Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/169

and that the Socialist party in America should not identify its cause with theirs.

A distinctive custom of the Czech people in America is that of expressing congratulations or condolences through the medium of paid advertisements in the newspapers. A very popular couple will be congratulated on their marriage perhaps to the extent of a page of congratulatory notices. The usual form is two columns wide and about four inches deep, enclosed in a “box”, but special fervor or social standing may be expressed by inscreasing the size of type and box, and including a verse of poetry.

Other advertisements are those of the entertainments of societies and lodges. During the summer picnics to country farms and groves are the principal thing, but from October to June musical and dramatic entertainments hold the field. A single issue of a paper has contained announcements of fifteen different dramatic performances to be staged within a space of two weeks in the various Czech centers of the city.

The general character of the Bohemian newspapers of Cleveland is excellent. They co-operate in all public movements and their devotion to the cause of freedom is a passionate one. During the war, they gave whole pages of advertising free to the government,—as the English papers did not—and their support of every good cause is always wholehearted. They specialize, of course, in news from the home land, and through underground channels were often able to reveal Austrian conditions which were never officially acknowledged. In the establishment of the Czecho-Slovak Republic, their influence has been incalculable.

Important as is the present position of these papers, there can be no doubt that their future as Bohemian publications is distinctly limited. They are read by the old people and the newcomers. Of the young people who have grown up in this country, there are comparatively few who read Bohemian at all, and, without immigration, the clientele of these papers must necessarily decrease. Even among the older people, there are few who do not have a workable knowledge of English, but they cling to the news in Czech, because thus only are they sure of complete and perfect understanding. They can get the gist of a news in English, but to read it in their own tongue, gives them assurance as to details and significance.

If we must see in Germans and Magyans the greatest enemies of our nation and of our republic, in Jugoslavs we find our best allies and friends of all the neighboring nations. Our relations have always been friendly, because both sides have been conscious of close racial relationship, which led to alliance in the political field, as soon as constitutional regime was introduced in the former Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Through the division of the Hapsburg empire into the Austrian and Hungarian halves the Slavs were split; but in the Austrian parliament there prevailed close co-operation between the Czechs and a part of the Jugoslavs. When the Poles in the Galician diet defeated the federalist program of Francis Šmolka and thus betrayed the Slav program for the reconstruction of Austria championed by the Czechs, Slovenians and Croatians of Dalmatia upheld the Czech program. The diets of Bohemia, Moravia and Carniola, denying the right of the Reichsrat to approve the compromise with Hungary, refused to send deputies to it, whereas the diet of Galicia by a considerable majority voted on March 2, 1867, to send delegates to the Reichsrat. In Dalmatia the national Croatian-Serbian party endorsed the Czech attitude, but being in the minority in the diet was unable to prevent election of delegates for Dalmatia. Again in 1873, when in the interest of centralization elections to the Vienna parliament were to be transfered from the diets to electoral districts, Slovenians supported the Czechs in absenting themselves from the sessions, but the speaker declared a quorum to be present, after he had illegally dprived all absent deputies of their mandates. When later both nations were represented in the Vienna parliament, Slovenians and Croatians supported in general Czech policies, while the Poles co-operated with the Germans. The Czech-Jugoslav friendship was specially strengthened dur-