English Translation

Grazian: THE CRIEG AND THE SMALL PEOPLE Rice world-historical crises make their conditions of existence clear to the peoples. At least they create the conditions for the people who are therefore trying to do so. They are historical constellations, which are bought by enormous shocks of the existing, by threat of all that has come to pass, by fear, restlessness and extreme tension. But one of its advantages is to suddenly open up the abysses of historical depths, to give completely new glances in stratification and contexts of one's own national and personal existence, but so that previous mere historical knowledge can be transformed into living and painfully blooded-through experience and thus into clear consciousness. Such constellations are limited as those of the celestial bodies. Human as well as political wisdom commands to use them. Life in quiet, undisturbed times is comfortable, but it drowsinesses. The sense for the latent danger of all human beings is dull. The consciousness of its necessary political concrete preconditions slumbers, historical experience sinks to mere knowledge. Today we are living through such a crisis period, which at the same time sharpens the sense of its foundations, requirements and thus reserves with the deadly threat of our forms of life. The European forms of life and existence are in between double rushes: between the emerging steppe of the East and unbridled businness-Americanism. This threat, which forces to extreme tension even of the intellectual powers, prolongs and sharpens living consciousness of the preconditions of European total existence. One cannot say that the Czech people have so far been distinguished by a particular understanding of their political conditions of existence. A brief look at his behaviour within the framework of his last state-political forms shows this. From the Czech point of view, the Habsburg monarchy was undoubtedly the relatively cheapest form of his securing his existence. It offered a double advantage: one part of an old-known great power and the thereby given certainty, on the other hand the possibility to throw in the balance the restrained weight of a small people in a multi-ethnic state on optimal favorable conditions. Of course, temporary recognition of these circumstances has created certain forms of Austro-Slavism, but it immediately slips into other paths. Far from considering the conditions of existence of this power and following it, one subverts it and recognizes it only when it is too late. Contemporary Czech overall impression is that in this "people's people" it is impossible to endure and therefore it is necessary to quickly escape to the ideal state of the future. Today there are not a few Czechs who are willing to scratch their old "peoples' men" with their nails out of the ground. When the ideal state of the future became flesh in the form of the Czecho-Slovak Republic, an analogous attitude appears.