The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 3/From the Prague papers

FROM THE PRAGUE PAPERS.

Quite a number of men well known in the Bohemian circles of America have turned up in Prague since the arrival of President Masaryk. There is Jaroslav Císař, the president’s private secretary of whom the journalists had quite a little to say. There is Ven Švarc, a Cleveland lawyer, who represents certain American news papers in Bohemia. There is also Capt. Ferdinand Písecký who spent more than a year in the United States and gave lectures in nearly all the Czech and Slovak settlements; Dr. L. J. Fisher, former president of the Bohemian National Alliance and later medical officer in the Czechoslovak Army, has also arrived with a convoy of invalids in Prague.

But the big figures from America, at least in the Prague newspapers, are two well known workers in the cause of Czechoslovak independence, Capt. Emanuel Voska and Joseph Tvrzický. Mr. Voska, formerly chairman of the New York district committee of the Alliance, was granted a commission in the Intelligence Division of the U. S. Army last May and was stationed in Paris. He arrived in Prague on January 10th with Mr. George Creel, chairman of the Committee on Public Information, and has been lionized ever since. He received a great reception upon his arrival, big boosts by the newspapers, a tremendous ovation in his native city of Kutná Hora, spoke at dozens of meetings, had freedom of cities conferred upon him, and among other things Emmy Destinn sang at a concert in his honor. Mr. Tvrzický threw himself at once into the fight against Alois Muna and his fellow bolshevists from Russia who troubled the harmoniius political life of Bohemia just at that time. At one meeting he spoke three times, addressing an overflow crowd from a tree. He tells the people what their brothers in America have done for them and exhorts the nation to make short thrift of any disturbancers. The papers state that he opened a bureau in the office of the old National Council to give information about conditions in America and to facilitate communication between relatives that had been out of touch during the war.