Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/119
in other words the aim will be to make the value of the crown, or whatever the future unit of currency will be called, equivalent to that of franc.
The Czechoslovak Republic can only exist as an exporting country, and this is fully realized by the governmental and commercial circles. Great attention is being paid to Czechoslovak ports, granted to the republic in the peace treaties. A conference held in Trieste between Italian and Czechoslovak representatives resulted in making the port of Trieste more available to Czechoslovak trade. Direct freight trains have been provided between Italy and Bohemia with through rates; Italy agreed to furnish open cars of which the Republic has not enough. A section of the harbor was turned over to Czechoslovaks, with docks and all other facilities for handling freight; here Czechoslovak employees and customs officers have full control. Czechoslovak export will be directed as before the war principally toward the Levant, the Black Sea countries and the Far East. Major Sheba, formerly military attaché in Rome, was appointed consul general in Trieste. Similarly in Hamburg Hugo Vavrečka, an experienced engineer and businessman, was appointed consul general and manager of the Czechoslovak sector of the port of Hamburg.
England pays much attention to the new Republic. There has been recently founded in London the Czech Society of Great Britain. Lord Robert Cecil, the distinguished statesman and advocate of the League of Nations, is president, and many friends of Czechoslovakia, like R. W. Seton Watson, are among the directors; Robert F. Young, formerly secretary of the British legation in Prague, is the honorary secretary. The society aims at the strengthening of political, intellectual and commercial ties between Great Britain and Czechoslovakia, and to spread in England knowledge of the nation by lectures, meetings, concerts, art exhibits and literary publications. Why is there not such a society in the United States?
We remember hearing somewhere once upon a time the story of a certain Irish captain who, in ordering uniforms for his company, to save time, had the tallest man and also the shortest accurately measured, divided the sum of the measurements by two and thus, expeditiously arriving at an average (?), ordered uniforms for the entire company. It is unnecessary to add that, as a result, not a suit fitted and great was the rage of the captain to find that his men absolutely would not fit into the uniforms he had devised for them.
It is inconceivable to the army of “Americanizers” who are abroad in the land “seeking whom they may devour”, why the “alien” (anyone who speaks another language instead of English or even in addition to English is so classified by the professional “Americanizer”) refuses to be melted and moulded instantly into the pattern all duly described in the handbook issued by the particular organization said “Americanizer” is representing.
To-day practically every national organization in the United States—religious, social, industrial, economic and political—has incorporated an Americanization department in its sphere of activities. Their combined funds to be spent for “Americanization programs” run up into tens of millions. Then there are hundreds of other organizations of state or local significance which have undertaken the same ambitious program.
Out of this feverish and fanatical rush of first aiders to the injured it cannot be said that any one organization has clearly defined a national ideal of what is really meant by Americanism. In all fairness to the leading men and women in the above named organizations it must be said that some of them actually have in mind an ideal of what they would like to attain as far as the immigrant element is concerned. Unfortunately, however, their assistants, sub-assistants and minor “field-workers”—those who come into actual contact with