Stephen Bonsal

“ The whole land is garrisoned by Magyar and German soldiers and, latterly, detachments of the Landwehr from Prussia have been brought in to garrison practically all the Bohemian cities and towns. These men, together with the Magyars, as much by petty persecutions as by their cold-blooded murders have made themselves particularly obnoxious to the unarmed population; but as all men capable of bearing arms between the ages of eighteen and fifty-five are drafted to the front, there would seem at the present moment little chance of, and no utility at all in, an uprising. ”

“ One feels drawn towards the Bohemians for their idealistic point of view. They are perfectly familiar with the economic wrongs and the exactions which their country has suffered at the hands of the Austrians, but always subordinate these injuries to the threatened loss of the language and the nationality which they hold so dear. Again, one is struck by the enthusiastic loyalty of all Bohemians in this country to America and to American ideals. ”

“ And so naturally enough today, the Bohemians are basing their demands for self-government and independence not merely upon the abstract right of all men to these precious things, but upon laws and covenants which have never been repealed or abrogated with their consent. Under the Austrian constitution of later years all nationalities were declared equal before the law and the throne. But this provision meant little, and by the Ausgleich of 1867, by which the Germans and the Magyars secured absolute dual control, it came to mean nothing at all. ”

“ But our language, the words that we learned in childhood, which we drank in with our mothers' milk, which binds us for time and eternity to all we cherish and prize; no, you shall not take our language away; you shall not choke the expression of our souls. ”

“ A very few days before the outbreak of the Great War the last measure of Bohemian autonomy was destroyed. By one sweep of the pen the Emperor dissolved the so-called Council of the Kingdom, and subsequently an imperial commission was created to govern Bohemia. The members of this body, called upon to exercise autocratic powers, were aliens and outlanders in spirit or by heredity and generally in both. ”

“ At the end of the Thirty Years' War, Bohemia was spoken of as a well-nigh uninhabited wilderness, and its revival from this low ebb to their present position of power is an indication of the vitality of a noble race. ”

“ If they wish to have anything done, the unfortunate Bohemians needs must go down into their pockets and pay for the desired improvement with personal contributions. And still, in spite of all this unfair treatment, the Bohemians stand at the head of all the Austrian nationalities in the matter of education. Less than four per cent of their people are illiterate, while among the Magyars, who dominate the situation, and help to misrule them, the ratio of illiteracy reaches nearly forty per cent. ”

“ It is not a new thing that this harassed people should stand in the way of German expansion to the east, as they are doing today. For more than a thousand years their lands have been a bone of contention between Slav and Teuton. Since early in the fifth century, when the Bohemian kingdom was most probably established, hardly a generation has passed but that their national existence has been endangered and their homes given over to fire and sword at the hands of the German invaders. ”

“ The Bohemians have always been opposed to the Triple Alliance and to those close, almost vassal-like relations with Germany, which the Austrian-Germans and the Magyars for obviously selfish reasons favored. Nowhere was the full significance of the great war more promptly appreciated than it was in Prague. ”

“ The response your people have made to my appeal for fighting men has been extremely gratifying. I gladly bear witness to the fact that no class of Americans has come forward to defend their country in time of war with better spirit than Americans of Bohemian birth and descent. ”

“ The great majority of the Czechs and Slovaks undoubtedly dream of a republic with access to the sea either through the South-Slavic state yet to be erected on the Adriatic, or through the instrumentality of President Wilson's plan whereby under "A right comity of arrangement no nation need be shut away from free access to the open paths of the world's commerce." ”

“ Since our entrance into the war there has been no public expression of opinion, much less any formal statement from official quarters on this phase of the situation, which is not only of great concern to our fellow citizens of Slavic tradition but which has such a vital bearing on the question of whether the next peace congress is to build on the fundaments of justice and honor, or whether, again, the ideals of an awakened humanity are to be submerged in the archeology of the hazy diplomatic past. ”

“ If such a generous and elastic policy could be adopted, a great many men would be reached who are not being reached now. Among the many fractions of the six hundred thousand Bohemians in this country, who will not be affected by the selective draft, there are thousands of trained soldiers who have served three years in the Bohemian infantry, which are the smartest regiments of this arm in the Austrian army. ”

“ Kramarzh, of the Austrian Parliament, the well-known historian and publicist, is still in jail at hard labor, his death sentence—on charges which were never made known to himself or to the world—having been commuted to fifteen years' imprisonment. Because news of the illegality of his trial excited deep and widespread indignation, the Austrian authorities have latterly favored drumhead court-martials, which leave no substantial record upon which an appeal to civilization and humanity can be based. ”

“ The offer of autonomy, it will be noticed, does not include the Slovaks in northern Hungary. And while autonomy, if real and not merely paper, would mean a great improvement of conditions in Bohemia, to the Slovaks this adjustment, if accepted, would sound the death-knell of even their most moderate hopes. ”

“ These men are fighting and dying anonymously in so far as this is possible. With the Russian army the Bohemian contingent is represented by at least two full divisions amounting to something over forty thousand men. These figures are at least four months old and there are undoubtedly now many more Bohemians in the army of the Russian Republic, as, whether from mere stupidity or with design, the old autocratic regime placed many obstacles in the way of the Bohemian recruit. ”

“ If I should make a plea for exceptional treatment and special units for the Bohemians, it would be on the ground that among large classes of our people there is greatly lacking an appreciation of the spiritual kinship that has existed between our races since the days of Wycliffe and Huss. ”

“ The Slavs in America believe that their cause has the overwhelming support of their fellow-citizens, they have no fear of what the outcome will be, nor yet that their interests, so bound up with and inseparable from the peace of the world, shall be neglected. ”

“ Men who have been fighting for more than three centuries for the ideals which, at least in a world sense, we have only so recently espoused are entitled to fight under the colors their fathers have placed so high. ”

“ Since our entrance into the war the Bohemians and the Slovaks have gone very intelligently and industriously to work to furnish the United States military forces with as large a quota of men as possible, without awaiting the operation of the selective draft. ”

“ In the reconstituted Serbian army there are a very large number of Bohemians, many of them reserve officers who have been placed in command of the decimated Serbian detachments. In the Serbian division that fought with the Russian army in Bessarabia it is of record that there were nearly two hundred Bohemian officers and about three thousand privates. In France the Bohemians form several battalions of the French Foreign Legion, and with these daredevils they have carried the Bohemian lion-flag well to the front. ”

“ It requires the presence here on the submerged front of such a large body of alien troops who, now that the pinch of the wasting war is being felt, could be utilized to such advantage in other quarters, that the Statthalter is reported to have expressed the opinion to Vienna that the draft gain was not worth the cost, especially in view of the fact that every recruit deserts to the enemy and joins his true colors on the Russian front whenever the bare possibility of doing so is presented. ”

“ There are more than sixty Bohemian newspapers published among us, and for years past each one of them has carried in every issue a call upon all their readers to secure American citizenship as quickly as possible, and this they have done almost without exception. ”

“ Perhaps a way will yet be found to gratify them and to give a still greater impetus to their recruiting, as the capacity to fashion special weapons to secure special ends is always the forerunner of success in peace or in war. Even under the present system enthusiastic recruits are coming in. ”

“ It is impossible to estimate even roughly the millions of crowns that this unfortunate people have been compelled to spend every year in private schools, by means of which they have sought and have succeeded in preserving their Bohemian children from Germanization. ”

“ In this way thousands have been killed at the front who never would have been sent there had it not been planned to put them out of the way in this expeditious and economical manner. But their spirit goes marching on. ”

“ Even a civilian can understand the inconveniences and the paper-work difficulties which would result from a compliance with the very natural requests of the Bohemians to serve and fight shoulder to shoulder as a distinctive unit. ”

“ It is by studying the brutal situation thus created that we uncover the immediate sources of the great conflict and, what is more helpful, we acquire light as to possible settlements and certainly some guidance as to those which are clearly impossible. ”

“ The severest penalties are being exacted of men who are charged with having surrendered to the Russians, whatever the circumstances attending the surrender may have been. Decrees of confiscation against the property of these men have been entered and their families, deprived of all means of livelihood, are turned out in the streets to beg. ”