The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 2/To Bohemia, our ally

TO BOHEMIA, OUR ALLY!

 

Under this title the Chicago Daily News published on June 26 an inspired editorial which we are proud to reproduce herewith.

Prof. Masaryk of Bohemia and his daughter, Miss Olga Masaryk, have been in Washington, where they have talked about Bohemia and about Germany. We greet, we salute, the character they show, the purpose they show, for the fighting and for the finishing of this war.

According to the German code of national ethics, they have every human right, this father and this daughter, to desire the destruction of Germany and the extinction of the German name: to urge the allies to gut Germany, to partition it, to break it limb from limb, to rend it into powerless fragments. For four centuries Bohemia has lain buried by Germans. For a hundred years it has struggled to burst its grave cloth, only to be wrapped back into it by Germans. Prof. Masaryk is an exile, condemned to death by Germans. His wife, his other daughter, his two sons, are at home in the power of Germans. His friends, his acquaintances, his fellow countrymen in thousands have been executed by Germans. He speaks of these wrongs; and his daughter, who is with him, speaks of them; and they cannot forget them. And yet not once have they talked of reprisals and retaliations, of partitions and persecutions. Not once have they descended to the level of their enemies. Not once have they been German.

We welcome these visitors .these ambassadors from a nation so ancient, so new. They confirm to us the spirit which we had already surmised in the soul of the whole Bohemian people. Never again, they say, and we believe, shall Bohemia return underground. Bohemia will have victory now, in the light of day, or , in the light of day, extermination. They are ruthless for their rights. But not one inch of German soil do they demand. Not one German right, even in Bohemia, do they ask us to extinguish.

Germans, in a minority, have existed in Bohemia for ages. They will have a right to continue to exist there. The Masaryks do not speak of their extermination or of their expulsion, or even of their exclusion from any political right or from any civil right whatsoever, of office or of property or of language. On the contrary, they speak of guaranties by which those rights shall be safeguarded forever.

This is the spirit which will both defeat Germany and redeem the world. It is the spirit of America’s own entrance into the war. We greet the Czechoslovak National Council, sitting at London, recognized by the Allies as the Bohemian provisional government. We greet the Czechoslovak national army, fighting on the Western front, recognized by the Allies as the army of Bohemia returned to life. We greet a new military ally. We greet a new spiritual ally.

When we look at Siberia and see the long lines of Czechoslovak armies|, ex-prisoners of war, fighting their way to Vladivostok, to San Francisco, to New York, to the Western front, to hurl themselves against the Germans, we know the valor of Bohemia. When we listen to the Czechoslovak political leaders, in their proclamations at Prague and in their conversations at Washington, we know the morality, the democratic morality, the Christian morality, the invincible morality of Bohemia.

And so to Bohemia, a nation which refuses masters, a nation which refuses slaves, a nation worthily a member of the coming democratic family of nations, we give not only our hands, but our hearts.

 

---