n the history of the cultural development of the Slavonic nations in the sixties of the past century the Sokols undoubtedly were an eminent and highly interesting element. They are a striking instance of the extensive process of renaissance which is proceeding on Slavonic soil and has no other significance than the expression of the yearning after a more perfect, freer and stronger life. It is the outcome of the awakened impulse of racial regenarition which in the Slavonic nations sprang up again after long years of utter indifference and carelessness regarding their own development, and which drives them to a vigorous strife to regain indomitable fitness of the race.
The Sokol organization, as we see it in our days, is, as a matter of course, not the work of one epoch or disposition of mind; it comprises and represents the whole genesis of the juvenile national movement, especially among the Czech people being the emanation of its soul, of its feeling and development in the various periods which it passed through since the first years of its reawakening to the present times. Out of a simple gymnastic association there has developed in the course of time a prominent and powerful national organisation which assumes important public functions in order to meet the demands of the times and as a natural consequence of its activity which began with the elementary care of the education of the Czech’s body and of his physical recovery and reinvigoration but, step by step, was induced to attend also to his spiritual welfare, to his moral development, considering before everything else his national wants. The very genesis of the Sokol institution was inspired by a mighty effervescence of the national self consciousness, by a desire to show its vitality and the invigoration of the national existence which was weakened to the lowest degree in consequence of the long period of humiliation and decadence. It was in the early sixties of last century that suddenly dawned the hope of free constitutional institutions after the overthrow of the severest system of autocratic government under which especially the non German nations of ancient Austria had to suffer cruel oppressions and wrongs in all branches of public life; then, at last, the long oppressed classes of the poeple who,
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