Page:Czecho-Slovak Student Life, Volume 18.djvu/152
which have been preserved to our time. His school was responsible for the formation of new artistic centers which sprang up everywhere in Bohemia on the foundations laid by the old Czech school. This was especially true in Silesia, where we find many paintings betraying the same influence. Unfortunately, many creations of art were destroyed in the seventeenth century during the Thirty Years War, which made out of the formerly flourishing and prosperous countries a depopulated graveyard. What has been almost miraculously preserved tells us of a highly developed original art, and it is to be hoped that the creative genius of the Czech people, having shaken off the shackles hampering its free development through centuries, will come to new life and bear rich fruit.
MY GIFT
(For the S. L. by Cecilia Gallik.)
Have I to offer Thee,
For never was a creature poor
As could compare with me.
But Lord, ere You depart,
Accept the wounds man’s law has made
Upon my troubled heart.
Views from thy hand no worthy action done.
—Staniford.
THE WAR MEMOIRS OF DR. BENEŠ.
Dr. Beneš’s book, “The World War and Our Revolution”, is an excellent companion to President Masaryk’s, “The Making of a State”. Both books appeared originally in Czech and have been translated into English and published in London. These two books like the two men themselves supplement each other to such an extent that the story of the making of the Czechoslovak State would hardly be complete without the one or the other. President Masaryk is the spiritual father of the Czechoslovak revolution and the creator of the State; second to him is Dr. Edward Beneš. President Masaryk never could have achieved so much, as he did, without the able assistance of Dr. Beneš; and it is doubtful whether anybody in Dr. Beneš’s place could have been of so much assistance to Masaryk as he was. In his book, The Making of a State”, President Masaryk describes the spiritual and moving forces of the Czechoslovak revolution, while Dr. Beneš in “The World War and Our Revolution” describes in detail the actual making of the Czechoslovak State. These two books form the most glorious chapter of the history of the Czechoslovak nation. Not only the story itself is fascinating, but also the way it is told. Dr. Beneš, like President Masaryk, has proved himself an accomplished stylist.