Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/127

At the end of June Prague will put on her robes of state to act as hostess to a hundred thousand Sokols, men and women, girls and boys, and to more than hundred thousand visitors, all brought to the “golden mother” Prague by the magic call Sokolský Slet, the seventh quinquennial meet of the “Falcons” of the nation, of all Slav nations.

Only a Czech wil understand the thrill that lies in the word Sokol. At a time, when the nation was subject to Austrian rule, when the young men were drafted each year against their will to wear the “emperor’s coat”, the Sokols represented the real army of the nation. Their Garibaldian costumes raised a sparkle in the eyes of the girls, where the Austrian uniform was a hated sight. Sokols were the hope of the enslaved nation. And they did not disappoint this hope. When the time of fiery trial came, when Czech conscripts were driven into Serbia and Galicia to shoot their brother Slavs, the Sokol training made good. Sokols were the leaders of the small groups and of entire regiments that risked a traitor’s death and went over to the “enemy”, not because they did not want to fight, but in order to fight on the right side. It is a matter of pride to every Czechoslovak Sokol that in 1915 and 1916 the possession of Sokol membership card or insignia was treated as treason by the Austrian military authorities.

Those who passed through the Sokol discipline in the days before the war helped to organize and to fill up the Czechoslovak legions. Others who were not so fortunate as to reach the Allied lines in the course of the fighting, the men who were in general beyond even the Austrian military age, rendered a distinguished service to their country in the first days of the Republic. On the first Independence Day, October 28, 1918, the National Committee called on the Sokols to maintain order and to carry out its directions. At a time, when the country was garrisoned by Magyar and German formations of the old Austro-Hungarian army, when soldiers of Czech nationality were fleeing home from the smashed Austrian front in Italy, before the legions came home or the new government could form a few reliable regiments, the Sokols filled the gap. In November and December 1918 the traveler saw their uniforms, as soon as he reached the frontier station; they kept watch at the railroad stations, to prevent disgraceful scenes, such as occurred in Russia after the revolution; they occupied Bohemian and Moravian towns in which the Germans had long held the upper hand. They were the soldiers of the nation, when the nation had the greatest need of them. Is there any wonder that Sokols are popular in Bohemia? The nation is anxious to do them honor. And so their seventh general slet, flocking together, if we are to translate it literally, will be an occasion of rejoicing such as probably Prague never saw, unless we except the day of the arrival of Masaryk, the first president of the Republic.

The seventh general meet which should have been held in 1917 will of course be something unique, just because it will be the first gathering of the Sokols on the free soil of the Republic and because the nation more than ever will honor its darlings. But if it were no more solemn or imposing than previous ones, the sixth for instance, it would present a sight which it is worth while to come to see from the distance of four thousand miles. Thousands of fresh young bodies performed the most difficult and pleasing evolutions on the tremendous plain of Letná, thousands of young women in neat uniform and other thousands of boys and girls drilling furnished proof to the nation that the young generation was growing up sound in body and therefore sound in mind.

It is now nearly sixty years, since Miroslav Tyrš founded in Prague the first Sokol Union; two generations of the nation had been under the influence of the Sokol ideas—training of the body in the gymnasium and training of the mind in patriotic ideals, so that the entire being of the Czech men and women should be at the