Czech Republic

“ Decision on declaration of war, approval of a dispatch of Czech military forces outside the territory of the Czech Republic or of the presence of foreign military forces on the territory of the Czech Republic as well as a decision on the participation of the Czech Republic in defence systems of international organizations of which the Czech Republic is a member, shall require the consent of absolute majority of all Deputies and absolute majority of all Senators. ”

“ No review of Czech and Slovák literature could be counted complete if it omitted Thomas G. Masaryk. The man who to-day is president of the newly created Czechoslovak Republic has been a leader of thought in his native land for nearly two decades. Born March 7, 1850, in Hodonin, Moravia, of a Slovák father and Moravian “Hanák” mother, he had all the experiences incident to laboring families of insufficient means, before he finished the gymnasium in Brno and his philosophical studies at Vienna. ”

“ CHAPTER SEVEN - Territorial Self-government Article 99
The Czech Republic shall be divided into municipalities, which shall be fundamental self-governing territorial divisions, and regions, which shall be superior self-governing territorial divisions.
Article 100
(1) Self-governing territorial divisions are communities of citizens inhabiting a particular area, which have the right of self-government. The law shall define when they constitute administrative areas.
(2) A municipality shall be always a component of a superior self-governing territorial division. ”

“ President of the Republic shall take an oath of office at a joint meeting of both chambers of the Parliament, where it shall be administered by the Chairman of the Senate.
(2) The oath of the President of the Republic shall read as follows: "I swear allegiance to the Czech Republic. I swear to observe its Constitution and laws. I swear upon my honour that I shall perform my office in the interest of all the people, and to the best of my belief." ”

“ The conference unanimously adopted a resolution declaring Slovakia to be a part of the new Czechoslovak republic. It elected a national committee of 20 members and de cided to send a delegation to Prague to reach an understanding with the Czech leaders about the manner of uniting Slovakia with the Czech lands. ”

“ Every citizen of the Czech Republic who has the right to vote and who has attained the age of twenty-one years may be elected to the Chamber of Deputies.
(2) Every citizen of the Czech Republic who has the right to vote and who has attained the age of forty years may be elected to the Senate. ”

“ A nation producing the quality of men who never forgot what they were striving for even though the struggle was centuries old arouses the interest of the thinking public. Whence came the strength of purpose of these representatives of so small a country? The Czechoslovak Republic comprises, with the combined areas of the former kingdom of Bohemia, margraviate of Moravia, duchy of Silesia and province of Slovakia but 50,000 square miles of territory and some 12,000,000 of people. ”

“ The literature of the nation of Czechoslovaks is as ancient as its history. For a period of over a thousand years, the literature of no nation is more closely entwined with its history than is that of the people composing the new Czechoslovak Republic. ”

“ In spite of the constant struggle against the perjured dynasty, the Czech nation is to-day, culturally and economically, one of the most progressive nations. It has thus proved its virility, its energy and ability to hold its own against the pressure of imperialistic Germany and Austria; this high degree of culture, as we have emphasised before, being attained by the Czechs through their own strength, without assistance from the dynasty and from Austria. ”

“ The Czech nation cannot but express its most ardent sympathy to that noble and glorious France who to-day is defending her independence and the national soil, who has deserved so well of civilisation and to whom we owe the greatest progress realised in the principles of humanity and liberty. ”

“ This does not mean that we ought to forget, later on, what they do for us; but such an attitude on their part is at once the most, generous and the most happily inspired. Like the philosopher who proved motion by walking, the Czech nation proves its existence by action and struggle. ”

“ The Czech nation, formerly broken into many quarreling parties, is absolutely united, standing as one man on the platform first given out by Masaryk in 1915 in the Bohemian Declaration of Independence. ”

“ You left Prague alone, now you return at the head of noble companies of Czechoslovak warriors who bring moral and material help to our young republic. Our age-long enemy is vanquished; the terrible fight of two worlds is ended in a victory of justice and humanity, of which you have ever been a herald and defender by word and pen. We have lived to see our deepest desires fulfilled, the government of our country has been returned to us. ”

“ Save our people, while there is time, in order that calamity might be averted, in order that we might not die of hunger. Do not believe, gentlemen of the entente, that conditions in Prague and the Czechoslovak Republic are better than in Vienna. ”

“ We Czechs and Slovaks at home want to be equal to you who are citizens of the free republic—the Independent Czechoslovak Republic will strengthen the League of Nations by a strong element of modern democracy. ”

“ The population of Czechoslovakia is ethnologically of a mixed character. The prevailing element is that of the Czechs (7 millions) , with whom the Slovaks (2 1/2 millions) form one people; indeed as long ago as the 9th century the kingdom of Great Moravia, with frontiers roughly identical with the present boundaries of the Czechoslovak Republic, was the creation of the Slav people, who occupied in common a territory stretching from W. Bohemia to the Carpathians. ”

“ Any citizen of full integrity who is eligible for election to the Senate is the graduate of a university law school and has been active in the legal profession for at least ten years may be appointed Justice of the Constitutional Court. ”

“ It suffices that all maps of Europe will now bear the name of the free and independent government of Czechoslovakia—and that the united action of a thoroughly capable leader and a trained and intelligent nation achieved the consummation of the national aspirations of centuries. ”

“ In fact, the most salient point about the development of the modern history of the Czech lands is the emergence at last of an independent and democratic Czech-speaking state relatively free of the traditional internal divisions and hostile external pressures, after hundreds of years of subservience to German-Austrian culture and political control, major internal conflicts, and a series of short-lived and often unhappy experiments (to use the mildest word available) with different political systems. ”

“ The Philadelphia convention left an overpowering impression on the Czechoslovaks present—a feeling of pride in their people and its leader, and a feeling of responsibility which the position of their people as the first liberated nation among all these small nations imposed upon the future Czechoslovak Republic. ”

“ What the Czechs in America Feel.
The event of that fateful July day in 1914, which suddenly changed nearly all of Europe into a mass of consuming fire, shocked profoundly the large Czech and Slovak population of America. These people, unable longer to endure the inhuman Austrian tyranny, had turned away in mighty numbers from their native land. That land, to be sure, was the richest soil of the Empire; but it was so sapped by greedy misrule that existence had come to mean only want and limitation. They came to America. ”

“ With the utmost savagery the Austrian-Germans under Hapsburg and Jesuit leadership uprooted the Czech aristocracy and landed gentry, and filled their places with foreign adventurers, who ever since have insulted the country in which they live by considering themselves its peers and owners. The Czech nation lost all its educated classes and practically ceased to exist. ”

“ Czechoslovak lands are fertile and well cultivated and under normal conditions they produce more food stuffs than are needed for their dense population. But during the war the Austrian government requisitioned most of the crops for the use of the army and for feeding the barren lands of German Austria and the great capital city of Vienna. Czech cities, and especially Prague, were starved by the central authorities, because the Czechs were considered rebels and traitors to the emperor. ”

“ The Czech nation is convinced that such a humiliation as the snatching of a fragment of its territory from an illustrious and heroic nation, full of just national pride, would be an inexhaustible source of new wars, and consequently of new injuries to humanity and civilisation. The Czech people is a small people, but its soul and its silence are not small. ”

“ This fact alone proves what a gigantic work was done by the patriots who awakened the Czech nation to a new life. And yet the citizens of Prague were in a sense patriotic Bohemians, for all of them, Czechs and Germans, looked upon Bohemia as their fatherland and were proud of its noble history. ”

“ The spirit of courage and endurance which had enabled the Czechoslovaks to achieve their independence was now to inspire a further work of no mean significance the consolidation of a free, democratic and enlightened republic in the heart of Europe, the most westerly outpost of the great Slavonic world stretching from the banks of the Elbe and the Danube to the Pacific Ocean, and at the same time a nation bound by ties of gratitude and common interest to the Anglo-Saxon and Latin races. "At home we feel sufficiently confident," said Dr. ”

“ The Czech is a democrat. “We accept and shall adhere to the ideals of modern democracy, as they have been the ideals of our nation for centuries,” says the Declaration of Independence of the Czechoslovak Nation. ”

“ It is in this spirit that the Czech nation throws itself into action, ready for all the sacrifices which its conscience may dictate. Even if its appeal should prove useless, it would at least have the satisfaction of having done its duty at a critical moment, by bearing witness to truth, right, and the cause of the liberty of peoples. ”

“ Above the mass of the population, composed of small shopkeepers, peasants and workmen, eighty per cent of whom were of Czech origin—a mass possessing an old culture which, for all its rusticity, had not lost its freshness and colour—there were three upper strata boasting the loftier culture of Central Europe: the Germanised middle class of Prague and the leading towns, the civil and military official caste, numerous and well-disciplined, and finally the international aristocracy with its eyes turned towards Vienna. ”

“ When some day a history of our fight for liberty is written, full credit must go to those who by organizing the National Alliance of Bohemian Catholics made possible the full participation of all divisions of our people in the great work.
Let me add also that the National Alliance from its very foundation, when the future form of the Czechoslovak government was uncertain, insisted on the establishment of a republic, fashioned after the example of the United States ”

“ While the bulk of the Czechs and Slovaks now living in the United States, came to this country during the last seventy-five years, yet immigration of Czechs, to speak of the older branch of the nation, is not a phenomenon restricted wholly to the nineteenth century. The first individuals of Czech (Bohemian) origin came to America during the seventeenth century, undoubtedly seeking religious and political liberty, even as did the Pilgrim Fathers. ”

“ We know that our whole nation stands behind the Czechoslovak National Council as one united rampart. Full of joy at the great political act which the constitution of the National Council represents, full of confidence in the victory of our common cause, we address today the whole Czechoslovak nation with an urgent appeal to support our work with all its strength, to obey all orders of common discipline and to follow firmly our common national aim. ”

“ We, the Czechoslovak nation, desiring to consolidate the perfect unity of our people, to establish the reign of justice in the Republic, to assure the peaceful development of our native Czechoslovak land, to contribute to the common welfare of all citizens of this State and to secure the blessings of freedom to coming generations, have in our National Assembly this 29th day of February 1920 adopted the following Constitution for the Czechoslovak Republic ”

“ Not a portion of the Czechs but all of them have had political education and have been familiar with suffrage and parliamentary life. The Czechs had their quota262 of functionaries in the Hapsburg Empire, which gives them trained men for government service. Without intending offense, one might say that the Czechs are the most promising of the newly emancipated people because they are German-trained in public life, administration, and education, as well as in business. ”

“ President of the Republic has the right to attend meetings of the Government, to ask for reports from the Government and its members, and to discuss with the Government or its members the issues that are in their competence. ”

“ Every citizen of the Czechoslovak State may take up his abode wheresoever he will in the Czechoslovak Republic, may acquire there real property and carry on any calling for the purpose of earning profits within the limits of the law. ”