this committee to fix the limit to which a foreign personnel may be recruited. This same control is to be extended over races of color in the interest of whose intellectual level French workers demand the organizing of elementary schools at industrial plants.

But international problems occupy the workingman less than the profound transformations which are becoming necessary and already declaring themselves in our national economic life. To produce with intensity, to use only the most modern machinery, to exploit to the full and with system all the resources of the country, taking no heed of economic Malthusianism, to capitalize all capacities and assets, these be the great principles which should underlie our national reorganization.

Upon the nation, represented by its government, lies the duty of looking to the carrying out of these principles, but the nation must be understood to possess the right to profit by the results which the common economic effort will bring to pass. It should not permit enormous and abnormal fortunes, which are always the product of the common energy of the country.

Guardian of the general right, the nation should exercise control over all the branches of production, the nation in particular should not abandon to individuals that which is the property

of all. Let no one, however, take these words in the sense that French labor is aiming at the nationalization of industry. Such is not the case. Let us quote directly from the programme.

'If it is not desirable,' says the programme, 'to extend the direct management of the State over all things, it is none the less essential that nothing which is necessary to personal family and national life should be delivered over to private interests, without having established over those interests a control which will oblige them to direct their efforts along the road of common interest.' This control, it appears, will be applied by agents of the State, and by delegates from the great associations of producers and consumers. This union of powers will result in the control of the industry by all those interested. We have before us a new conception of national control. The Confederation thus expresses its desireL'Europe Nouvelle

'Whenever a capitalist organization has in its power a raw material or a matter necessary to the production of a raw material, the monopoly of the State will be imposed as a means of stabilizing the production and directing its flow.'

But, the programme continues, the economic reorganization of the country and the exploitation of the national wealth will be profitable only if the nation will confide the working of the reorganization to the various departments, communes, and local bodies, above all, to committees administered by qualified representatives of producers and consumers.

This programme may be summed up in a few formulas, the control of private industry, the participation of the State in the direction of certain economic interests, the decentralization of power, and the giving over of economic rule to the general mass.

Reveille

By Robert Nichols.