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.