compel us to be prudent and vigilant—vigilant, not crafty, for the era of political cunning is closed, nor has cunning ever brought a people real advantage.
From the knowledge that we withstood the pressure of our expansive neighbours we may draw strength—it is a potent argument and consolation from the fact that, in a fateful hour, we found allies and protectors and, despite our hard fight, contrived to restore our lost independence. Yet the memory that, in a world-situation essentially similar, we, like our Slav neighbours, the Poles, once lost our independence, obliges us to redouble our circumspection and foresight. Neither should we forget that, towards the beginning of the Middle Ages, the Slavs extended to the Saale and to the Northern Elbe, although we have to-day a clearer and more accurate view than Kollár and his contemporaries held of what befell the Slavs of the Elbe. We need to know our strength and to estimate it soberly, seeking examples among the other nations great and small, copying no model heedlessly but rather pursuing with consistent resolve our own well-thought-out policy, working ever to increase our inner virtue as Havlíček defined it. Then we shall be able calmly to say: "We would not be subdued, and never and by none will we be subdued." I always think of little Denmark who in 1864 manfully and honourably refused to be intimidated by two giants, Prussia and Austria, notwithstanding the expectation of defeat. At the end of the world war Denmark got back what she had wrongfully lost, and got it without fighting.
The Influence of the West.
For our political independence we have chiefly to thank the West-France, England, America and Italy. Though, in former times, our relations with Germany were so intimate that, for a while, our Kings stood at the head of the Holy Roman Empire, we were linked with the West—that is to say, with France, England and Italy, not with Germany alone—from the beginning of our development in Europe, whereas our relations with the Byzantine and Russian East were intermittent and episodical. The influence of the other Western nations upon us was less pronounced than that of the Germans, but French and Italian influences, especially in art, were noticeable among us in the early days. It was on a Western model that our King, the Emperor Charles IV, established Prague University. In the Reformation, the entire people threw in
