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"At this grave moment when the Hohenzollerns are offering peace in order to stop the victorious advance of the Allied armies and to prevent the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary and Turkey, and when the Habsburgs are promising the federalisation of the empire and autonomy to the dissatisfied nationalities committed to their rule, we, the Czecho-Slovak National Council, recognised by the Allied and American Governments as the Provisional Government of the Czecho-Slovak State and nation, in complete accord with the declaration of the Czech deputies in Prague on January 6, 1918, and realising that federalisation and, still more, autonomy mean nothing under a Habsburg dynasty, do hereby make and declare this our Declaration of Independence: "Because of our belief that no people should be forced to live under a sovereignty they do not recognise and because of our knowledge and firm conviction that our nation cannot freely develop in a Habsburg confederation which is only a new form of the denationalising oppression which we have suffered for the past three centuries, we consider freedom to be the first pre-requisite for federalisation and believe that the free nations of Central and Eastern Europe may easily federate should they find it necessary.
His idea was to convert the Monarchy into numerous more or less independent National States, having in Vienna a common central organisation for all important and absolutely necessary affairs in other words to substitute Federalisation for Dualism.
Again, if our Dominions have been able to combine local Home Rule with national unity so runs another variant why should a policy which works successfully in Canada or Australia not work in the United Kingdom? Another suggestion freely thrown out is that Home Rule is only the beginning of a process of federalisation which is to bring us to the goal of Imperial Federation.
Earl Grey, an admitted authority on federal constitutions, urged that if, as the Government were continually assuring the country, Home Rule was the first step in the federalisation of the United Kingdom, there was every reason why Ulster should be a distinct unit in the federal system. The Archbishop dealt more fully with the Ulster question.
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