Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/104

A number of important matters were discussed at the meeting of the Czechoslovak National Council, held in Cleveland on January 8, with full representation in attendance. The delegation of the Council which was sent in July to pay a visit to the Czechoslovak army in Siberia made their report. On the way to Vladivostok. they met in Japan the official delegation from the old country and combined forces with it; they went as far as Novo-Nikolayevsk, between Irkutsk and Omsk, gave adresses and held informal talks with the greater part of the army and cleared up some misunderstandings about America. They found the morale of the soldiers very high, discipline excellent, food and clothing good, health quite satisfactory; the only real complaints were as to insufficient news from home and above all the delay in returning home, especially as everybody felt that further exile in Siberia could serve no good purpose. The fund of $18,000 which the delegation brought with them as a gift of Czechoslovaks from America was spent in the purchase of tobacco.

The meeting had the pleasure of listening to a talk by Major Gephart, representative of the American Relief Administration. He described the work done by his organization on behalf of the children of Czechoslovakia, and the Council voted to turn over to Mr. Hoover’s bureau the balance of the Alice Masaryk Fund for the benefit of the children. Major Gephart also explained the new plan of the American Relief Administration by which food drafts may be purchased of banks here, good for packages of food from the warehouses of the organization in Czechoslovakia and other European countries. The plan was endorsed and the Council pledged itself to recommend this relief method to its people.

Dr. Písecký, director of the Bohemia Bank of Prague, asked the cooperation of the National Council in directing the stream of remittances that are being sent in thousands each day to relatives in Czechoslovakia so as to benefit the value of the crown. The Council voted to issue an appeal to Czechoslovaks in America to send their remittances through banks which buy their crowns in Prague and not from Swiss, German and other speculators.

A delegation of Czechoslovak legionaries from America who fought in the Czechoslovak army in France were assured of a substantial gift from the Council, as soon as they perfected their organization.

Among other matters taken up was the winding up of the business of shipping relief packages to the old country and the closing of the relief department of the Council in New York. The next plenary meeting will be held in Chicago on April 14.

The Čechs (Bohemians) in America. By Thomas Čapek. Houghton Mifflin Company, publishers. Price $3.00, postpaid $3.15.

It is a book for which Bohemians in America have been long waiting; and it could not have been written by anyone else than Čapek, the man who kept his finger on the pulse of Bohemian-American life for thirty nine years and who has already published monographs in English and Bohemian on certain phases of his general subject. Besides Čapek has the additional qualification of conservative judgement and eminently fair temper so necessary to the man who desires to deal justly with the various camps into which Čechs in America are split. The book he gave us will probably satisfy all except a few extremists on either side.

The study is quite exhaustive and must have represented a tremendous amount of preliminary research; there are nearly three hundred pages of reading matter and over one hundred illustrations and photographs. Čapek tells of Augustine Heřman, the first known Bohemian immigrant in the days, when New York was still New Amsterdam, describes the immigration of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, discusses every important character and every interesting movement and ends with an account of the part Čechs in America took in the world war and the liberation of their home country. You will find in this book the biographical data, an estimate of the personality and life work, and probably also the picture, of any man who was talked of in the Bohemian settlements, when you were young, or may have occupied a place of leadership during your father’s younger days. Čapek’s Čechs in America is a complete Who’s Who of Bohemian America.

Looking at the Bohemian record in America, registered in this book, one must admit that while it is respectable it does not furnish any reason for boastfulness. Half a million Čechs have brought forth in half a century no great men; they have made no startling contribution to the civilization of either Bohemia or America. Ant yet they have made good from the point of view of the old country, when they financed the revolutionary campaign which ended in the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic: while from the point of view of the United States, the country is a gainer by the addition of the intelligent, industrious and law-abiding Bohemian immigration.

An American reader who is not personally acquainted with the Čechs and their leading men may find the bok occasionally too rich in names and details; to a Čech reader this only enhances the value of the book. However that may be, any man that finds the Czechoslovak Review interesting will enjoy reading Čapek’s new book.