Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/301

How they conceive the future is gleaned from these lines:

“Personal labor, dependence on one’s strength, critical and sober judging of surrounding conditions of our neighbors and happenings, let these be a guide to further labors, which await us in our homeland.”

“The first point of our program we have fulfilled and now there are ahead of us further tasks, to weld ourselves into the bosom of the nation, to create and to build, to be citizens and to be men. You were good fighters, therefore be good citizens, endeavoring at all times to gain the ideals of social, economic and political justice.”

That is their goal, that is the thought of the heroes, which always remain a monument of the moral force of the Czechoslovak soldier.

(The transport Mt. Vernon, carrying the Czechoslovak soldiers under the direction of Major Moravek was forced, through accident, to put into Norfolk for repairs. The soldiers were visited there by the chargé d’ Affaires, Mr. Jan Masaryk, and the military attaché of the Czechoslovak legation, Col. Hurban, who looked after the comfort and welfare of the troops. It is expected that in the early part of July another ship will take them to Trieste, from whence they will be transported by rail to Prague. The obstacles placed in their path have been many. With good fortune they have overcome all of them. These heroes deserve a better fate, but the hand of Destiny has allotted these men to drink from a cup of bitterness. Bon Voyage and a happy and early return home.—(Ed.)

The Czechoslovaks have an undeniable historical right to Teschen. The Principality of Teschen is an inseparable part of the lands of the Crown of St. Václav. From the year 1327 it was part and parcel of the Kingdom of Bohemia and the historical rights of the Czechoslovaks to it are not extinguished as the Poles declare. For as the Bohemian State and the right of the Bohemian nation thereto never ceased to exist constitutionally even in the darkest days of oppression under the Habsburgs so the right of the Czechoslovaks of today to the District of Teschen, as an indivisible part of their state, have not lapsed. Even Bohemia’s mortal enemy, Francis Joseph I., confirmed this Bohemian right by his Rescript of September 1870 in which he acknowledged the indivisibility of the Bohemian Crownlands. The Czechoslovaks of today in defending the District of Teschen are defending desperately their own land.

The historical past of Teschen is Bohemian. The people who have for centuries inhabited it are Bohemian. As late as the year 1550 a law passed by the Duke of Teschen Václav prescribed Bohemian as the sole official language, while later, when Duke Ferdinand received the Principality of Teschen from the Emperor Ferdinand as a feudal tenure of the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Duke ratified that law. Evidences of the glory of old Bohemian days are found everywhere in Silesia; in the parish church of Teschen, in the public offices and archives as well as in the remotest villages. Such relics comprise official charters and documents, inscriptions in the churches, epitaphs in the churchyards and old Bohemian songs, hymnbooks and prayer books which old women still preserve in their old-fashioned painted boxes as sacred remembrances.

With the growth of the coal industry it is only natural that the native working classes proved insufficient to meet the the demands of that industry. Large numbers of uneducated workers were introduced from Galicia bringing with them their priests and teachers who became the pioneers of the Polish idea in Silesia, and who exerted all their powers and influence to the harm of the Bohemians whom they strove to turn into adherents of Poland. Their great aim was to Polonise as quickly as possible both the Church and the School the very focus of national and intellectual work.

In the Protestant churches of Teschen District sermons were preached and hymns sung in Bohemian till the year 1870. Bohemian books, prayer-books and hymn-books are still found in the Protestant families which have preserved their Bohemian character. In their houses one still sees pictures of the Bohemian heroes Hus and Žižka. It was only by force that the Bohemian language was driven out of the churches and congregations. At Komorní Lhotka, for example, there are persons still living who remember the forcible Polonization of the Lutheran local congregation. At the Easter in the year 1865 Polish music and Polish hymns were introduced to replace Bohemian. The people were offended, they left the Church and remained defiant for a long time. They ceased to attend church, but read Bohemian religious books and