burg began to ship home Austrian reservists, but Dornik-Plotner stopped that by explaining in the public press to the Jugoslavs who constituted the consul’s principal recruiting field, what the war was about and that they should rather join the British or Serbian army.
It was a long time, before we heard anything about the revolutionary work undertaken by Czech leaders against Austria. Our first work was to boost the relief funds, and we collected particularly for Serbian funds, having official permission to do that. We kept that up far into the second year of the war, because we did not know of any more definite goal. In Johannesburg our women, dressed in Czech national costumes, were the principal workers and collected large sums.
But after a while we read in Bohemian-American newspapers that the Bohemian National Alliance was established there for the purpose of campaigning for Czechoslovak independence, and that money was being collected and sent to leaders in Europe. Mr. Dornik-Plotner immediately sent letters to all our people in South Africa calling on them to give liberally to the Alliance, and we sent to Chicago several large sums of money.
After the destruction of Lusitania the government started to intern all enemy aliens, and all our people who were not naturalized were classed as such. That gave us fresh work, namely to liberate the interned Czechs. The main work was again done by Dornik-Plotner who addressed many letters to General Botha, explaining the real position of the Czechs in the war and their relations to the Germans. Another worker in this cause was an American Bohemian, Mr. Janda, who enlisted the sympathies of the American consul and brought to our side many members of parliament. As a result we released a majority of our countrymen out of internment camps in the course of about three months.
In 1916 Mr. Dornik-Plotner came to Johannesburg to call a meeting of all African Czechs for the purpose of establishing a branch of the Bohemian National Alliance in South Africa. This was done; Mr. Janda was made president and Dornik-Plotner secretary. The society commenced its activities by making a house-to-house collection; we sent money to America, to Professor Masaryk to London and later to the Czechoslovak “Samostatnost” in Paris. After that we sent several sums to the Czechoslovak Press Bureau in London, for we felt the need of a campaign of information through the newspapers. Our own neighbors knew nothing of the Bohemians. Our organization co-operated closely with the Jugoslav “Slovanska Sloga”; there were at least twenty times as many Jugoslavs as Czechs in Johannesburg.
I have mentioned that a majority of the Czechs were soon released from the internment camps. But many were kept there, and most of the Jugoslavs never got out. All the appeals of our leaders were in vain; they received the stereotyped answer that the matter “was having attention” or would be decided “in due course”.
It was evident that some hidden hand was working against us. Mr. Janda decided to take a trip to Pretoria to discover the reason, and he found out that the official to whom our petitions were referred was a German by birth and presumably by sympathies. He hated all Slavs and tried to do us as much harm as possible. There was nothing surprising in the fact that a German was holding an important governmental post. During the Boer war a large number of Germans served on the Boer side; after peace was established, they made an oath of allegiance to King Edward and became British subjects. When a few years later the Boers obtained control of the government, many of these Germans got into the governmental service, some into very important posts.
Mr. Janda ascertained that the censor passing on Bohemian letters was German by birth and that the detective whose duty it was to look after Austrian aliens was also a German. When petitions came to the authorities asking for the release of Czechs and other Slavs, these South African government officials told the ministers that to release Austrian “enemies” would cause bad blood among Boers, as long as Boer rebels of 1915 were detained. They also tried to get the matter postponed indefinitely by recommending that it be referred to the British authorities in London. They succeeded in inducing the government to take no action.
We decided on new tactics. Mr. Janda called on Mr. Duncan, an opposition member of the Legislative Assembly, and made him familiar with the entire situation,
