CZECHOSLOVAK STORIES
INTRODUCTION
THE CZECHOSLOVAKS AND THEIR LITERATURE
The literature of the nation of Czechoslovaks is as ancient as its history. For a period of over a thousand years, the literature of no nation is more closely entwined with its history than is that of the people composing the new Czechoslovak Republic.
When the first despatches began to appear in English and American newspapers relative to the exploits of the Czechoslovak troops in Russia and Siberia, the average reader asked: “Who are these new people? What new nation is this that has sprung into prominence as a friend to the Allies?”
It was necessary to enlighten many even of more than usual intelligence and to inform the general public that it was no new, strange race of whose brave deeds they were reading but only the old and oft-tested nation of the Czech inhabitants of Bohemia in northwestern Austria and of the Slovaks of northern Hungary, the name “Czechoslovak” being formed by combining the
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