# The New Europe/Volume 7/Number 88/The Prince of Wales and the Czechs

* related portals: World War I, Czech lands.
* related authors: Edward VIII of the United Kingdom.
The Prince of Wales and the Czechs
[On the occasion of the Prince of Wales’s visit to Rome last month two companies of the newly-formed Czecho-Slovak Army formed part of his special guard of honour; and it is perhaps not surprising that this fact should have caused a profound sensation in Vienna. The following extracts from a leading article in the Neue Freie Presse of 6 June are of especial interest, because they were at first prohibited, and subsequently released, by the Austrian censor.]
“The Prince of Wales visited the King of Italy on the anniversary of Italy’s declaration of war. . . . Two Czech companies, which had only reached Rome ​a few hours before, were commissioned to be the guard of honour. Mutinous soldiers, traitors who have broken their oath and caused the death of many thousand comrades-in-arms, paid the young prince the military courtesies usual on such occasions. The Prince of Wales is a captain on the General Staff; and if he had paid any special regard to these men who were foisted upon him, then contempt would have been reflected in his eyes. For among soldiers, whether friend or foe, there can only be one feeling towards people who have committed such low acts and yet parade them—a feeling of reluctance at contact with infamy. Crown Prince Edward Albert is 24, and at that age the heart is still unspoilt, and the sense of purity still specially strong. He must have turned away with loathing from this guard. In the outhouses of policy, where crime has many a secret corner, renegades are used, because they help to weaken the enemy. No decent Government has boasted of such assistants. The Italian generals and ministers are the first in the civilised world to select mutineers to greet a prince. That would not be possible in London and Paris, or anywhere, where, even in the war, the stock of fundamental moral sentiments has remained unimpaired despite many excesses. This distinction paid to the Czech brigade, this assault on the fine feelings of a young prince, was the natural sign of an obscured sense of law, inaccessible to shame.”
After the usual comparison between the Czechs and the Sinn Feiners and a lyrical passage upon the prosperity and happiness of Bohemia under the protection of the Austrian constitution, the Neue Freie Presse reaches this conclusion: The sons of a people which has been loaded with good fortune and coddled for years past go over to the enemy. That is treason, but, at the same time, foppery and megalomania which wishes to be talked of.
“A Congress of the Oppressed of the Monarchy was summoned to Rome, and, as usual, there appeared the Entente’s emissaries, the wretched and contemptible Masaryks. But it is comic that these oppressed ones should pilgrimage to Rome of all places. Can anyone in Bohemia mention a single place where there is so much misery as among the workmen of the notorious sulphur mines of Sicily, where human strength is exploited for a mere song, till nothing remains save skin and bones. This poverty amid a flourishing and fertile Nature is a mockery of justice and charity. These are people who are oppressed. Where have the Czechs a trace of such popular diseases as the pellagra, caused by excessive use of maize, and a sign of bad food and extreme need? Where, on Czech territory, is there a Lake Thrasimene, on whose banks the inhabitants are shaken by fever because the Government spends money on armaments and not on the draining of marshes? These are people who are oppressed. . . .
“If the Czechs would only wake up and banish their bad dreams! Enough of scandal, enough of the comedy of wanting to play the Job with full purse and full granary! The Czechs have bad advisers who, in the guise of oppressed, always wanted to be oppressors. They have injured them very much. The Prince of Wales’s guard of honour must also injure the self-esteem of the Czech people. The Czech renegades were employed like the savages of the African Gold Coast or some Singhalese tribe, in order to excite ethnographic curiosity by exhibiting exotic men. It is time for understanding and change of view (Einsicht und Umkehr).”
This article deserves to be quoted as a very typical product of the leading organ of German Austria. The best answer to this contemptuous talk about Czech renegades would be to reveal the number of Czecho-Slovak troops now engaged upon the Allied side; but there are obvious reasons for preserving silence on such a matter. It is, however, safe to point out that the Czechs and Slovaks are to-day fighting side by side with Italians, French and British on the Piave front, with the same gallantry which distinguished them during the Brusilov offensive last year, and that their determination to achieve independence, or perish in the attempt, is shared by the overwhelming mass of their compatriots in Bohemia and in America.
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