Jaroslav František Smetánka

“ The militarists of Vienna forget that a nation wants to be not united only, but free, and that love of liberty is one of the strongest motives of human action. The most fruitful cause of wars will be abolished, when there will be no ruling races and no oppressed races.
The process of making Europe a family of nations must be carried on to completion. Let each people that possesses a national consciousness and sufficient enlightenment constitute an independent unit of that New Europe which will emerge from the smoke of the cannon after the final defeat of the Germans. ”

“ Italians of Austria will naturally be joined to Italy. Bohemians and Slovaks want independence in a common Czechoslovak state. Magyars care for only one thing, to maintain their tyranny over all Hungary, while the Germans want the closest union with or even annexation to imperial Germany. The only Austrian left is the emperor. Dismemberment of Austria will hurt Emperor Charles in pride and pocket, but it will be welcomed by the overwhelming majority of the people of the empire. ”

“ But pending any such authoritative pronouncement, a resolution passed in the Congress of the United States declaring the Slavs and Latins of Austria to be friends will encourage wonderfully the dejected spirits of the victims of German-Magyar oppression. It is time for America and her Allies to realize that they have little to hope from the ruling races and from the emperor of Austria, but that thirty-two million Austro-Hungarian subjects will use every means to further the cause of the Allies, if only they feel sure that the Allies will not abandon them in the end. ”

“ The last speaker, Duke Colonna di Cesaro, emphasized Italy’s special interest in Bohemia. “In England and France there still are people who dream about Austria, as it used to be before 1866, an Austria that would be a rival of Germany and might be attached to the anti-German alliance. And so they would preserve Austria and would not hesitate to sacrifice to it the sacred national rights of subject races. In Italy there are no such illusions. Italy knows Austria, as the Czechs know it. ”

“ In Chicago there are four Czech daily papers, in New York one Czech and two Slovak, in Cleveland two Czech and one Slovak. Weekly and monthly publications exceed one hundred.
Difference of parents and children in attitude toward America
Children of Czechoslovak immigrants become keen Americans in the public school. They speak English even to their parents, they look upon the United States as their country and the best country in the world and they take little interest in the country, language and customs of their parents. The older people seldom learn to know the true America ”

“ The middle part of the nineteenth century is known in history as the period during which the principle of nationality determined the course of events in Europe. The wars for the liberation of Italy, for the unification of Germany, for the redemption of Balkan Slavs from Turkish yoke, all had their reason in the overwhelming desire of peoples who felt a strong consciousness of unity to have that unity expressed and embodied in a national state. ”

“ Now, while the order of Europe is temporarily broken up, there is a unique opportunity to clear away many old abuses which have caused trouble in the past, and will, if they are left, go on causing trouble in the future. Now we have an opportunity to make a clean job of it all over Europe and the Nearer East which may not recur.
Edwyn Bevan, The Method in the Madness, p. 298.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929. ”

“ And now, at the end of the year, so momentous in the history of Bohemia, President Wilson, the one man in whom Bohemian hopes were centered, declares that “we do not wish in any way to impair or to rearrange the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is no affair of ours what they do with their own life either industrially or politically.” ”

“ There have always been among the immigrants many young men with an adventurous spirit, but the mass of the Czechoslovak immigrants crossed the ocean because of the economic opportunity which America presented to the poor peasant. Slovak immigration on a larger scale began about forty years ago and was especially strong in the ten years preceding the war.
The Czech immigrants of the third quarter of the nineteenth century settled for the most part on farms. ”

“ During the nineteenth century the Turk was the sick man of Europe. Today that ignoble role is played by Austria. The sooner it is partitioned in accordance with the legitimate aspirations of its races, the better for the peace of the world. ”

“ There has been for generations a very close intellectual and spiritual connection between the Slavs of Austria and the tremendous mass of Slavs of the Russian empire. Since 1867, when a great pilgrimage of Bohemians and other Slav subjects of Francis Joseph went to Moscow as a protest against the division of the Hapsburg empire into a German and a Magyar sphere, every significant movement in Russia found an echo in the monarchy to the southwest, and every injury to the Slavs of the Danube realm aroused resentment among the people of Holy Russia. ”

“ There are many rural and urban communities with a considerable Czech population which is entirely unchurched, and these people may now be and should be reached by our regular American churches, as language is no longer a barrier.
The Jan Hus Presbyterian Church of New York City has rendered a unique service to our American culture by the preservation and cultivation of the arts and music of the Czechoslovak people, so that the distinctive gifts of these people may not be lost upon their amalgamation in our American life. ”

“ In all probability it matters little that the Bohemian nation spurned the rich bribe tendered them by the young emperor. He could not have carried out his word, even if we take it for granted that he would want to do so. Kaiser Karl is not a free agent; he is a dependent of Kaiser Wilhelm. Austria dances as Germany plays. There is no doubt, for instance, that Charles was anxious to avoid a break with the United States, but Germany needed a proof to convince the world that it can still dispose of the resources of Austria-Hungary, and Emperor Charles sent Penfield home. ”

“ The reason for this is that Czechs and Slovaks, though close neighbors, have lived a separate life for nearly a thousand years. The Czechs had for centuries their own kingdom of Bohemia, until in the 17th century they were merged with the Austrian possessions of the House of Hapsburg, while the Slovaks were a part of the kingdom of Hungary and lived under the sway of Magyar landholders. ”

“ To create a barrier of independent Slav republics from the Baltic to the Adriatic—free Poland, free Bohemia, free Jugoslavia—out of the ruins of the present tyrannic, medieval Hapsburg empire, is the peace program of the Allies. The United States is trying to avoid the mistakes made by the Allies in the early, days of the war; the benevolent attitude toward Austria is one of those mistakes which should not be repeated by this country. ”

“ Would the peace of Europe be secure, if four million people, the most advanced part of the Little Russian nation, remained in Eastern Galicia, Bukovina and Northeastern Hungary under German and Magyar rule, while from thirty to thirty-five million of their brothers enjoyed full national freedom right across artificial boundary lines? Of the varied races of Austria-Hungary Czechoslovaks and Magyars alone are contained entirely within the monarchy. ”

“ The truth is—and the authorities in Washington, as well as all intelligent Americans are aware of it—that the Slavs, Roumanians and Italians of Austria-Hungary hate the cause of Germany far more bitterly and passionately than native-born citizens to whom Europe is only a name. Our government has found it necessary at first to institute a campaign of education, because the people as a whole did not realize the great issues of the war. ”

“ One must emphasize over and over again that Austria-Hungary and the Hapsburg dynasty cannot be separated; the existence of the empire depends absolutely on the maintenance of the dynasty. The dynasty is German and has found its support in the past in the German minority. The Hapsburg empire represents the rule of majority by minority, and as long as it continues, Europe will be in a state of unstable equilibrium. ”

“ It is not necessary to dwell at length on the conflict of the Italian and Polish national aspirations with the integrity of Austria. When the union of Italy was accomplished after Austria’s defeat in the wars of 1859 and 1866, small fractions of the Italian people in the Trentino and around Trieste remained subject to the Hapsburgs. Italy will not rest, until these her children are united to the rest of the nation of which they feel themselves to be a part. ”

“ The war has become definitely one of democracy against autocracy, and that means that if democracy wins, there will be no room for “monarchies”, as Austria-Hungary is officially known, especially monarchies that hang together only through common subjection to a ruler by divine grace and that would fall to pieces the moment that the force majeure holding them together is overthrown.
The Russian revolution had a double effect on the internal situation in Austria-Hungary. It made it clear on the one hand to Emperor Karl that concessions must be made to the Slavs of his empire. ”

“ To the Czechoslovaks the Dual Empire is a jail in which their national life is being strangled to death, while to the Magyars it is a means to make the home of their race coterminous with Hungary and even expand it into the Balkans at the expense of the Slavs and Roumanians. Bohemian and Slovak democracy demands the break-up of Austria-Hungary in order that their nation may live in a free state ”

“ Those that appreciate the real significance of the European struggle realize that it is due to the imperialistic tendencies of the German race. Germans look upon themselves as a race of lords—Herrenfolk—a chosen people destined to rule the world and incidentally to confer upon the weaker races the benefits of German kultur. ”

“ It proved impossible to suppress eight million determined people who set their faces dead against the unjust war. The second reason which had a great weight with the new emperor arose directly out of the attitude of the Czech race toward the war and the German plans of conquest. When the Allies announced to the world that their conditions of peace involved the disruption of the Hapsburg empire, the statesmen of Vienna could close their eyes no longer to the fact that policy of repression was dangerous. ”

“ Among the many problems which the United States will face upon declaring the state of war not the least will be the problem of the foreign-born population. It has proved to be an embarrassing one in all the belligerent countries, but in America it is one of unusual dimensions. ”

“ Thus England has its alien element in the Irish for whom patriotism means something far different from devotion to the United Kingdom. In Germany the people of the lost provinces and the Poles in the East look upon the state within which they are held by force as an enemy, while Russia has of all the national states the largest admixture of foreign elements. There are two states, however, whose very existence is a denial of the principle of nationality—Turkey and Austria-Hungary. ”

“ Bulgaria found itself on the German side partly from hate of its neighbor and cousin, Serbia, party through the crooked politics of its German king, and Turkey hardly knows at all, how it came to deliver itself to Germany. Among the numberless races of newcomers in the United States, two only need be considered as possible enemies, the Germans and the Magyars. ”

“ Of the Germans the largest part was born in Germany, a considerable minority in Austria-Hungary and several hundred thousands in Russia. Most of the immigrants from the Dual Empire belong to races that not only do not sympathize with the Teuton cause, but are far more anxious to defeat Germany with its domineering ambitions and ruthless methods than the average American citizen whose patience has only recently been roused to the point of war. ”

“ And while Germany, a real nation, cannot be destroyed even when completely defeated, Austria which is only a government and not a nation, will not be spared by the Allies, if its various races do not ask to have it preserved. ”

“ At the beginning of the twentieth century most of the states of Europe were national states. France, England, Germany, Italy, Spain, even Russia are political formations in which for the great majority of the population the terms nation and state are synonymous. ”