our highest duty and--do not hesitate to say so--our national religion
and our greatest moral mission to damage Austria wherever and whenever
possible, and that our loyalty to our own nation, to our native
country, to our history, to our future and to the Bohemian Crown,
prompts us to betray Austria which is backed up by Germany. We are
therefore determined faithfully to betray her whenever and wherever we
can_. I tell you further, gentlemen, that this state, this Austria
which Seidler talks about, is not a state at all. _It is a hideous,
centuries-old dream, a nightmare, a beast, and nothing else_. It is a
state without a name, it is _a constitutional monarchy without a crown
and without a constitution_. For what kind of a constitution is it if
it has not the necessary confirmation by oath and won the general
approval of nations because it was found to be untenable? _It is a
state without patriots and without patriotism_, it is a state which
arose by the amalgamation of eight irredents--the German one
included--it is a state which had no future and in which the dynasty
... (suppressed) ... in a word, it is a state which is no state at all.
_As a matter of fact, Austria no longer exists_, it is an absurdity and
an impossibility. If I spoke about Czech regiments which went to
embrace their 'enemies,' I must admit that personally I know nothing
about them except what I heard from my German colleagues who persist in
making complaints against us. We believe every word of what they say to
be true, but ... (suppressed by censor). Did you ever hear that a
husband conscious of his honour and respectability told the whole world
about the infidelity of his wife who left him because he ill-treated
her? No, because the husband knows that it is his shame and not hers.
_And if Czecho-Slovak brigades are to-day fighting against
Austria-Hungary it is only a proof that there is something very wrong
with Austria, that Austria is more rotten than Shakespeare's Denmark._
For what other state has soldiers who ran over voluntarily to the