"You should at least be gentlemanly enough not to slander your enemies who have proved themselves to be greater heroes than any other soldiers, because they are voluntary heroes, whereas the others are heroes under compulsion! "This question of cowardice is therefore, I hope, settled forever. "And now with regard to the title of 'traitors.' _We are traitors to Austria--every one of us admits it honestly_. Not one of you, however, has the right to reproach us for this. All of you are patriots by order, and it cannot be otherwise in a dynastic state like Austria. "With regard to the patriotism of the Magyars, we have proofs of this dating from 1866. They have done the same as we are doing to-day. They surrendered and organised Klapka's legions against Austria. The fact that they were punished for their treachery by being given their own independence does not speak against us. "Yes, gentlemen, we are traitors as much as you Magyars, or as you Germans were, or would be under similar circumstances. And _we want the same as you want_, i.e. _to be free citizens of our own state_. Our own state--that does not mean to have a few officials or one more university. To have a state of our own--that means to be able to decide freely if our soldiers shall go to war again, and if they do, to see that they go only for the interests of their own nation, and not for the interests of their enemies. An independent state--that means for us no longer to die by order of foreigners, and no longer to live under foreign domination. "Let me remind the gentlemen on the German benches of a lesson in history. Up till 1866 Germany was nominally under the sceptre of the Habsburg dynasty--a German dynasty, mind you. Prussia and Northern Germany felt the indignity of the 'foreign' rule of the Habsburgs--and they started the fratricidal war in 1866 in order to get rid of this rule.... "It is for you gentlemen on the German benches to speak! Let him who regrets the blood then spilt stand up and speak. Let him stand up and condemn Bismarck and William I. who started the war in order to deliver Germany from the same yoke from which we are trying to free ourselves to-day. If there is a single man among the Germans who would be prepared to say that the war against Austria should never have happened, let him stand up. That war was carried on to free Germany from the incapable rule of Vienna and it had the same aim in view which you reproach us with to-day and call high treason! "You are silent, gentlemen! We are satisfied with your silence. And now go and continue to stone and abuse us."