Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/122
Red Cross has received 379 calls from Czechoslovaks who served in the United States Army. Those men, writing in their native language, make apeals ranging from questions on War Risk Insurance, Income Tax, lessons in English and in United States Citizenship, Naturalization papers, backpay, re-employment, location of relatives to questions on Health and calls for Liberty Bonds and War Savings Stamps which they had paid for in camp but had not yet received.
None of these men could write English or read it understandingly if at all, but all of them were informed on matters pertaining to the United States Government, especially to the War and Treasury Departments and were refreshingly loyal and staunch in their praise and support of the United States Government. Many of them had fought a desperate fight to be allowed to serve the United States during the war, for at first our American Government was disposed to regard all individuals who came from Central Europe as enemy aliens, an intolerable situation which would never have obtained had our government been informed of the anti-Hapsburg history of the Czechoslavs.
The Lincoln (Neb.) Star in this respect says, in its issue of April 7, 1918: “There is perhaps no class which has entered into the war against Germany as wholeheartedly and vigorously as the Americans of Bohemian descent. They have been leaders in responding to the call to colors, in the purchase of liberty bonds and in aiding the Red Cross. The University Bohemian “Komenský" club, typical of the spirit of all Bohemians in Nebraska, sold more Liberty Bonds than any other university organization and the club was the first to pledge money to the Red Triangle. Even before the United States had formally declared war, the Bohemian societies in this country sent out literature to its members urging them to support finacially the American government in case war was declared.
The sacredness of democracy is uppermost in the heart of the Bohemian. American of Bohemian stock shares with the love of democracy in this country a kindred love for democracy in Bohemia. Prussianism has no more bitter enemy than the Bohemian. There is today an army of 16,000 Czechs fighting in France. When the kaiser’s brutal arm has been bended and the liberty of humanity assured the world will find that Bohemia has done more than its share.”
The indiscriminate “bunching” of all foreignborn peoples with the disloyal element among the Germans has aroused the resentment of the great groups of non-German and non-Magyar origin who unhesitatingly and faithfully supported the United States government, when it most needed that moral and substantial backing.
Somehow the public has lost sight of the fact that it was not the Slav or Italic element in our population that betrayed the United States cause, but that it was members of the Teutonic and Hungarian groups who failed in their support of the American cause. Moreover the “traitors” in our time of stress were not foreigners unacquainted with English, but English speaking American citizens of Teuton origin.
Nevertheless a perfect frenzy of attacks on all foreign speaking peoples set in and state legislatures proceeded to enact laws and local organizations at once began practicing a highly Prussianized treatment of all the foreign speaking population.
During the war it was fully understandable that measures would be taken to suppress an enemy language, but the extension of the prohibition to the languages spoken by our allies in the world struggle is establishing a precedent unheard of even in Berlin. A prominent Iowa lawyer in discussing the drastic measures of Governor Harding writes: “We of Czechoslovak blood were good enough for America during the war to support the government with our lives and our fortunes, but before the struggle overseas is fairly won, we are ignobly classed with our enemies and the language in which we all did faithful American propaganda service is suppressed.” A woman who worked indefatigably for American War relief in Nebraska states “Nebraskans refuse to differentiate between the friendly and the enemy nations. This morning my aged mother who has knitted industriously for the Red Cross throughout the war, but who can speak only the Bohemian language, was roughly treated by some extremists of native birth for using the Czech (Bohemian) language in speaking over the telephone to me.”
The Siman language law passed early in 1919 by the Legislature of Nebraska while aimed ostensibly at the German parochial schools wiped out temporarily instruction in every language except English.