They feel that nothing short of a decisive defeat of Austria will liberate them from the thraldom of German-Magyar domination. If Austria collapses in this war the Bohemians will be among the first to profit thereby.[17] Is it really true that the Slavs are loyal? Is it not rather a loyalty wrung from them at the point of the bayonet? Besides, how can they protest against a war which was neither of their choosing nor of their making, when the military rule has made protests impossible? One must respect and even admire the French and the Germans when they declare that they are fighting for the existence of the fatherland. What are the Austrian Slavs fighting for? To them, or rather to the majority of them, Austrian fatherland conveys but an abstraction, for correctly speaking, Austria is a government and not a fatherland in the sense that a German or a Frenchman regards the country of his birth. Austria may possibly be a fatherland to the inhabitants of the Archduchies of Lower and Upper Austria, but not to a Bohemian, a Magyar, or a Pole--certainly no more than England is the fatherland of an Irishman. By allegiance a Bohemian is an Austrian subject, ethnically he belongs to the country of his birth--Bohemia. While the national anthem “Kde domov můj” (Where is my Home?) stirs deeply the emotions of a Bohemian, the singing of the Austrian hymn “Gott erhalte” leaves him cold and indifferent. VIENNA, THE CAPITAL Vienna loves to pose as the beacon-light of the empire somewhat as Paris, the recognized centre of everything French, or Berlin, the pivotal city of Germany. Yet Vienna forgets that it lacks all of the historical, geographical, economic essentials of Paris and, for that matter, of Berlin. What is Vienna? The residence of the sovereign and the seat of the government and the capital--not of the empire, mind you, but of the Archduchy of Lower Austria. The capital of Hungary is Budapest; the centre of attraction of the Poles is Cracow; the heart of the Bohemians is Prague. What has been the attitude of Vienna toward the non-German peoples and their national needs? The good-natured Viennese has for decades seen the Slavs caricatured on the stage, or in the humorous journals, as hopeless simpletons, while the Bohemian Wenzel was chosen by common consent as the quintessence of stupidity. Several years ago a Bohemian Bank purchased palatial quarters on a leading thoroughfare, but it had to cover with cloth a Bohemian sign on the building until the municipality gave its consent thereto. A few years ago a company of actors, attached to the National Theatre at Prague, arranged to give in Vienna representative plays. Anti-Bohemian demonstrations, ending in riots, were the result.