even the Catholics are more firmly rooted religiously than in the Catholic States of Europe—an effect of a Protestant environment.
In the early days of the American Republic this religious factor was of especial significance. Inadequate means of communication, in a huge, sparsely peopled territory, precluded effective control from one administrative centre. Hence, through their organizations, the various religious communities and Churches acquired great importance as elements of cohesion.
The American Republic is the work of pioneers, energetic men who had shown their energy in breaking away from their home surroundings and who had only been able to keep foot in America by yet greater vigour and industry. The pioneers sought freedom and well-being—even to-day, the American Republic serves chiefly an economic purpose and ideal, all the more because it is free from political and racial problems like those of Europe. Independence and Puritanism made up the real religion of the pioneers. The Constitution, framed in the spirit of the Rationalist philosophy of law that was prevalent in France and England towards the end of the eighteenth century, is a veritable code of pioneer economics. Estranged by emigration from the English dynasty, the American colonies had no dynasty and therefore no aristocracy, no army and no militarism. The Republic was founded upon communities religiously organized, and its founders were not soldiers on expansion bent but pioneers, farmers mainly, then traders and the inevitable lawyers. Thus the American State differed from European States, particularly from Prussia, Austria and Russia. Even the French Republic inherited from the old régime institutions like the aristocracy and the army which, in America, did not and do not exist. In the course of its development the American State has grown to the size of a continent. Yet, in the process, it has but accentuated its original characteristics; for, by reasons of the gradual conquest of the West and the South, the pioneer spirit remained a constant moral and political factor.
In the cemetery on the Gettysburg battlefield and in other places my mind often dwelt on the idea that our Czechoslovak State would resemble America in that we have no dynasty of our own and no liking for a foreign dynasty; that we have no aristocracy, no army and no military tradition. The traditions of our Reformation, on the other hand, preclude intimacy with the Church—a point of weakness unless we can realize that a
