Bohemia under Hapsburg Misrule / A Study of the Ideals and Aspirations of the Bohemian and Slovak Peoples, as They Relate to and Are Affected by the Great European War

by Unknown

AUSTRIA’S FUTURE DARK

What is Austria? A land that has a German head and a Slavonic body, in which minorities rule and majorities are made to obey, the homeland of a dozen races, every one of which is dissatisfied or jealous of some other race.

There was a time when Austria had a mission to perform. That mission was to serve as the advance guard of Germandom and as a Catholic power. The first came to an end at Sedan when the Prussians assumed leadership among Germans; the second terminated when Prussia gave up its Kulturkampf against Rome. Now Austria is a country without a mission, unless it be a mission to thwart the legitimate aspirations of the Slavic races to national freedom.

For Austria to pursue further its policy of Teutonism is madness. If the monarchy wishes to live it must be neither German, for there is no room in Europe for two Germanic Empires side by side, nor wholly Slavonic, like Russia. Her manifest destiny is, or rather has been, to form a bridge between Germany and Russia, between the Slavs and Teutons, between the west and the east. For Germany to go to war to fight the Slavic peril is conceivable, even justifiable; but for Austria, more than 60 per cent. Slavonic, to draw her sword to combat Slavism sounds very much like the familiar story attributed by Plutarch to Menenius Agrippa, according to which various members of one’s body determined to down the stomach as the source of all their troubles. To fight the Slavs Austria must fight herself.

Plainly the destinies of Austria and Germany are as unlike as are divergent their ambitions. Germany aspired to be a world power, a Weltmacht, and in pursuance of this dream she began to build up a colonial empire. Austria possesses no colonies. The plan of her statesmen (Aehrenthal) has been to establish a predominating Austrian influence in the Balkans, where Germany’s interests, to quote the well-known words of Bismarck, were not worth the bones of one Pomeranian grenadier. Germany is a homogeneous country or nearly so; Austria, on the contrary, is the most heterogeneous empire in Central Europe.

Quite naturally the question suggests itself: what would arise on the splendid ruins on the Danube should the proverbial ill-luck overtake the Hapsburgs in the present war? With Galicia and Bukovina lost to Russia, with Transylvania annexed to Rumania, with Trentino and Trieste restored to Italy, and Bosnia and Herzegovina incorporated in Greater Serbia—provided the partition went no further—what would be left of the Hapsburg inheritance? Instead of a Greater Austria, that should have included conquered Serbia, it is not improbable that the Hapsburgs will return home from the Great War with a Small Austria—an Austria as it began in 1527, when the Austrians, Bohemians, and Hungarians formed a confederacy and elected a Hapsburg as their ruler.

Rieger, a Bohemian statesman, once declared in the Vienna Parliament, that Austria will only live as long as the Slavs wish her to live and no longer. Rieger’s famous utterance has acquired a new meaning in view of the passing events in the Hapsburg Empire.

Thomas Čapek.

References: The writer of this article is largely indebted for much of the material to Professor Ernest Denis’ most excellent work, La Bohême depuis La Montagne-Blanche (lately translated from the French into Bohemian). Among others he has consulted the following Bohemian works: Our Re-birth, Review of Bohemian National Life Within the Last Half Century, by Jakub Malý; Slavdom, Pictures of Its Past and Present. (This is a standard work containing isolated articles by a number of representative authors.) History of Our Times, by Dr. Jan Krištůfek; Political History of the Bohemian Nation from the Year 1861 to the Ascension of the Badeni Ministry in 1891, by Adolf Srb; Political Ideas of Francis Palacký; Political Utterances and Principles of Francis L. Rieger; A Great Bohemian: The Life, Work and Meaning of Francis Palacký, the Father of the Nation, by Vácslav Řezníček; Karel Havlíček: Aims and Hopes of Political Awakening, by T. G. Masaryk.

II
THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY

The Slovaks, a branch of the Slavic family, numbering between 2,000,000 and 3,000,000 people, and kinsmen of the Bohemians, inhabit the northwestern provinces of Hungary. There is not uniform agreement among Slovak scholars with reference to the ethnic affinity of this people with the Bohemians. Are the Slovaks a direct offshoot of the Bohemians or a separate branch of the Slavic family? Ethnologists find convincing arguments for and against both theories. Bohemians, as may be surmised, take the ground that they and the Slovaks are one—one in language and one in racial traditions—and that nothing divides them except political boundaries,—the Slovaks being subject to the rule of Hungary, Bohemians owing allegiance to Austria. Samo Czambel, a learned Slovak, published a book recently on the grammatical peculiarities of his mother tongue in which, contrary to the almost universal opinion of philologists that Slovak is but an older form of Bohemian, he contends that the old grouping of Slovak jointly with Bohemian is wrong; and that the language should be treated as an independent Slavic idiom, precisely in the same way as Polish, Russian, etc. But, though grammarians may disagree about this or that Slovak or Bohemian root or termination of a verb; though they may fancy they see a difference where probably none exists, the people themselves have no quarrels to pick, no disputes to adjust. On the contrary, they have always been good neighbors[20] and loyal friends. As for real differences of speech, these are so slight that a Slovak will understand a Bohemian as readily as an Englishman from Yorkshire will his cousin, the Yankee. One is reminded of the closeness of the two languages when one recalls that Slovaks of the Protestant faith read at their church services from the Bohemian Bible. Recently a meeting of representative Bohemians and Slovaks[21] in New York passed a resolution, in which occurs this significant passage: “Nothing now separates us, except that we owe political allegiance to two different states, one to Austria, the other to Hungary. Remove that barrier, and it will be seen that the Bohemians and Slovaks are one in language, one in blood, one in national faith, indissoluble and indivisible.”

According to the census of 1910, a census, by the way, notoriously unreliable, Slovaks number 1,967,970. If an enumeration were taken free of intrigue and coercion, the actual number of Slovaks, it is asserted, would be nearer 2,500,000; and, were we to include as Slovaks the opportunists who everywhere go with the ruling element, and further, were we to add those who are compelled, for various reasons, to conceal their nationality, the actual number would not be far from 3,000,000. Outside of Slovakland Slovaks are scattered throughout Hungary except in Transylvania. There are few districts in Hungary in which they do not live. The various settlements in the interior of the country are in part ramifications of Slovakland proper, which formerly extended further south into Hungary than at present and in part colonies, the origin of which dates back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

When did the Slovaks come to Hungary? Probably the question could best be answered by saying that they had always lived there. Certain pseudo-historians wish to make it appear that the Slovaks are descendants of immigrants from Bohemia who fled to Hungary to escape religious and political persecution. The truth is, however, that their ancestors occupied the Carpathian highlands from the dawn of history. The Slovaks of Hungary are not immigrants, and no authoritative historian has successfully disputed their claim to priority as one of the earliest inhabitants of the Kingdom of St. Stephen.

Down to the middle of the last century no one of the languages spoken by the different racial elements in Hungary acquired predominance. For the purposes of every-day life each race was free to use its mother tongue. During the mediæval period Latin was the medium of communication among the cultured classes. Latin was gradually superseded by the German language and the Slovaks, though grieved at the wanton suppression of their vernacular, did not feel that their national existence had been threatened by the innovation. But when, in 1867, Austria concluded with Hungary the Act of Settlement, whereby the dual system of government was introduced, and the Magyars secured for themselves ascendency over all the other races in the kingdom, the danger became acute, and has been growing steadily since, until now the Slovaks are menaced by denationalization. True, the Law of Nationalities was promulgated soon after the Act of Settlement, ostensibly for the protection of non-Magyars; but this law, in the words of Plutarch, “is like a spider web and would catch the weak and the poor; but may easily be broken by the mighty rich.” Bitter experience has shown that under the Law of Nationalities, the very acts which the law was designed to prevent or regulate, have been perpetrated with impunity, either by omission or commission.

Students of Slovak nationality have been expelled by school authorities from seminaries and secondary schools for Pan-Slavic propaganda. Pan-Slavism in the case of these unfortunate youths consists in the reading, recitation, or circulation of literature in one of the Slavic tongues.

Journalists are prosecuted or jailed for alleged seditious articles against the Hungarian State; newspapers are mulcted in ruinous fines, in many cases tantamount to their suppression. In countries enjoying the blessing of freedom of speech and press, de facto and not only de jure, the articles which Hungarian prosecuting attorneys construe as seditious, would be regarded as an honest and fearless criticism of the acts of government. There are few Slovak journalists who have not served terms in jail or whose newspapers have not been fined.

To plead one’s case in the courts in the Slovak language, notwithstanding the express provisions of the Law of Nationalities permitting this procedure, would be prejudicial to the litigant’s case in the lower courts and impossible in the higher courts.

A patriotic Slovak may not hold a government position of any trust or importance. One aspiring to an office in any way connected with the government, directly or indirectly, must of necessity renounce his nationality—or, in the alternative, conceal his true inward feelings, both before his superiors and before his friends.

Apparently with the object of making the world believe that Slovakland has always been Magyar, the Hungarian Government is abolishing the ancient Slavic nomenclature of villages and towns, replacing it with Magyar names, and this crusade is undertaken in districts where from times immemorial no other speech had been heard but Slovak.[22]

A visiting Hungarian statesman boasted before an American audience in New York City that the laws of Hungary were as broad and liberal as those in the United States. If such were the case, why are not Slovaks permitted to establish schools and organize themselves into societies as freely as in the United States? In the early seventies of the last century the government closed all the Slovak secondary schools (gymnasia) on the pretext that they fostered among the pupils and professors Pan-Slavic propaganda. Since that time, and despite the plain language of the Law of Nationalities, assuring to every race education in its native tongue, Slovaks have been unable to obtain from the authorities consent to the reopening of even one higher school. Think of a nation of two millions and a half, living in the heart of Europe, not having one higher school for the education of its youth! In 1875 the government confiscated the funds of an educational institution, and with the money undertook to publish at Budapest “a patriotic Hungarian journal.” At the University of Budapest, the Slovak idiom is studiously ignored by the instructors, though the Slovaks are heavy taxpayers, and even a biased census concedes 10 per cent. Slovak population in the country. Slovak elementary schools are fast disappearing; those that still remain in Slovakland are either mixed, that is Slovak-Magyar, or pure Magyar. Under the provision of the Apponyi Law, Magyar is the only recognized language of instruction in elementary schools in Hungary which are attended by twenty or more Magyar children. Since the normal schools are all Magyar, it is obvious that the future teachers of Slovak children will have no means, except by private study, to learn the language of their little charges.

Neither Vienna nor Budapest will listen to their appeal for justice. The Lord is too high and the Emperor-King too far away to hear and see the Slovaks. The Rumuns in Transylvania may hope for succor from their motherland, Rumania; Italians in the unredeemed provinces may look forward to the time when Italy will liberate them from Austrian misrule; even the Serbs in Southern Hungary find new courage in resisting oppression by reason of their nearness to their brothers in the Serbian Kingdom. Whence shall Slovaks look for sympathy and help? Their nearest kinsmen, the Bohemians, who, of all the nations, best understand them, are themselves held down by an alien oppressor and unable to give them other than moral aid.

“In comparison with the Government of Magyarland the Government of Austria is a model of tolerance.”[23]

This is the opinion of an Englishman who knows conditions in Hungary well. Exterminate the race, suppress its language, obliterate every evidence of its existence: that is now and has been for decades the policy of the Hungarian Government toward the Slovaks.

Some time ago the American Slovaks formulated a demand for autonomy in a memorandum which they sent to influential friends and to those whom they hope to win as friends. The memorandum “voices the sentiment and national aspirations, not only of Slovaks living in the United States, but also interprets the mind and the will of their brothers, inhabiting, since times immemorial, the ancestral homelands of the race.” That the American Slovaks took the initiative in issuing the memorandum is not hard to understand. “The Slovaks at home are not permitted to approach their king with grievances, the last deputation to him having been denied admittance. Slovaks, therefore, are made to feel that they have no king, only a government—a government, however, that knows no mercy, that feels no remorse, that offers no hope, that fears no punishment. If Slovaks are resolved to speak at all, if they wish the world at large to know the measure of their wrongs, under existing conditions, they can only appeal through the medium of their compatriots in the United States.”

Of the Magyars as a nation the Slovaks do not complain. It is the Hungarian Government which they accuse of oppression.

When the time approaches to re-draw the map of Austria-Hungary, the Slovaks will ask to be freed from the Hungarian yoke. And if they cannot have a government of their own, their second choice is to co-operate with the Bohemians toward the establishment of a confederacy that shall include the autonomous states of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Slovakland. Thus to the present ethnical unity of Slovaks and Bohemians another bond would be added, that of political unity.

Thomas Čapek.

References: The Slovaks of Hungary, The Knickerbocker Press, New York, 1906, by Thomas Čapek; Racial Problems in Hungary, Archibald Constable & Co., Ltd., London, 1908, by Scotus Viator. Die Unterdrückung der Slovaken durch die Magyaren, Prague, 1903.

III
WHY BOHEMIA DESERVES FREEDOM

By Professor B. Šimek of the State University of Iowa[24]

In the present European crisis several nations are hoping for a betterment of their political fortunes. Among these not the least hopeful are the Bohemians in the historic Kingdom of Bohemia, now annexed to the Austrian Empire.

Many who are unfamiliar with the situation will probably ask: Why should the Bohemians seek independence? Are they not more secure as a part of a large empire? It is in anticipation of, and in response to such questions that the following facts are presented.

Bohemia has not received just treatment at the hands of the Austrian Government. Her national spirit has been offended or ignored, her people have been oppressed, her schools are not adequately maintained, and the scant support which they now receive has been wrung from the government only by tremendous effort, and in times of great political stress. Even now the people are compelled to maintain schools in some parts of the kingdom by voluntary contributions. The government has done nothing for Bohemia either politically, intellectually, or industrially, excepting under compulsion. Therefore there is no reason for a grateful desire to perpetuate the present relation. Bohemia has heretofore been loyal to Austria only because she faced a greater danger from German absorption.

The grounds on which the Bohemians ask the right to shape their own destinies as a nation are chiefly the following:

1. The historic right.—The House of Hapsburg was called to the throne of Bohemia by voluntary election. The first Hapsburg to attempt to rule Bohemia was Rudolph (1306-1307), who was forced upon the country for a short time by the German Emperor, and who attempted to secure the color of a right to rule by marrying the widow of the last Bohemian King of the Přemysl line. His right to rule was contested, and upon his death the Bohemians selected several kings from other ruling houses, and it was not until 1437 that another Hapsburg, Albrecht, was again voluntarily elected King of Bohemia. But after a brief rule of two years, during which he violated his oath and his pledges to the Bohemian people, he was again succeeded by a line of kings elected from various ruling houses, and the greatest of them, George of Poděbrad, the Protestant king who ruled from 1458 to 1471, from among their own nobility.

It was not until 1526 that another Hapsburg, Ferdinand I., was elected king by the Bohemian Diet, but he soon destroyed the old charter in accordance with which he was recognized as a king by election, and usurped the power which the House of Hapsburg continued to exercise for some time. But in 1619 the Bohemians reasserted their right to elect their kings and chose Frederick of the Palatinate, thus precipitating the Thirty Years’ War. But notwithstanding the reverses which the Bohemians suffered, Ferdinand II. of Hapsburg, who ascended the throne, was obliged to take oath “to maintain the privileges and liberties of the kingdom” and to “govern the kingdom according to the laws and usages of the kings, his predecessors, and especially Charles IV.”

During the long dark night which followed the deep tragedy of the Thirty Years’ War, the Hapsburgs ruled over Bohemia, but the nation never conceded them the right to incorporate their country in any other, and in 1868 formally declared that “the Kingdom of Bohemia is attached to the empire by a purely personal tie,”—that is, through the person of the king who was also Emperor of Austria. Francis Josef himself soon after recognized this right and promised to be crowned King of Bohemia, but this promise was broken.

For the reasons here given the Bohemians claim that their kingdom is still a distinct political entity.

2. Their political capacity.—Time and again the Bohemians have demonstrated their loyalty to high political ideals and their capacity for self-government. They never recognized the “divine right” of kings to rule,—unlike their German neighbors, most of whom recognize the “right” to-day. They elected their own kings, who were bound by what was practically equivalent to our modern constitution, and they sometimes chose these kings from their own midst; before the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War they were seriously contemplating a form of government not unlike that of our own country; and to-day they are hoping for a republic, or at least for a monarchy as liberal and innocuous as that of England. Indeed, for several centuries their political ideals have approached nearer to those of England than of any other of the greater European nations.

3. Their intellectual power.—A nation claiming the right of self-government is usually expected to show competent intellectual capacity. This the Bohemians have demonstrated beyond a doubt. When we consider the great odds against which they contended when they struggled to re-establish their schools and their intellectual life, the progress which they have made in the past century is astonishing. The city of Prague is to-day one of the greatest publishing centres in Europe. The growth of Bohemian literature in all its branches has been stupendous, and to-day Bohemia leads the Empire of Austria with the smallest percentage of illiterates and is one of the leaders of Europe in this respect!

Nor are these educational and intellectual ideals a gift of the Germans, as has been asserted in certain prejudiced quarters. Bohemia had a great university, that of Prague, before a single institution of the kind had been established within the limits either of the present German Empire or any other part of the present Empire of Austria. This has been claimed repeatedly as a German university, but it was established in 1348 by Charles IV., whose mother was a Bohemian, and whose sentiments were wholly Bohemian. He was educated in the University of Paris, and that institution furnished the model for his new university. Following the Paris plan he gave two votes to the German nations in the management of the university (a courtesy which they have never been inclined to imitate), but like all other institutions of that period the university was Latin, and not in any sense German. Fifty years later it passed wholly under the control of the Bohemians and developed into one of the greatest universities of Europe, sharing this honor with Paris and Oxford, and for more than two centuries it continued to be one of the world’s great centres of intellectual activity and inspiration. The Thirty Years’ War overwhelmed it, and transformed it into a German institution for a long time, but a third of a century ago it was re-established as a Bohemian institution, and has now far outstripped its German rival in the same city which was forced upon the nation in the effort to Germanize it.

It is also a matter of historic interest that as early as 1294 a King of Bohemia, Václav II., attempted to establish a university at Prague, but the plan failed because of dissensions between the ecclesiastics and the nobility.

The Bohemian people have abundant intellectual traditions of their own, and their devotion to their educational interests has been tested repeatedly and found not wanting.

4. The moral and ethical right.—Why should any other nation rule Bohemia? The Bohemian people are intellectual, with high political ideals and splendid traditions, and they are industrially progressive. They are competent to direct their own affairs, and it is only the insolent usurper who can assume to lay claim to the right to rule over them. Bohemia is a fertile country blessed with boundless riches which should be employed to sustain a happy, busy, progressive nation, and not a usurping military power, and that nation has a right to be free!

This briefly is the Bill of Rights of the Bohemian nation. Whatsoever may be the form of the government which will come to liberated Bohemia, all lovers of freedom will join in the hope of the realization of the spirit of the prophecy of Doctor John Jesenský of Jesen, one of the martyr leaders of the Bohemians who were executed at Prague in 1621, who proclaimed from the scaffold: “It is vain that Ferdinand gluts his rage for blood; a king elected by us shall again ascend the throne of Bohemia!”

IV
THE BOHEMIAN CHARACTER

By Herbert Adolphus Miller, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, Oberlin College, Ohio[25]

The mental and moral characteristics of any social group are the product of a wide variety of complex influences of a pre-eminently psychological nature. The suggestions that come through tradition and history result in mental reactions that become so typical of the group that it is popular to call them inborn and racial. The easy assumption of this explanation hinders the more fundamental discovery of why certain characteristics prevail. The Bohemians illustrate this principle of the creative influence of definite ideas.

A Bohemian is a Slav. The influence of this relationship is the broadest and most general. It has become self-conscious only in comparatively recent times, i.e., two or three generations. Previously there was much changing from Slav to Teuton and vice versa. Unquestionably a very large proportion of Prussians have a considerable infusion of Slavic blood, and many Bohemians have German ancestors. In centres like Pilsen or Prague, where the two races have lived together for a long time, it is absolutely impossible to tell them apart until they begin to speak, and then the identity may be concealed by using the other language. Within the last seventy-five years there has been a clear recognition of the Slavic relationship which has taken the form of conscious efforts to preserve certain Slavic characteristics, and to join with the others in withstanding the influence and authority of the Germans. There have been certain other Slavic characteristics that have persisted in all the Slavic groups which will be mentioned later when we consider their contribution to democracy.

For something over five hundred years the Bohemians have been clearly conscious of their Bohemian nationality and much that is distinctive of them has been developed and is still being developed in them by this national history, and nothing of it can be understood except in the light of this historical influence. The two most influential forces have been John Hus, who made Bohemia Protestant a century before Luther, and who was burned at the stake in 1415; and Comenius the world educator, who was exiled for his connection with the Protestant Church of Bohemian Brethren. These two national heroes planted the seeds which differentiated the Bohemians from the rest of the Slavs in religious freedom and respect for education. Hus also was the symbol for the development of nationalism and the consequent revival of the language which have occupied such a large place in the attention of the Bohemian people. The two most characteristic expressions of these influences are now found in Nationalism and Free-thought, and no appreciation of the condition and purposes of the people can be complete without reckoning with these facts.

From about 1400 for more than two hundred years Bohemia was a leader in European culture, but the Thirty Years’ War crushed her so that some claim that she has had no history since 1620. Count Lützow says that “Bohemia presents the nearly unique case of a country which was formerly almost entirely Protestant and has become almost entirely Catholic. The popular optimistic fallacy which maintains that in no country has the religious belief been entirely suppressed by persecution and brute force is disproved by the fate of Bohemia.” As a matter of fact, instead of being suppressed, it was smouldering during the centuries and now constitutes an amazing unanimity of mind and feeling among the nation in regard to religion. Immediately after the Act of Tolerance in 1781 there sprang up here and there churches which took up the old faith exactly where it had been left more than a hundred and fifty years before. Free-thinking is in part a philosophy, but it is more particularly a sign of national character.

In the past it has been the custom of nations to try to absorb all within their political boundaries into the character of the governing group, however much they may have differed in traditions and customs. Austria not only tried to make Bohemians Catholics but Germans, and the history of the effort ought to make clear for ever that political science must adjust itself to the laws of human nature, and that the way to develop the individualism of a people is to try to blot it out. Whatever may be said about the superiority of one culture over another it cannot be imposed by force, and the Germans have been stupidly slow in discovering this fundamental fact. Bohemia is but a single example of this new consciousness which is called Nationalism. The Poles, Lithuanians, Finns, Magyars, Irish, and all the Slavic groups are showing that there is a psychological force to be reckoned with which military force cannot overcome. The contribution of the variety of cultures is what will enrich the life of civilization and not the pre-eminence of one, whatever that one may be. Some evidence of the way in which the revival of nation spirit is taking place among the Bohemians will show what a tremendous force this spirit is.

Count Lützow, in an address given in Prague in 1911, brings out the present situation: “One of the most interesting facts that in Bohemia and especially in Prague mark the period of peace at the beginning of the nineteenth century is the revival of the national feeling and language.... The greatest part of Bohemia, formerly almost Germanized, has now again become thoroughly Slavic. The national language, for a time used only by the peasantry in outlying districts, is now freely and generally used by the educated classes in most parts of the country. Prague itself, that had for a time acquired almost the appearance of a German town, has now a thoroughly Slavic character. The national literature also, which had almost ceased to exist, is in a very flourishing state, particularly since the foundation of a national university. At no period have so many and so valuable books been written in the Bohemian language.”

About sixty years ago several Bohemian writers were bold enough to write in their own language instead of German and from that time the Bohemian spirit has grown until opposition to the overbearing Germanism became almost a passion. Wherever the Germans were in a majority only German public schools were provided, but wherever the municipality had fewer Germans than Slavs German as well as Bohemian schools were provided. To meet this discrimination Bohemians, both at home and in America, have contributed to a remarkable degree for the “Mother of Schools” (association) which supports Bohemian schools of first caliber in the minority communities. There are no other Slavs who compare with the Bohemians in the high regard for schools. As one goes through the country he is struck by the palatial school building even in poor peasant villages. It seems to bear a relation similar to the prison and church in a Russian town. The inevitable result of this universal spirit is the gradual elimination of the German language. German had nearly vanished from the streets of Prague. One fared ill in a restaurant if his German were good enough to sound genuine though the waiter understood perfectly. Business men were beginning to take pride in the fact that they could succeed without knowing any German, and fathers who were reared with German as a mother tongue taught their children Bohemian instead. The unifying force of this national feeling has been going on with great rapidity in the face of the disrupting force of eleven political parties, besides the sharp spiritual division into Catholics and anti-Catholics.

It could not fail to be a distinct disadvantage for a people of seven or eight million to cut itself off from the opportunities of the environing German culture, science, and commerce, but those who saw this most clearly deliberately assumed the cost in their struggle for the freedom of the spirit. When we remember that prestige was on the side of the German one sees a sacrifice approaching nobility. At the time the Olympic games were being held in Europe and attracting the attention of the world a far more important athletic meet was being held in Prague. This was Slavic in its membership, though Bohemian in its origin. More than twenty thousand persons took part, and at one time eleven thousand men, speaking several different languages, were doing calisthenic exercises together. With the exception of the Poles, who would not come because the Russians were invited, there were representatives of all the Slavic nationalities, and the keynote of every speech was “Slavie! Slavie!” and when it was uttered the crowds would go wild. There were a quarter of a million visitors in the city, and illustrated reports of the exhibition went to the ends of the Slavic world. A few weeks afterwards I saw some of them pasted on the wall of a primitive factory in the back districts of Moscow. But the German papers completely ignored the whole thing and no self-respecting German could attend, though it was undoubtedly the greatest thing of the sort ever held.

Two years ago when war was threatening between Austria and Serbia, Bohemians who were being entrained from their garrison for mobilization on the Serbian border, in more than one case sang the Pan-Slavic hymn, “Hej Slované!” familiar to all Slavic nations, but forbidden to Austrian soldiers in service. They used a popular parody in this enthusiastic and powerful hymn, full of encouragement to the Slavs, telling them that their language shall never perish nor shall they “even though the number of Germans equal the number of souls in hell.” It is said that at this time at least seventy thousand Slavs in Austria eligible to military service quit the country.

The Germans have succeeded in making the Bohemian culture almost identical with theirs, and it is difficult to find in the German any traits that can be called specifically Bohemian. Only a long future can tell whether there are actually inherent psychological differences which can account for aggressiveness in the one and passivity in the other. We may assume, however, that we have not had time to test the subtle forces which work on social groups and give them a cast of thought that seems biologically inherent. No Slavic people has exhibited the individualistic character of the Teuton, but we have no assurance that this Teuton habit of mind is the result of anything except the history and the philosophy which have been appropriated in comparatively modern times. There are two ways of explaining the relative passivity of the Slavic mind. One is the fact that having been for so long a subject people they have no traditions of success. Even the Russians are ruled by a bureaucracy with which they have no sympathy. The other is that the Bohemians and the others have retained the democratic characteristics which are common to the Slavs. There has been some influence from both.

One peculiarity of Bohemians both in America and Bohemia is the habit of criticising any of their own people who acquire any eminence or leadership in any field. One never feels free to speak with enthusiasm about a successful Bohemian lest he invite a dash of cold water. There seems to be universal suspicion of the motives or methods underlying the success. If a leader were to appear he would not get followers. Such a habit of mind can never bring anything that corresponds to imperialistic success. Count Lützow says “that the evil seed of hatred and distrust sown by the oppressors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries bears evil fruit up to the present day. Bohemian peasants even now instinctively distrust the nobles of their own race who are in full sympathy with the national cause. This antagonism has frequently contributed to the failure of the attempts of the Bohemians to recover their autonomy.”

There is a great difference in an individual or a people that has been accustomed to accomplishment. The attitude in Bohemia has been that of pessimistic resignation. Their devotion to certain ideals and causes is magnificent, but the inability to organize unanimously is indicated by the eleven political parties, most of which are nationalistic and none of which has the active co-operation of the masses. They follow an ideal rather than a person, and the symbol of the ideal is always a person who is dead. The look is thus backward rather than hopefully forward. Hus is the great hero, but also Comenius, Palacký, Havlíček, and many others of more or less remoteness are the real leaders, and the reinstatement of national self-direction and the Bohemian language are the ideal objects.

In Bohemia these result in an impracticalness which magnifies the æsthetic even to sentimentality. They will talk as though art were the end of life. For many the æsthetic life consists of sitting in restaurants night after night listening to the band and talking over their beer. In spite of this industry has made great progress in Bohemia, and when they come to this country they forget their objection to the practical. There are probably no other immigrants in America who make such direct efforts to own their own homes as the Bohemians. At a gathering of instructors of the University of Prague to organize a sociological institute, I was asked to tell some of the things we do here. I tried to show how we combine theory with practice and emphasized my own interest which is theoretical, but they unanimously said that our methods were too practical to be used by them.

A comparison of Poles and Bohemians who belong to the same race shows the influence of culture on the Bohemian. In 1900 the percentage of illiterates among the Bohemians entering the United States was 3. and of Poles 31.6. The Poles are as strongly the Catholic as the Bohemians are Free-thinkers.

In Austria there are fourteen times as many cases of litigation in the courts among the Poles as among the Bohemians. A Bohemian in Chicago who does a large mail order business among all Slavs says: “We will not do business with the Poles at all because they will not pay. To the Serbians we send everything C.O.D., but the Croatians, Ruthenians, and the rest we trust.”

The family life is an important sign of the morality of a people, and we find among the Bohemians many interesting qualities. The following statement in “Hull House Papers” derived from a study of Bohemians says: “The family life is affectionate, and it is the prevailing custom among the working class to give all the wages to the mother.” I have often noticed that in families the income is naturally estimated as the total earnings of husband and children and that the mother gives even to the larger children who are earning good wages what money they need, and always with cheerfulness and perfect understanding. The attachment for the home is very strong, and they take pride in large families which stick together. It is probable that ownership of the home works both ways in this matter, having the home integrates the family and having the family unity makes it desirable to own a home.

In sex morality we must remember that the Bohemians are European and not American, but on the streets of Prague there is less public display of immorality than in Chicago. Modesty is observed as an important virtue. The Bohemians, like all other people, have prejudices that make it difficult for them to see clearly values not measured by their own standard, but there can be no question but that their standard measures up well with any people in Europe. The important thing to civilization is whether they have any peculiar traits of mind or character that will be a contribution to progress. I think that the Bohemians have this in common with the other Slavs to a very marked degree and in a direction which has hitherto been entirely unrecognized, and this is the contribution to democracy.

However else the Germans may justify the present war, they sincerely believe that on their success hangs the salvation of civilization from the barbarism of the half-civilized Slav. Professors Eucken and Haeckel have voiced a widespread indignation that England could so far forget her ideals as to join with Russia against the forces of enlightenment. Americans, even those whose sympathies are hostile to Germans, dread success of the Russians. The socialists who are opposed to all war feel convinced that Russia is a menace to all their plans. In fact they have tacitly admitted more than once that it might be necessary to resist encroachments of Russia by force. It is my contention that the Slavic people, of whom the Russians are the largest group, have more to contribute to what the world needs next than any other people, and that all that is best in socialism will find its fruition among them as nowhere else.

A learned Bohemian friend, in reply to my letter to Bohemia, in which I spoke of the political progress America was making, said that it could but fill the heart of a Bohemian “with a feeling of sad resignation”; but he adds, “I am not pessimistic enough to give up all hope that Providence may have yet some good things in store for the Slav. What keeps me up is a certain hazy impression that human development may sometime be in want of a new formula, and then our time may come. I conceive ourselves under the sway of the German watchword which spells Force; and as watchwords, like everything else human, come and go, perhaps the Slavs may sometime be called on to introduce another, which I should like to see spelled Charity.”

There is no literature in the world which has contributed so much toward such a sentiment as that of the Slavs. Tolstoy is the great example, and his very greatness enabled him to propose a program even beyond present imagination, but many other writers, some of whom have been translated and some not, have expressed the same ideal of needed radical reform. We must not make the mistake of thinking these writers the originators of their doctrines. A popular prophet expresses the heart of the people, and is a product of their ideals. The great vogue of these writers is among their own people. The government of Russia is hostile to Tolstoy, but it could not resist the demands of the students that an heroic statue of this radical be placed in the great government technical school.

The ultimate goal of society is democracy and, strange as it may sound, the Slav has more to contribute to this end than anyone else. Russia, whose name is the synonym of despotism, is already in reality the most democratic country in the world. Democracy means the opportunity for the individual to express himself to the utmost, to have his expression count according to its value, and if he does not predominate to yield gracefully to the expression that does prevail. This habit of mind cannot be obtained without practice, and up to the present time in the world’s history would not have been as efficient as the leadership of individuals who, right or wrong, obtained results. Now by means of rapid communication and a clearer understanding of social purposes the method of democracy can be applied with increasing efficiency. Nurture in democratic practice is the contribution the Slavs will make, and we cannot realize how rich this will be.

The despotism of Russia is no more an expression of the real Russian people than Tammany Hall is an expression of American democracy, and the influence of both institutions on national character has been practically nothing. Despotisms come and go, but the traditions and customs of the people persist. It was formerly thought that ideals were imposed from above, but now we are becoming pretty thoroughly convinced that this is not the case. Imitation is horizontal between people of the same class and not vertical between classes. Polish nobles had glass windows for years, but it did not occur to the peasants to have them until the idea was brought back from America by people of their own sort. And so influences and habits may go on for centuries upon centuries without being affected by a different culture. This fortunate fact has enabled us to preserve what would have been eliminated by the contemporary values and customs that were not valuable for the time.

Any observant traveler entering Russia, after he gets over the first fear which everyone seems to feel, will gradually be impressed with the contrast to the Germans and Austrians whom he has just left. There he was never addressed without his full title of Herr Professor, Herr Journalist, or whatever he might claim for his distinction. Here his self-esteem suffers a shock, for, in the language of the country, he becomes simply “Mister.” This universal custom, unimportant in itself, is significant of a national habit of mind. Men in high places, as heads of universities, are addressed by their colleagues by their first names. In the familiar Russian and Polish novel we find nobles and military leaders regularly with the simple title Pan (Mr.), which is a term of respect but not of distinction. In fact the attitude of the noble and the peasant toward each other is not that of superiority and servility, but as elder and younger brother. The name Little Father which is applied to the Czar expresses the attitude of familiarity rather than of awe. Compare this with the worship of uniform in Germany, where a policeman will not answer your question unless you salute him and an omitted title is an insult. In Petrograd during student riots it is not an uncommon thing for the students to kick the shins of the police and no one thinks of it as lèse majesté. The Russian officer and soldier are more nearly comrades than in any other army in the world.

These habits have not been assumed deliberately, but are the product of underlying institutions out of which they have grown naturally. At least fifty million people in Greater Russia and Siberia live in Mirs or Communes. In these from time immemorial they have practiced a degree of co-operation and local self-government which has never been equalled by deliberate action in the most enlightened nations, and which the most despotic government, not being able to overthrow, has recently incorporated into its governmental method. In the Mir the land which is owned in common is regularly reallotted among the householders according to their working capacities and needs. The Mir elects its own executive and may undertake all kinds of work of public utility. Occasionally a woman is elected as executive, and when the man representing the household is away or dead the woman votes and takes part in the assembly. The Mirs are united into larger bodies with similar jurisdiction. The interesting thing about it is that it prevails so widely and among people between whom there has not been the slightest possibility of intercommunication. The promise of the Mir is not communism, but a habit of mind that can be applied in more general and complex affairs.

Complaint has more or less justly been made that the Slav is deficient in political leadership except in the smallest units. This can have been true in the past while holding for a future under quite different conditions. Ease of communication has enlarged social units so that common ideas may result in common action over wide areas as easily as in a common room. At any rate the Slavs have succeeded in carrying over their custom in a very remarkable manner. The artel, which is a co-operative productive organization, embraces most diverse enterprises throughout Russia, and is efficient in a manner only dreamed of elsewhere. Tiffany’s finest silver enamel is mostly made by peasant artels in Moscow. In one small factory where most of the men were away getting in their harvests, the rest were making beautiful inlaid Easter eggs, and a special order of ice cream dishes worth a hundred dollars apiece, yet these work-owners were so untouched by modern customs and the civilization for which they were producing that they ate their dinner from a common dish with wooden spoons. The porters at the railroad stations are artels governed by their own rules and sharing the proceeds. Many banks and large enterprises are carried on in the same way. One of the largest restaurants in Petrograd is owned by the men who do the work. Fishing is also co-operative in its methods. Undertakings of this sort could not possibly be carried through so generally and so successfully if it were not for the great background of experience in which co-operation and acquiescence to the will of the people is accepted as a matter of course.

We recognize that one of the greatest problems of our time is that of class consciousness between labor and capital, and economists have suggested co-operation as the only cure for the deadlock that threatens, but it has not succeeded where tried. The Russians have succeeded without being conscious that they were doing any but the most natural thing. For people who have been forbidden so much that is thought to be essential to freedom, it is nothing short of remarkable, that in the recent years of industrial progress and increasing complexity, they should have been able to adapt their democracy to fit the needs. Nowhere are labor unions formed more easily, and while meager in their activities, as compared to American or English, they have coherence.

The church has developed in line with the characteristics of the people. Although the Orthodox Church is magnificent in its equipment, and its priests most richly caparisoned, yet it offers a marked contrast to the aristocratic system of the Roman Catholic Church. The Russian most devoutly takes off his hat in passing a church or holy image, but he keeps it on when passing the priest, and he kisses the priest on the cheek rather than the hand.

Among other Slavs there is the same widespread prevalence of democratic customs. In Serbia the Mir is found in much the same form as in Russia, and in Poland in numerous instances the Zadruga is a community of from ten to sixty or more living in one house and settling important matters by vote. The head of the Zadruga is generally the oldest man, but this is not necessary, and not infrequently a woman is head. In the days of its independence the Polish king was always elected. The suffrage was restricted to the nobles, and much turbulence prevailed at the time of election, but the people were very jealous of the privilege.

Of all the Slavs the Bohemians have come most under German influence and it has often been said that the assimilation is all in the direction of the German. In many characteristics this is true, but some of the traditional habits of mind have clearly been preserved. They have not lost these by being transferred to America and are able to carry on certain forms of association with phenomenal success. In Chicago they have 104 Building and Loan Associations incorporated under the laws of Illinois. All are prosperous, only one has ever failed. Each has only one paid officer, a secretary who receives from five to ten dollars a week. One association has assets of $600,000, and all of them aggregate about $14,000,000 and 20,000 members. They also have numerous benevolent lodges with an aggregate membership of over 100,000 in the United States, which manage insurance systems on a most democratic and safe basis. This management in almost all cases includes women in exact equality. The same thing is true of the Sokol or gymnastic society which is organized in all Slavic countries. In the numerous deliberative meetings of Bohemians that I have attended the women have shown themselves quite the equal of the men in debate.

The ultimate democracy must include universal suffrage, which we see has its roots in the Slavic institutions. The Bohemians have the arguments of the Germans about the place of women, but their practice is more subtly democratic than they are aware of. Until it was confused with the prohibition question Bohemians have consistently advocated equal suffrage, before it became generally popular. The Germans have as consistently opposed it.

Whatever the outcome of the war the Slavs will inevitably become an increasing influence in the world’s progress because of their higher birth rate and because they possess the richest natural resources in the world. It is perhaps an occasion for gratitude that in the midst of the apparently insoluble problems about the exploitation of natural resources and labor conflicts, a people that has been nurturing in what we have called barbarism the traits most desirable for dealing with such problems, is now about to come upon the stage.

To be sure, most of the Slavic world is permeated by ignorance and dominated by bureaucracy, but education is only a generation deep, and political reorganization is the most rapid and remarkable fact of our era. The Bohemians have shown us that under modern conditions these traits are not lost. Civilization may have a temporary setback, but it cannot be as great as that now arising from militarism, but in the end the Slav will contribute to the social fabric that for which it is now peculiarly ready. In the words of an ancient writer we may say that the stone which the builder rejected is become the head of the corner.

V
PLACE OF BOHEMIA IN THE CREATIVE ARTS

By Will S. Monroe, Professor State Normal School, Montclair, N. J., Author of “Bohemia and the Čechs,” “Comenius and the Beginnings of Educational Reform,” etc.[26]

It remains to call attention to the place of Bohemia in letters, art, music, education, social and religious reform. In this connection it may be pointed out that the civilization of the Bohemians is distinctly older than that of the German-Austrians, and that it developed wholly independent of the Teutonic art movements in Germany and Austria.

In the matter of literature, Bohemia occupies a place of distinction and priority. The development of the vulgar tongue took place at a comparatively early period. Some of the most ancient of the poetic documents date back to very early times. Indeed, the prose literature of Bohemia, after the Greek and Latin, is one of the oldest in Europe. The three centuries from the time of Charles IV. to the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War covers the early brilliant period in literature. Two centuries of intellectual barrenness followed the fatal battle of the White Mountain and the usurpation of the Bohemian Crown by the House of Hapsburg. The ancient constitution of the kingdom was suppressed and it was replaced by a slightly veiled system of Teutonic absolutism. The lands of the Bohemian nobles, who had been patrons of letters, were confiscated and given to generals in the Austrian army and to Austrian noblemen. The inhabitants of the flourishing cities, that had been strongholds of the national language and literature, were driven into exile and their places were taken by immigrants of non-Bohemian birth. The country people were reduced to a state of serfdom and attached to the soil. The pillory, the gallows, and the whipping-post were the sinister arguments that were employed to obliterate all traces of national culture.

Not only was there a complete arrest in the remarkable literary movement that intervened between the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War, but most of the literary treasures of the previous centuries were destroyed by the royal edicts of the reactionary Hapsburg rulers. This was done with the notion that the brilliant period of Bohemian existence might be blotted out and forgotten. The book-destroyers that were turned loose in the land burned not only all historical and theological works, but every form of literary composition that might suggest to the Bohemian people their glorious past. One book-destroyer, an Austrian priest, boasted with pride that he had burned 60,000 Bohemian books. Many works were carried by the Bohemian exiles to Saxony, Slovakland, and other countries, and preserved; and these, together with others that escaped the fury of pillaging soldiers during the Thirty Years’ War, constitute the fragments out of which the literary history before the seventeenth century must be constructed. But these fragments are little more than the planks of a ship that was wrecked on the ocean of national vicissitude.

The modern Bohemian literary movement dates back only one hundred years. Joseph Dobrovský (1753-1829), the patriarch of Slavic philology, initiated the literary movement at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The few other Bohemian scholars of the day—Jungmann, Palacký, Kollár, Šafařík, and the incomparable publicist Charles Havlíček—lent their services to the rehabilitation of a national language that was long supposed to be dead. The letters of Jungmann give us our most intimate accounts of the struggles of himself and his co-patriots during the early day of the modern Bohemian literary renascence.[27]

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Austrian Government had penalized the publication of books in the Bohemian language and the teaching of the vernacular in the schools of the kingdom. But in spite of prohibitions of the Hapsburg rulers, the vernacular continued to be spoken in the country districts. This fact facilitated the extraordinary progress made in the fields of poetry, drama, fiction, criticism, and historical works during the last fourscore years. The satirical writings of Jan Neruda, the historical dramas of Alois Jirásek, the rich lyrical poetry of Jaroslav Vrchlický (Frida), the bold imaginative compositions of Julius Zeyer, the modernist poetry of J. S. Machar, the great national epics of Svatopluk Čech, the historical works of Francis Palacký, and the political and sociological writings of Thomas G. Masaryk have made notable contributions to the literary history of modern Bohemia. When one recalls the dearth of literature from Teutonic writers in Austria during the same period, the contrast is marked indeed.

In matters of art also Bohemia was early in the field. The Prague school of painting that came into prominence during the reign of Charles IV. (1316-1378) took favorable rank with similar early art movements in Italy. Painters, sculptors, and architects trained in Bohemia are represented to-day at most of the great cities in Europe where art treasures are preserved. The zealous and promising artistic movement inaugurated in the country by the followers of the Prague school, like most of the other culture movements in the kingdom, was well-nigh extinguished by the attempted Teutonization of the country by the Hapsburg rulers after the fatal Bílá Hora.

The political and literary activity in Bohemia during the opening years of the last century reacted favorably on the art life of the nation. A society of the fine arts, that was distinctly Bohemian and national in character, was organized at Prague in 1848; and this was followed by annual expositions of the chief productions of Bohemian and foreign artists. As an immediate result of these activities, Bohemia produced an astonishingly large number of painters who took high rank in their art, artists of the rare talent of Hellich, Manes, Čermák, Schwaiger, Aleš, Brožík, Mucha, Úprka. In sculpture, too, modern Bohemia has taken a place of distinction in the works of Myslbek, Šimek, Seidan, Sucharda, and Šaloun.

Bohemia’s music is probably better known throughout the civilized world than any other branch of her creative art. This is largely due to the universal character of the language of music and to the eminence of her great tone poets, Smetana and Dvořák. Not that the history of music in the country begins with these two modern composers, but because they spoke in such musical forms and with such musical force that they arrested the attention of the world.

We read in the chronicles of the mediæval historians of the rôle played by music in the life of the Bohemian people; and we know that during the Hussite period the Bohemian hymnology attained a degree of excellence that has not been surpassed by later ages. The Bohemian school of music of to-day takes foremost rank among the music schools of modern Europe.

Bohemia’s position in the matter of education is likewise distinctive. Education of an elementary and secondary character was general in Bohemia several centuries in advance of Austria and Germany. The University of Prague antedated similar institutions in Germany by more than half a century. John Amos Komenský (known in America and England by the Latinized form of his name, Comenius) was a Bohemian, and in the judgment of competent historians of education he was the real evangelist of modern pedagogy. Most of the school systems of progressive and cultivated European peoples are based directly upon ideas that he formulated.

In the domain of religion and ethics, Bohemia has given the greatest moral reformer of the past five hundred years in Jan Hus, the forerunner of Martin Luther, John Calvin, and William E. Channing. And in Jerome of Prague, the contemporary of Hus, she produced another spiritual leader of great power.

VI
THE BOHEMIANS AND THE SLAVIC REGENERATION

By Leo Wiener, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University[28]

Bohemia is the westernmost Slavic country and its fortunate geographical position between the West and the East of Europe and half-way between the Slavs of the Balkans and those of the North has in past ages determined its cultural mission, which has been that of mediating between the Latin civilization and the Poles on the one hand and the Byzantine culture and the Russians on the other. Bohemia is the keystone in the Slavic arch. Without it the proto-history of the Eastern nations in Europe has no meaning and no coherency. Unfortunately even the most profound scholars have as yet overlooked the important rôle which Bohemia has played in forwarding that Carolingian civilization which the Visigoths, expelled by the Arabs from Spain and settled by Charlemagne in southern and central France, caused to radiate to the whole Germanic world and, through Bavaria, grafted on the neighboring Čechs.

It is well known that the first Christian activity in Bohemia proceeded from German missionaries, but it is only a recent discovery on the origin of the so-called Gothic Bible which has revealed to me the extraordinary extent of the Visigothic literary and cultural influences upon the Bavarians and the Čechs. In the light of this discovery, which I am now subjecting to a close scrutiny, it appears that a tremendous proportion of the Slavic vocabularies, from Russia to Dalmatia, from Poland to Bulgaria, has been borrowed from the religious works of the Bohemians, of the early period, now entirely lost to science. Bohemia was the intellectual mistress of what may be called the proto-Slavic world. Without Bohemia, the greater part of the Slavic vocabularies remains irreducible as regards origins and distribution, while with the proper appreciation of this country’s geographical factor it appears at once that far from standing aloof from the Roman civilization of the early Middle Ages, the Slavs have been equal participants with the Teutons in the benefits of the Visigothic culture, which shows hardly any traces of Teutonism, but a curious mixture of Western Roman, Southern French, and Arabic elements. The linguistically strongest of these is the Arabic, for my discovery goes to show that the so-called Gothic Bible was written only about the year 800 and in Southern France.

It was only in 813 that Charlemagne introduced the Germanic languages to the knowledge of the educated, by ordering that homilies should be written in the native dialects. There does not exist the slightest evidence that, with the possible exception of some Gothic tracts, which Bishop Ulphilas is said to have written in the fourth century, the Germans used their native dialects for any literary purposes. There is nothing which we possess in the way of literary documents that dates back of the ninth century, and there is precious little that can with certainty be ascribed to a period previous to the tenth century. Hence it appears that the literary Teutonic activity is very little, if at all, ahead of the distinctively Slavic literary activity, which, so far as we know, begins, at the end of the ninth century, with the translation of the Bible by the proto-apostles of the Slavs, Cyril and Methodius, for the Čechs of Bohemia.

In the present stage of philological science it is impossible to ascertain the precise dialect in which these Bulgarian monks wrote, though the reasonable assumption is that it was that of their native Thessalonica. But the existence of a distinct Slavic alphabet, the Glagolica, of which Cyril’s alphabet is but a simplification, and the existence of the Freisingen fragments which, although not older than from the eleventh century, are written in a variant dialect and obviously are based on documents preceding the activity of the proto-apostles, make it certain that Cyril and Methodius drew on an older literary stock or composed in a language which was already permeated by the Christian conceptions which were the common possession of the Čechs in Carolingian times. This is proved by the precious Kiev fragments, of the eleventh century, which contain the most primitive form of the Old-Slavic language and, at the same time, use distinctively Čech words of the Roman Catholic liturgy. It is, therefore, plausible that whatever dialect was later chosen by Cyril and Methodius in their religious activity in Moravia and Bohemia, it was based on the vocabulary which was already familiar to the Čechs from their previous relations with the German missionaries.

The Slavic liturgy did not survive long in Bohemia. After the death of Methodius in 885 the Slavic priests were banished and Moravia and Bohemia became Roman Catholic once more. Only the Abbey of Sázava continued to use the Slavic liturgy until the year 1096, after which nothing more is heard of the Slavic Church. Cyril and Methodius, who had come to Moravia at the request of Prince Rostislav, had in 867 been accused by the German missionaries of heresy, which accusation, however, Pope Hadrian found to be groundless. But the Slavic activity could not be maintained against German arrogance, and, as it was Bishop Wiching who soon after the death of Methodius banished the Slavic liturgy from Bohemia, so it was in the eleventh century again German priests who destroyed the last vestige of the incipient Slavic culture. The Slavic liturgy left the country to become permanently associated with the Greek Catholic Church in Russia, Serbia, and Bulgaria. What might have formed a bond between the various Slavic nations had been senselessly destroyed in Bohemia by the machinations of the German clergy.

Again it was Bohemia which was the first country, not only among the Slavs, but in the whole of Europe, to carry high the banner of religious freedom. The Germans boast of the contribution to freedom of thought by their Luther, and they constantly forget that a century before him Hus had prepared the ground for that religious dissent which was voiced by Luther and his contemporaries. In the fourteenth century Bohemians were fond of attending foreign universities, especially those of Paris and Oxford. In the latter place they became acquainted with Wiclif and, returning home, they translated his works and laid the foundation for that remarkable activity which is known as Husitism. Matěj of Janov, who had studied at Paris, had even before Hus put himself in opposition to Popery, but it was Hus’s particular desert to have roused the Čech national feeling. Hus was opposed not only to the corruptions that had crept into the Church, but also to the anti-nationalistic activities of the Germans, and so headed the movement which had for its purpose a Čech regeneration. Čech became the language of intercourse, and a large number of translations of the Bible into Čech was made between 1400 and 1430, the most remarkable being that written by a Taborite miller’s wife.

Hus became the first rector of the Čech Prague University, after the German students had withdrawn to the newly formed University of Leipsic. Bohemia was rent by disorder, not only from without, but also within the Husitic movement itself. Husitism stood not only for religious freedom, but also for democracy, and for a time the Husites got along without a king. The most advanced of these democratic protagonists of that time was Chelčický, who dreamed of a millennium, not unlike the one represented in literature at the present time by Tolstoy. His chief desert lies in having, by his writings, promoted the formation of the Church of Bohemian Brethren. The idea of Slavic nationality was not confined to Bohemia alone. The growth of a similar national feeling in Poland may be discerned as the result of this Čech renascence, and the Southern Slavs, too, were directly and indirectly influenced by the nationalism in the North. Indeed, the golden age of Polish and Serbian literature is but a century older than the rebirth of the Slavic idea in Bohemia.

Again it was a Bohemian who, at the end of the eighteenth and in the beginning of the nineteenth century, became the founder of Slavic philology and the new Slavic literary movements throughout Europe. Jagić begins his stupendous “Encyclopedia of Slavic Philology” with a definition of Slavic philology, after which he says: “Only at the end of the eighteenth century did the whole volume of Slavic philology, as an independent science, assume shape. The chief desert in this matter belongs to Joseph Dobrovský. He laid the foundation for a scientific grammar of the Slavic languages, centering it on its most ancient type, the Church-Slavic. He was the first to attempt a determination of the degree of relationship between the separate Slavic dialects by means of a scientific classification. It was he who introduced into the circle of scientific interests the questions from the literary and cultural history of the Slavs, for example, the question of the educational activity of Cyril and Methodius, and finally also from social history, such as archeological and ethnographical questions.... The critical spirit of Dobrovský with his broad views has created Slavic philology. He is the father of this science.”

In the second half of the eighteenth century it looked as though the Slavic languages were doomed to perdition. Poland lost its independence and was parceled out among three nations; Bohemia had become a mere dependency of the Hapsburg Empire; Serbia and Bulgaria were under the Turkish yoke and did not even dream of a separate political existence. Nor did matters stand better in the national literatures. The Polish and Bohemian literatures led a vegetative existence; the Serbians and Croatians had forgotten of their literary past; the Bulgarians had not yet discovered the fact that they spoke an intelligible language worthy of literary refinement. Russia was still struggling with the establishment of a linguistic norm out of the ecclesiastic Slavic and the spoken idiom, while its literature was but a feeble reflex of French pseudo-classicism. Nowhere was there the slightest conviction that the homely native dialects had a right to exist by the side of the more fortunate German, while of the past of the Slavic languages but the faintest surmises had been uttered by men untutored in historical and philological lore. But if it was the preponderant influence of German culture that put the Slavic into the shade, it was also the result of German philosophy which gave the Slavic national idea a new lease of life.

German literature had itself been decadent for some time, and was obliged to yield to the more universal French culture which ruled even at the Prussian court. The revolt against French pseudo-classicism and encyclopedism was, however, voiced by a few German writers who began to look in the native elements of the intellectual life for a basis for a native poetry and belles lettres in general. Thus arose the German Romanticism, which believed that in the creations of the popular mind could be found truer, more natural sentiments for literary expression than in the artificial productions of a select upper class. Possibly the chief activity in the direction of a simpler literature was developed by the brothers Grimm, who, by their collections of fairy tales and mythological lore, laid the foundation for a nationalistic movement which was soon to sweep over Europe. Not only did German literature successfully establish itself against the French fashion, but all the smaller nations, who had almost forgotten of their historical existence, began to discover themselves. If the popular creation was truer and more important than the traditional literatures of the Græco-Roman type, then Serbia and Bohemia and Russia, which had preserved an enormous mass of oral literature in out-of-the-way places, harked back to important pasts and should develop from within. The nationalistic idea began to grow out of proportion to the folklore which could conveniently be mustered in proof of native superiority, and where there was such a disproportion it became necessary, so unscrupulous nationalists thought, to manufacture such material. Everybody knows the huge literary forgery of Macpherson, whose Ossianic poetry none the less had a great influence upon susceptible minds, even in the East. Another such forgery was that of the Bohemian Hanka, whose Queen’s Court Manuscript still finds overzealous defenders among a certain class of unwise nationalists. It is not the forgery of Hanka which has had most widespread influences upon the dissemination of the nationalistic idea among the Slavs, but the legitimate and scholarly activity of the father of Slavic philology, Joseph Dobrovský.

Having studied Eastern languages at the University of Prague, he had hoped to become a missionary in India, but he soon abandoned this intention and devoted himself to the study of Slavic antiquity. In 1779 he made his appearance in criticism with a periodical which set itself the task of telling “the truth, the naked, unvarnished truth” without regard for persons. He at once attracted attention by his sharp, critical acumen. His main interest lay in the purification of the Čech language and the formation of a literary norm. In 1792 his desire to reconstruct the Slavic past took him on a long journey to the libraries of Sweden and Russia, and even to the Caucasus, where he had expected to find some indications of a Čech origin. In the same year appeared his “History of the Bohemian Language and Literature,” in which he described the struggles of the Čech language against the German and Latin from the time of Hus until his day, and showed what relation it bore to the other Slavic languages. The effect of this work upon the nationalistic feeling was very great. Especially his grammar of the Čech language which he published in 1808 formed the basis for all Slavic grammars written in the first half of the nineteenth century. Dobrovský was a voluminous writer, and his scientific correspondence, lately edited by Jagić, contains an immense amount of material which throws a light upon the history of the Slavic renascence.

Dobrovský soon gained many disciples in the Slavic world. The Russians Vostokov, Kalaydovich, Stroev, and many others, the Slovenes Kopitar and Vodník were his followers, and the great Slavists Šafařík and Miklosich carried on the work of philology after him. He enjoyed the friendship of German scholars and poets, Goethe, Jacob Grimm, Pertz, and others. Goethe wrote of him: “Abbé Joseph Dobrovský, the past master of critical historical science in Bohemia, this rare man who long before had followed the general study of the Slavic languages and histories with genial industry and Herodotic travels, rejoiced in reducing his gains to the study of the Bohemian people and country, and thus united with the greatest glory in science the rare reputation of a popular name. The master is visible in whatever he attempts. He everywhere grasps his subject and deftly unites the fragments into one whole.”

It cannot be said that the strong nationalistic movement which developed in Bohemia was entirely beneficial, for it not only led to unhealthy, ecstatic moods in the Bohemian literature of the first part of the nineteenth century, but even to a series of literary falsifications which still form the subject of discussion among laymen. But it must not be forgotten that the Bohemian nationalism was a reflex of the nascent German nationalism and was fanned to exaggerated manifestations by the obscurant absolutism of Emperor Francis I. Indeed, the Čech nationalism was to a great extent encouraged by the Austrian Government, as a protective measure against Napoleonic sympathies. The work begun by Dobrovský was carried into the field of literature by Jungmann, who was not satisfied with creating a native literary language for the lower classes only, which seemed sufficient to Dobrovský, but set about to create a literary norm for the whole of the Bohemian people. Jungmann was especially successful in translating from foreign languages, and the Slovaks Šafařík and Kollár, and the Moravian Palacký, not only imitated the activity of their teacher Jungmann, but became even more important in the dissemination of the Slavic idea, both at home and abroad.

In the twenties of the nineteenth century the fame of these ardent Slavists had spread to all the Slavic countries, and in Russia the question of founding a chair of Slavic philology, to be occupied by some Bohemian scholar, was seriously considered. In 1830 the Russian Government offered a chair of Slavic philology to Šafařík, but nothing came of it, chiefly through the machinations of the forger Hanka, who sided with the Russian autocracy, while Šafařík publicly expressed himself in favor of the Poles in the revolution which had just broken out in Russia. But Šafařík continued to exert a great influence on Slavic science in Russia through his friend Pogodin, who never gave up the hope that Šafařík might be called to a chair in Petrograd. When this hope could not be materialized, the young Slavists then studying in Russia, Bodyanski, Sreznevski and others, made it their business to study for a time in Austria, more especially, to meet Šafařík and learn something from personal contact with him. Indeed, the main activity of Bodyanski consisted in translating into Russian the works of Šafařík and other Bohemian Slavists. Similarly Sreznevski, in his inaugural lecture at the university, pointed out the fact that there had existed no interest in Slavic studies in Russia until such had been created by the Bohemian and Serbian scholars. As Bodyanski stood in relation to the Russian Slavophiles, it is certain that the Slavophile movement in Russia received some of its ideas directly or indirectly from the Bohemian nationalists.

From the humble beginnings in the first part of the nineteenth century Bohemian literature has developed in a remarkable manner, borrowing what is best in all literatures, and to a considerable extent falling under the influence of the great Russian writers. It is eminently cosmopolitan in compass and subject-matter, but at the same time has preserved many national characteristics, which would well repay the interest of an English reading public, if it could be induced to read translations of this almost unknown literature. Its poetry is especially attractive and varied, and the poets have reveled in the discussion of those social problems which elsewhere have been relegated to the field of prose.

Whatever the interest of the outsider may be in Bohemian literature, it deserves the highest attention on the part of the Slavs, who owe their very regeneration to the labors of the Bohemian scholars a century ago. If, in addition, we consider what Bohemia did for freedom of religious thought a hundred years before the days of Luther, and still more, the great obligation under which the Greek Catholic Church is to Bohemia for its very ecclesiastic language and national alphabets, the sympathies of the world should particularly be enlisted for this country in the possible future reconstruction of the Austrian Empire. Slavs and non-Slavs should unite on this point without discussion, and even the Germans should look favorably on the restoration of Bohemia to its former freedom and glory, if they are not blinded by selfishness and useless conceit. Bohemia has in the Middle Ages been the mediator between the West and the East, the South and the North, and it will for a long time remain the mediator between the best German thought and the growing Slavic civilization, if the Germans do not, as in the past, rouse the Slavic antipathies. Of all the Slavs, the Bohemians understood the German ideas best, and Dobrovský and other Bohemian Slavists promoted the Slavic idea by means of the German language. That, of course, can never happen again, for the nationalist life is there permanently established. But there is no reason for racial antagonism in a country where Germans and Slavs have lived together for centuries.

ADDENDA
THE BOHEMIANS AS IMMIGRANTS

By Emily Greene Balch, Professor of Economics at Wellesley College[29]

In some cities, as for instance Cedar Rapids, and in some states, as for instance Nebraska, Bohemians are a large enough element in the population to be fairly well known; but they are not so numerous in the United States as a whole, as to be clearly present to the minds of most people. New Yorkers may have seen with interest the National Hall of the Bohemians, Clevelanders may be familiar with the Schauffler Missionary Training School, persons familiar with industrial conditions in Chicago may be aware of the great Bohemian colony there, the largest in the country; but in general if people know anything about Bohemians they probably “know a great many things that aren’t so,” misled by the fact that the French word for Gipsies is Bohemians, much as our word for the American aborigines is Indian.

Yet from the colonial period individual Bohemians have come to this country, and in 1906, the latest year for which I have estimates, the Bohemian group was put at a round half-million.

Some of these early settlers are picturesque and not unimportant figures like Heřman and Phillipse, but it was not till the disturbed period of 1848 that Bohemians came to this country in appreciable numbers. At this time there was a triple ferment in Bohemia: first, a desire for political independence; second, a resurrection of national self-consciousness symbolized by the revival of the Bohemian language, the use of which among cultivated people had been abandoned for German; and third, a spirit of religious questioning and vehement challenge of current Christianity, largely due to reaction against the influence of a corrupt Austrian clericalism.

Another possible influence was the discovery of gold in California in 1849, which is said to have brought Bohemian gold-seekers and to have stimulated the activity of ship agents. The census of 1850 mentions 87 natives of Austria (out of 946 in the United States) as then in California; these were probably Bohemians. Throughout the fifties and early sixties there was a pretty steady outflow from Bohemia, most of it directed to the United States. This early emigration was a movement of settlers, whole families going together.

With 1867 came a fresh impulse to emigration. Besides the newly granted right to emigrate freely, the disastrous war with Prussia in 1866 gave added reasons for going, while in the United States the Civil War was over and everything invited the settler.

The earliest colony of Bohemians was in St. Louis, where in 1854 they had already established a Catholic church, and this city has always remained an influential Bohemian centre.

More important, however, was the movement to the states further West—the largest numbers settling in Wisconsin, later Iowa, later Nebraska and the two Dakotas, though a considerable settlement also grew up in Cleveland. In general, however, in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois land was already too dear for the newcomers, and they continually settled further west as the years went on. In the early days they either went overland from the Eastern ports or up the Mississippi River. One of the reasons for so many Bohemians as well as Germans, Scandinavians, Poles, and Belgians being attracted to Wisconsin was undoubtedly the attitude of that state toward immigration. A fact that is easily forgotten in the present state of feeling in regard to immigration is the eager and official solicitation of immigrants that was carried on for years by various states. Wisconsin, like many other states, appointed a Commissioner of Immigration to stimulate the inflow. In 1852 the first man to fill this office reported to the Governor that he had been in New York distributing pamphlets in English, German, Norwegian, and Dutch, describing the resources of the state.

After four years this state canvass for immigrants was suspended for a time, but in 1864 the Wisconsin Legislature memorialized Congress for the passage of national laws to encourage foreign immigration on the ground that labor was scarce, owing to the war, and that wages had more than doubled. Whether or not as a consequence of this request, Congress did in the same year pass an act to encourage immigration, which, however, was repealed in March, 1868.

Again, in 1879, Wisconsin established a State Board of Immigration to increase and stimulate immigration, with authority to disseminate information. The official circulars mentioned as inducements the following points: climate, rich lands at a nominal price, free schools and a free university, equality before the law, religious liberty, no imprisonment for debt, and liberal exemption from seizure by a creditor, suffrage and the right to be elected to any office but that of governor or lieutenant-governor on one year’s residence, whether a citizen or not (intention to become one having been declared); and full eligibility to office for all actual citizens. “There is never an election in the state,” one circular continues, “that does not put some, and often very many, foreign-born citizens into office. Indeed, there is no such thing as a foreigner in Wisconsin, save in the mere accident of birthplace; for men coming here and entering into the active duties of life identify themselves with the state and her interests, and are to all intents and purposes American.” We are told “The language above used is, except in rhetoric, identical” with that in an edition of 1884.

Besides this direct encouragement by the state “a similar canvass was maintained by counties and land companies, and at a later stage by railway companies, some of them sending agents to travel in Europe.” Of such solicitation at the very beginning of Bohemian immigration I found tradition still mindful in the old country. Thus immigrants have felt themselves directly and officially invited and urged to come, and it is not surprising that one often finds them aggrieved and hurt at the tone of too many current references making foreigners synonymous with everything that is unwelcome.

Many of the Bohemians were pioneers in the unbroken wilderness, and a very large part were farmers. A large proportion, however, had trades, and this is characteristic of Bohemian immigration in general. The common estimate is that one-half of the Bohemians in the country are living in country places, occupied either with farming or with some one of the various employments incident to rural life, from shoemaking to keeping store or acting as notary public. If the comparison be extended to all groups of foreign parentage, Bohemia shows a larger proportion engaged in agriculture than any foreign countries except Switzerland, Denmark, and Norway, surpassing even Germany and Sweden. It is interesting to note that Italy has a very low rank in this regard; even Poland and Russia surpass her, lowered as their place is by the large non-agricultural Jewish element, and only Hungary is below her.

As to the quality of Slavic farming, one naturally hears different reports. I suspect that the American often thinks the Pole or Bohemian a poor farmer because he works on a different plan, while the foreigner, used to small, intensive farming, thinks Yankees slovenly and wasteful. Especially when he takes up old, worn-out farm lands, he has small respect for the methods of his predecessor, who, he says, “robbed the soil.”

The American business agent of a Bohemian farming paper, already quoted, could not say enough in praise of the Bohemian farmers. They farmed better than the Americans. They invested freely in farm machinery. Nothing was too good or too big for them. In the eastern half of Butler County, Nebraska, there were seventeen big steam threshing outfits among Bohemians—something to which you could find nothing parallel in the same area anywhere in the United States. The Bohemian paper of which he was agent had seven times more advertising of farm implements than any other paper in the United States, he said.

While the above statements are those of an interested party, all the available evidence points the same way. It would seem, moreover, as though in certain lines, new to us and familiar in Europe, the immigrant should be able to supply very valuable skill. This seems to be especially the case in the sugar-beet industry, in which the labor of Bohemians, who understand beet culture well, is much sought.

Of Bohemian women at work, nearly a quarter were in 1900 servants and waitresses, and more than another quarter workers at tailoring or in tobacco. This corresponds to the fact that many Bohemians in the cities are engaged in the two latter branches; many too are mechanics or trades-people, often carrying on a small business of their own.

The Bohemians, like other Slavic groups in this country, are much given to organizing into societies. Many of their associations are small local affairs of the most various sorts. In a New York Bohemian paper I found a list of 95 local societies among this group of perhaps 45,000 people. Many were mere “pleasure clubs,” to use the current East Side phrase, while many were lodges of various of their great “national” societies. Of these large national societies the most remarkable is the society founded by the Bohemians at St. Louis in 1854, under the name of the Bohemian-Slavonic Benevolent Society, or as it is commonly called, by the initials of this name in the vernacular, the Č. S. P. S. In the religious controversies which soon divided American Bohemians into two camps, this came to represent the free-thinking, anti-Catholic side. It numbers about 25,000 members.

The Sokols, which correspond to the German “Turnerbunds” or gymnastic societies, are as popular and widespread as they are desirable. They give opportunity for exercise dignified by a sense of the relation between good physical condition and readiness for service to one’s country. Women and children, as well as the men, have their own divisions, classes, and uniforms, and the Sokol exhibitions are important and very pretty social events. In Prague, in the summer of 1906, the Bohemian Sokols had an anniversary international meet, at which the American societies were also represented, and performed evolutions, literally in their thousands, in the open air.

Theatricals, whether given in some local hall or in a regular theatre hired for the occasion, are, as in Europe, a favorite employment for Sunday afternoons or evenings. Classic pieces, both literary and operatic, are much enjoyed; for instance, among the Bohemians, Smetana’s opera, “The Bartered Bride,” is often given. On the other hand, one will see a very simple spontaneous little exhibition given with the greatest abandon and delight by a club of hard-worked, elderly women, whose triumphs are hugely enjoyed by their families and neighbors. It is an especial pleasure to them to reproduce the pretty costumes of their old-world youth. Worthy of especial mention are the club called Snaha (Endeavor), of Bohemian professional women in Chicago, and the clubs organized for reading and study among Socialists of different nationalities.

There are numerous Bohemian papers and periodicals, including the Bohemian “Hospodář” (“Farmer”) of Omaha and the “Ženské Listy” of Chicago, the latter being an organ of a woman’s society, printed as well as edited by women. It is not devoted to “beauty lessons” and “household hints,” but to efforts toward woman’s suffrage and the “uplifting of the mental attitude of working-women.” Its 6,000 subscribers include distinguished Bohemians all over the country, men as well as women.

In religion the Roman Catholics claim a large number of Bohemians, but there is a substantial Protestant minority; outside the church fold is the numerous and very interesting group of Free-Thinkers.

The Bohemians are among the most literate of our immigrants. Taking the data for 1900, which I happen to have worked out, we find that of immigrants of all nationalities of fourteen years and over, those not able to both read and write were 24.2 per cent.; among the Germans 5.8 per cent.; among the Bohemians and Moravians only 3.0 per cent.; among Scandinavians, under 0.8 per cent. Certainly to supply only about one-half as many illiterates per hundred as the Germans is a notable record.

All of this is quite borne out by the impression one gets of Bohemians both in the United States and in Bohemia. In development and conditions they rank with the immigrant from northwestern Europe. The struggle with the Germans is in a sense the master-thread in their whole history, and this contact, even though inimical, has meant interpenetration and rapprochement. No other Slavic nationality is more self-conscious and patriotic, not to say chauvinistic, in its national feeling, and at the same time none begins to be so permeated with general European culture and so advanced economically.

As to character, if it is impossible to indict a whole people, so is it impossible to draw a portrait of such a collective group. Nevertheless, no one can doubt that one characteristic of the countrymen of Smetana and Dvořák is their noble gift for music. Their sense of color, too, is very marked, and they, beyond all people I know, love the dance. Yet with all their “gemüthlich” and temperamental qualities I find them reserved, delicate, shy, intensely family-loving, cherishing privacy.

The Bohemians are a people of high conscientiousness, and by nature loyal. In the Civil War their anti-slavery feeling and their devotion to their new country both were shown, and the first company that went from Chicago to fight for the Union is said to have been a Lincoln Rifle Company that some young men of that nationality had organized in 1860. The dominating feature in the great Bohemian National Cemetery in Chicago is the soldiers’ monument, just such a monument as stands on every village common in New England; and perhaps nothing so much as this visible sign of blood shed in the same cause bridges the difference of national feeling.

They are interested in ideas for their own sake, as are the Latin peoples, and especially in questions of religion. The older people love their past, their language, their old home, yet they cannot hand on these interests in their pristine intensity to the younger people, absorbed in the life about them, dropping their Bohemian speech and ways and gradually, only gradually, completing the transition to the New World and its ways.

Note.—I have to thank the publishers of my book, Our Slavic Fellow-Citizens, for permission to borrow here and there from its pages.

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