Page:Czecho-Slovak Student Life, Volume 18.djvu/433

In addition to the official celebration of the tenth anniversary of the proclamation of the independent Czecho-Slovak State, the present year will see a considerable number of public events at Prague which will bring large numbers of foreign visitors to the city. In May there will be an Easter Music Festival and the Jubilee Exhibition of the Czecho-Slovak Agricultural Society. For July there is booked a Design and Art Education Congress which is attracting exhibits from practically every European country, and for which many American and English art instructors have announced their intention of visiting Prague. The same month will also see an All-Slavonic Fire Brigade Congress. On American Independence Day there will be unveiled the statue of the late President Wilson which is to be placed in the Vrchlický Gardens in front of the railway station that already bears the American president’s name. The statue is the work of Mr. Albin Polášek, the well-known American sculptor of Czecho-Slovak ancestry. Many American Czechs and Slovaks are coming to Prague for the unveiling of the Wilson monument.

The Woodrow Wilson Prize Essay Contest, conducted by the American Alliance of Czecho-Slovaks, was won by Mr. B. D. Silliman, a lawyer located at 902 American Trust Building, Cedar Rapids, Ia. The theme, as our readers recall was: “What Czecho-Slovakia owes to Woodrow Wilson”, and carried as its prize a one round free excursion trip to Czecho-Slovakia.

Mr. B. D. Silliman is likewise an instructor of oratory at Coe College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Last year he also won a free trip to Europe for writing the best essay on the educational advantages derived from foreign travel. He is a Student Life subscriber.

The February copy of “Ave Maria”, a Slovak Catholic monthly magazine, announces that Rev. Fr. Gaspar Paník, pastor of St. Cyrill and Methodius parish, Bridgeport, Conn., has entrusted the editorship of the monthly to Rev. Anthony Gracik, of St. Stephen’s, Newark, N. J.

Father Panik has successfully edited the ‘Ave Maria’ for eleven years. He has made it a prolific source of religious information for the American Slovaks. His extensive parish work has made it necessary for him to give up his editorship. In the care of Father Gracik, Father Panik’s worthy successor, an indefatigable worker among the Slovaks in the East, the “Ave Maria” will surely continue as a source of inspiration to its Slovak readers.

Jan Kubelik, the famous Czech violinist, announced in London recently that he plans to visit the United States, South America, Australia and Japan. Being a composer as well as a virtuoso, he needs inspiration, which he finds by traveling and in meeting new people, he claims.