Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-07-09
sad fate of being witnesses and accomplices
of the annihilation of our mother tongue"

n nLtEADI, however, the work of resur-
n recton had begun. AS happens with
many oppressed peoples, 1t was erudition and
literature. quicker to gain freedom than
political action, that, by seeking out in the
past the titles of the race, as It were gave
it back its soul. Dobrovsky. the creator of
slav philology: Jungmann, who made Czech
once more living language; the poet kol-
lar; Chafarik. Slovak, the author of the
"Slav Antiquities; Palacky, whose great
History of the Czech People" began to
appear in 1886; these were the Czech awak-
eners."
THEN came the crisis of 1S4S. This ma
i tion. which had many grounds of COM
plant against the Hapsburgs, felt for them
no blind hatred. Against the tendencies,
pan-German, far more than liberal. of the
frankfurt Parliament. the Czechs felt that
Austria was, in a certain sense, the condi-
ton OF their existence. Hence Palackys
famous saying: "If Austria did not exist it
would have to be invented" Bohemia was
rewarded as Croatia was for having helped
the Hapsburgs against Hungary. Austria
refused to be regenerated by honest federal
ism. Even her reverses did not convert her.
After 1859 came the centralizing Constitution
or 1861, in which the electoral system Is skill
fully contrived to crush the Slavs. After
1856 came the Austro- Hungarian compro-
mise of 1867, the spirit of which, as regards
the Slavs, is expressed in Beusts brutal
threat: Put them up against the WALL !:
ana III MS words to the hungarian delegates:
Keep your hordes, shall keep ours"
OUNCE that time Bohemia has worn her.
~ self out with efforts to obtain justice
What she can expect from the Germans,
from an Austria who grows more and more
vassal of Germany. it is great Teuton.
1t is Mommsen, who has said it, and his in
tellectual superiority only makes the venom
Gus coarseness of his language more char
acteristic:
Czech skulls do not understand reason.
but they understand blows 1t is a matter
Of fighting for life and death"
Are the Czechs to whom should be added
| the Slovaks of Hungary, equally prosecuted,
| that Is to say. group of about 10000. 900
| men, whose intellectual activity and eco
nomic progress are brilliant. always to be
| refused the right of free development? The
war as every one felt at once. Is to them a
| terrible danger and a unique chance.
THE victory of the Central Empires means
| l. the Germanizing of Austria Their de-
feat means liberation. Bohemia has shown
that she understood 1t. The manner in which
| the Czech soldiers have behaved is known
| The Austrian Government may stgmatize
| 1t, in the name of a so-called patriotism
| which 1t has little right indeed to demand
| OF its subjects. For our part we shall say
| that there are cases when desertlon Is true
patriotism and the refusal to fight true cour.
age
| With regard to civilians, the measures
which Austria and Hungary have been lee
to adopt in Czech and Slovak countries ex
ceed all that Germany has done in Alsace
| we need say no more All political lif,
stopped, political parties dsbanded, thei
leaders imprisoned or exiled, three-quarter
of the newspapers suppressed. more than 4
| thousand persons sentenced to death oman,
of them women), the systematic practice O
confiscation and seizure of hostages, radica
and wholesale Germanizing-that is the pres
ent state of affairs, that is what must b.
done away with.