President Masaryk is a Moravian, and General Stefanik is a Slovak. These two men, together with Dr. Benes, a Czech, were the leaders in securing the recognition of Czechoslovak independence, and have succeeded in retaining the confidence of their people during the formative years of the new republic. This fact in itself, however, is not indicative of a real fusion of the Slavic elements. It will be remembered that even during the war some of the most prominent Austrian statesmen were Czechs, notably Count Czernin. The Czechs make up 46 per cent of the population of the new state, and even with the Slovaks amount to only 60 per cent. The two million Slovaks have insisted upon autonomy from the very beginning of the national life, and only their cultural inferiority has prevented them from acting as the Croats have acted in Jugoslavia. The greatest problem is that of the Germans, who live in a more or less compact mass in regions contiguous to Germany and Austria. Were it not for two saving factors in the situation, the natural mountain frontier separating the Germans of Bohemia from Germany and the cultural equality of the Czechs with the Germans, the presence in the body politic of a German _bloc_, comprising 27 per cent of the total population, would make Czechoslovakia a hopeless proposition. For, after the collapse of the Central Empires, the Germans of Bohemia declared themselves united to Austria and opposed to the bitter end the determination of the Peace Conference to put them under Czech rule in defiance of the right of self-determination. The Germans form a separate party in the Czechoslovak parliament, and use their own language in addressing the chair and in debates. They assert that they are citizens of Czechoslovakia against their will and that they had no part in forming the new constitution under which they are governed. They resent the sudden change of fortune of the Teutonic master race. Their new position is humiliating. But powerful material considerations have led them to make the best of a bad business and to accept the _fait accompli_. Austria is in a sorry plight, and the condition of Germany is not much better. The Germans of Czechoslovakia are far better off, although politically depressed, than Germans in any other part of the world. Comparatively speaking, the country of which they are now citizens is prosperous, and they form a large enough element to be able to stand up for their rights in the new state. The danger to Czechoslovakia of containing so large a German population will come only when Germany has rehabilitated herself, or if Austria succeeds in reaching a degree of prosperity equal to that of Czechoslovakia.