# America in the Struggle for Czechoslovak Independence

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America in the Struggle for Czechoslovak Independence
BY CHARLES PERGLER
COPYRIGHT 1926
DORRANCE & COMPANY INC
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PREFATORY NOTE
English language sources concerning Czechs and Slovaks in the United States are rather meager. As to the Slovaks there is no book of importance. The only book relating to Czechs is Thomas Capek’s The Czechs (Bohemians) in America (Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1920).
With the exception of a chapter in Capek’s volume, the war activities of Czechoslovaks in America have not been described at all in English, and this little work is the first attempt at such treatment. It is mainly based upon the Diary of the Slav Press Bureau and other original documents in the author’s possession, and in certain respects is supplemented by his own personal knowledge of Czechoslovak war work in this country. This personal knowledge grows out of the writer’s close affiliation with the movement from its inception.
The outbreak of hostilities found the author a practicing lawyer in northeastern Iowa; he is one of the signers of the Czechoslovak demand for independence issued in Paris on November 15, 1915. Thereafter, successively, he was one of the vice-presidents of the Bohemian National Alliance, director of the Slav Press Bureau in New York, director of the American office of the Czechoslovak National Council in Washington, secretary to President Masaryk as a result of the latter’s request cabled from Tokio, delegate of the Czechoslovak National Council in the United States following recognition of this Council as a de facto government by the Allied Powers, Czechoslovak Commissioner to the United States, and minister of the Czechoslovak Republic to Japan.
As indicated in the text, this work does not pretend ​to be of an exhaustive nature, primarily because detailed treatment is probably one for the Czechoslovak historian, but also by reason of the fact that an exhaustive presentation is out of the question until Foreign Relations, published by the Department of State, is brought down to date.
This short description is an attempt to present what is available at the present time and to record material which otherwise might be overlooked.
The question of terminology presented certain difficulties. It is not uniform even now. But the reader will appreciate that prior to the war Czechs were known, in the United States, as Bohemians, and that Slovaks are that part of the now united nation, which, before the establishment of the present republic, was subject to the Magyar rule of Budapest.
Beside the work of Thomas Capek, Czechs (Bohemians) in America, the following publications are either quoted or referred to in the text: The State, by Woodrow Wilson (D. C. Heath & Co., Publishers); Addresses and Messages of Woodrow Wilson (Boni & Liveright, Modern Library), edited by Albert Bushnell Hart; The Life and Times of Cavour, by William Roscoe Thayer (Houghton-Mifflin Co., Publishers); and Z boje za svobodu otciny, by Francis Sindelar (National Alliance of Bohemian Catholics, Publishers). Grateful acknowledgment is made of permission and opportunity to make use of these sources.
Special acknowledgment is due Dr. A. H. Putney, formerly Chief of the Near East Division of the State Department, for authority to make use of his still unpublished memorandum, Slavs of Austria-Hungary.
CHARLES PERGLER
Washington, D. C.
CONTENTS
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1954, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 69 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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