“ Suffice it to say that during most of the time Bohemians were forced to fight on two fronts—Vienna on one front and their fellow-countrymen with Pan-German leanings on the other. The main quarrel between Vienna and Prague during all these years has been over Home Rule. Shall Bohemians living in the countries comprising the Bohemian Crown (Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia) be the arbiters of their own destiny, and shall they govern themselves from Prague by laws made and enacted by their home parliament? Home Rule is and has been the main issue; all else is subordinate to it. ”

“ From Tyrol he was permitted to return home, broken in health and spirit. To the last Havlíček remained steadfast to the cause he had championed—the liberation from bondage of his nation. Havlíček’s colors were red and white (Bohemian national colors) , and neither threats nor favors could swerve him from his chosen path: [11] “They banished you from the fatherland,” wrote Pinkas to Havlíček, “but they transformed the fatherland itself into a fortress and a jail. We live here the most unhappy lives conceivable. Not a ray of light enters our intellectual prison to brighten it.” ”

“ Slovaks, therefore, are made to feel that they have no king, only a government—a government, however, that knows no mercy, that feels no remorse, that offers no hope, that fears no punishment. If Slovaks are resolved to speak at all, if they wish the world at large to know the measure of their wrongs, under existing conditions, they can only appeal through the medium of their compatriots in the United States. ”

“ I am a Bohemian of Slavic origin, and all I possess and command I place wholly and forever at the service of my own country. It is true that my nation is small, but from the very beginning it has possessed its own historical individuality. Its princes on occasions have acted in common with German princes, but the people have never regarded themselves as Germans, nor have others, during all these centuries, included them amongst them. ”

“ If Francis Josef had had his way, Bohemians argue, they would to-day be like the Slavs along the Elbe who have succumbed to Germanization, and Prague would be as German as Leipzig or Vienna. Their own determination to live saved them from extinction. All that the nation is and all that it has attained it has accomplished through its own effort, without help from Vienna, often in the face of the bitterest opposition from that quarter. Deny it as much as you will, the truth remains that Bohemians, remembering their experience with Ferdinand II., have always distrusted the Hapsburgs ”

“ For Austria to pursue further its policy of Teutonism is madness. If the monarchy wishes to live it must be neither German, for there is no room in Europe for two Germanic Empires side by side, nor wholly Slavonic, like Russia. Her manifest destiny is, or rather has been, to form a bridge between Germany and Russia, between the Slavs and Teutons, between the west and the east. For Germany to go to war to fight the Slavic peril is conceivable, even justifiable ”

“ The older people love their past, their language, their old home, yet they cannot hand on these interests in their pristine intensity to the younger people, absorbed in the life about them, dropping their Bohemian speech and ways and gradually, only gradually, completing the transition to the New World and its ways. ”

“ The Bohemian people are intellectual, with high political ideals [129] and splendid traditions, and they are industrially progressive. They are competent to direct their own affairs, and it is only the insolent usurper who can assume to lay claim to the right to rule over them. Bohemia is a fertile country blessed with boundless riches which should be employed to sustain a happy, busy, progressive nation, and not a usurping military power, and that nation has a right to be free! ”

“ Francis Palacký (1798-1876) , historian, revivalist, and statesman, is, by common consent, regarded as the greatest Bohemian of our time. His monumental work, “History of the Bohemian Nation,” on which he labored some thirty years, will endure as long as the Bohemian language continues to be spoken. There was a time when not only the outside world, but Bohemians themselves, believed that the old-time Bohemians of the stormy days of John Hus or those who revolted against Ferdinand II. were a band of heretics and rebels. ”

“ Self-government is not only an ideal but a necessity to Bohemians. Why should Bohemia, in addition to paying for her own needs, make good the deficits of lands which are passive, and in whose domestic affairs she has no greater interest than the State of New York has, for instance, in the local constabulary of Nevada? Year after year Bohemians justly complain that Vienna wrings millions in taxes from them that it spends on lands that are passive. It is partly this feature of the case, the high revenue flowing from the Bohemian Kingdom, which has made Vienna hostile to the home rule agitation. ”

“ Every Hapsburg ruler had been educated to the belief that he was rendering a supreme service to his subjects by forcing them “to unlearn the barbaric language of their sires, which isolated them from the rest of the world.” “He who knows only Bohemian and Latin,” declared Councilor Gebler, in 1765, “is bound to make a poor scholar, and it were better for him to stick to the plow and to the trade; there are too many Latin scholars as it is.” ”

“ Von Kaiserfeld was not the only statesman who believed that Austria should be a German state. That is the obsession practically of every German in the country, from the emperor down to the meanest postman. Yet Austria is to-day further from the realization of [99] this dream than it ever was. The feeling of nationalism has grown too strong among the non-Germans to be suppressed. And this nationalism demands that people shall be allowed to live their individual lives, to cultivate their language and racial ideals, and to pursue both without the interference of any other people. ”

“ Bohemia, Hungary, and Austria, it will be remembered, had formed a union in 1526-1527 on terms of equality. And then how should the larger Slavic questions be settled? Numerically the Slavs were the strongest element in the monarchy. If allowed to elect representatives to one central parliament, these discontented Bohemians, Poles, Slovaks, and Croatians might one day, uniting politically, control the country. Tacitly Vienna and Budapest agreed that, whatever the terms of the settlement with Hungary, the disaster of Slavic majority must be averted. ”

“ If there is one thing deeply rooted in the minds of the Bohemian people it is the belief, or rather the conviction, that the Hapsburgs, beginning with Ferdinand II. and ending with Francis Josef, the present sovereign, one and all planned the Germanization of the nation. Vienna newspapers make much of the fact that Bohemia has advanced under the rule of Francis Josef as under no other Hapsburg—and they seek to convey the impression that this remarkable renascence should be credited to his reign. ”

“ The proclamation which the Russian Generalissimo addressed to the Poles may be said to apply with equal force to the Bohemians: “The hour has sounded when the sacred dream of your fathers may be realized.... Bohemia will be born again, free in her religion, her language, and autonomous.... The dawn of a new life begins for you.... ”

“ To be sure, most of the Slavic world is permeated by ignorance and dominated by bureaucracy, but education is only a generation deep, and political reorganization is the most rapid and remarkable fact of our era. The Bohemians have shown us that under modern conditions these traits are not lost. Civilization may have a temporary setback, but it cannot be as great as that now arising from militarism, but in the end the Slav will contribute to the social fabric that for which it is now peculiarly ready. ”

“ Whatever may be said about the superiority of one culture over another it cannot be imposed by force, and the Germans have been stupidly slow in discovering this fundamental fact. Bohemia is but a single example of this new consciousness which is called Nationalism. The Poles, Lithuanians, Finns, Magyars, Irish, and all the Slavic groups are showing that there is a psychological force to be reckoned with which military force cannot overcome. ”

“ If the Canadian Government had treated its citizens of French origin in the same rough-shod manner as Vienna has treated the Bohemians, or Budapest the Slovaks, Serbs, or Rumuns, she would have made rebels of every one [100] of them, instead of loyal citizens. The Swiss Republic is the home of three races, French, German, and Italian, and yet we hear of no racial friction among them. And when and where did the national, state, or city government in the United States interfere when this or that people of foreign origin desired to build a school or establish a clubhouse? ”

“ Bohemia has in the Middle Ages been the mediator between the West and the East, the South and the North, and it will for a long time remain the mediator between the best German thought and the growing Slavic civilization, if the Germans do not, as in the past, rouse the Slavic antipathies. Of all the Slavs, the Bohemians understood the German ideas best, and Dobrovský and other Bohemian Slavists promoted the Slavic idea by means of the German language. That, of course, can never happen again, for the nationalist life is there permanently established. ”

“ In the past it has been the custom of nations to try to absorb all within their political boundaries into the character of the governing group, however much they may have differed in traditions and customs. Austria not only tried to make Bohemians Catholics but Germans, and the history of the effort ought to make clear for ever that political science must adjust itself to the laws of human nature, and that the way to develop the individualism of a people is to try to blot it out. ”

“ Fear of the Teutonic peril has always harried the soul of the nation. Every historian, every poet, every patriot has admonished the people to be on their guard. One of the oldest chorals extant contains the pathetic invocation to the patron saint of the country. “St. Václav, Duke of the Bohemian Land, do not let us perish nor our descendants.”
In course of time many Germans and denationalized Bohemians were Bohemianized, so that it is hazardous to guess whether in Bohemia and Moravia more Germans adopted the Bohemian language than Bohemians the German. ”

“ The growth of Bohemian literature in all its branches has been stupendous, and to-day Bohemia leads the Empire of Austria with the smallest percentage of illiterates and is one of the leaders of Europe in this respect!
Nor are these educational and intellectual ideals a gift of the Germans, as has been asserted in certain prejudiced quarters. Bohemia had a great university, that of Prague, before a single institution of the kind had been established within the limits either of the present German Empire or any other part of the present Empire of Austria. ”

“ Are the Slovaks a direct offshoot of the Bohemians or a separate branch of the Slavic family? Ethnologists find convincing arguments for and against both theories. Bohemians, as may be surmised, take the ground that they and the Slovaks are one—one in language and one in racial traditions—and that nothing divides them except political boundaries,—the Slovaks being subject to the rule of Hungary, Bohemians owing allegiance to Austria. ”

“ A close observer of the Austrian shadows is justified in thinking that the Bohemian people, so long suppressed, stand on the threshold of a new destiny. This destiny points to the restoration of their ancient freedom. If the Allies win—and every loyal [8] son of the Land of Hus fervently wishes that their arms might prevail, notwithstanding the fact that Bohemian soldiers are constrained to fight for the cause of the two Kaisers—Bohemia is certain to re-enter the family of self-governing European nations. ”

“ The uncompromising opposition of the Bohemians to Bach and to his policies visited upon them the wrath of Vienna. Under Bach they were probably subjected to oppression more ruthless and cruel than any they had experienced since the time of Ferdinand II.
Patriots, some of them mere youths, were thrown in prison on the flimsiest accusation of police spies. It was not safe to converse in Bohemian in the streets of Prague. Spies were at the heels of every Bohemian prominent in public life. ”

“ Is it reasonable to suppose, however, that if Austria could not wholly suppress the national aspiration of Bohemians in times of peace, under normal conditions, she is more likely to accomplish it if she returns home from the war exhausted, humiliated, perchance vanquished? ”

“ Americans, even those whose sympathies are hostile to Germans, dread success of the Russians. The socialists who are opposed to all war feel convinced that Russia is a menace to all their plans. In fact they have tacitly admitted more than once that it might be necessary to resist encroachments of Russia by force. It is my contention that the Slavic people, of whom the Rus [143] sians are the largest group, have more to contribute to what the world needs next than any other people, and that all that is best in socialism will find its fruition among them as nowhere else. ”

“ Possessing a common past, the same racial traditions, and speaking one language, the Serbo-Croatians are clearly one nation, divided only by different faiths. The Croatians use the Latin letters and adhere, almost to a man, to the Catholic faith, while the Serbs employ the Cyrillic alphabet and belong to the Orthodox Church. The busy grammarians in Vienna and in Budapest did their utmost to keep the Serbo-Croatians apart, and even incited one against the other, by instilling the belief in them that two different religions really meant two different races. ”

“ According to the Prague journals, which reach the United States, Austrians are winning everywhere—on land, at sea, and in the air. Police agents plan fraternal and loyal meetings of Germans and Slavs, and the police agents’ faithful ally, the censor, writes them up in the newspapers and the Imperial Royal Press Bureau in Vienna sends broadcast glowing accounts of them. Again, many of the leading men of the Bohemian nation are in jail or under strict police surveillance and cannot speak. Are we to believe that all the Austrian races fight enthusiastically? ”

“ The diet of the kingdom recommended, in 1790, that Bohemian should be introduced at least in certain secondary schools, preferably in Prague, but the Austrian world of officialdom was opposed even to this concession. “No one threatens the life of the Bohemian tongue,” protested these officials. “The government cannot antagonize the feeling of the most influential and wealthiest classes who use German, if not exclusively, at least overwhelmingly. Moreover, to encourage Bohemian would be to lose sight of the idea of the unification of the empire. ”