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annihilated and the mines cleared of Bohemians.

Their places were taken by Poles—the Poles who in their warm friendship for the Germans sent their legions with enthusiasm against the Entente. The Poles at this time had but one name for the Bohemians, viz, “Czech traitor”. The Poles assisted the German hangmen, they denounced the Bohemians, hunted them and left mothers and children in misery and despair. It is easy to see why not one of the Silesian Poles was ever persecuted by the Austrian Government.

Then came the end of the War and the 28th of October. The Silesian Bohemians, exhausted, sank down on the threshhold of their redemption, rejoicing at the prospect of new-born Bohemian liberty. But they were not to enter the paradise of their hopes. Fate closed the gates and the beaten and bruised people were driven back to the foot of their cross under Teschen. Justice cried in vain to Heaven. The people had not yet reached the culminating point of their Silesian Calvary: the cup of bitterness was not yet full to overflowing.

At the moment when the historic revolution took place at Prague—and that in spite of the presence of an armed enemy Hungarian garrison—at the critical moment when the Czechoslovaks had no army of their own, when they had in Teschen not a single soldier to defend the Eastern frontier of the newly proclaimed Czechoslovak Republic, it was at this moment that the Poles took advantage of the weak position of the Czechoslovaks to lay hands upon the Bohemian Crownland. Immediately on the 29th of October they seized the railway from Košice to Bohumín and on the 29th and 30th they ocupied Teschen, Bohumín and Karvín. From that moment all the horrors of war revisited the Silesian Bohemians in a new form.

The situation was a very serious one. From Prague instructions came to keep, at all costs, on friendly terms with the Poles. In view of the critical position the Bohemian National Committee, the Národní Výbor decided, on the 5th of Noverber 1918 to make a local pact with the Poles. It was expressly laid down in the pact itself that its terms were only provisional for the purpose of keeping peace and maintaining order in Teschen District.

This pact was never adopted by the Czechoslovak Government. The Poles systematically evaded it, but they had the presumption to declare it an international treaty, and pilloried the subsequent conduct of the Czechoslovaks in Teschen as a breach of international law.

The intolerable condition of affairs compelled the Czechoslovak Government to take resolute action. The occupation which they ordered, was, however, belated and should have taken place much earlier.

The Bohemians of Silesia had waited long enough. They had seen how their compatriots, the legionaries who had returned safe and sound from the hell of Verdun and from the bloody battles of many fronts, returned to their native land only to be murdered in their own homes by Polish bullets treacherously fired from behind. The Poles organized guerilla bands and distributed arms even to children.

The Poles heaped every form of abuse and indignity upon all who faithfully stood by the Czechoslovak Republic.

Innocent and peaceable people were dragged from their houses to the Polish concentration camps in Deb, the horrors of which not only equalled but even far surpassed those of the notorious Austrian Talerhof.

The Poles, in fact, in Deb by neglect systematically murdered healthy Bohemian prisoners. The dark Middle Ages could hardly have invented more insidious tortures for human beings. Such was the work of the Poles.

No single enemy of the Czechoslovaks has ever done them so much evil as the Poles whom they looked upon as their kin and to whom they were always ready to offer the hand of reconciliation for the sake of justice and peace.

In the meantime the Poles by diplomatic trickery persuaded the Entente Commission to order the Czechoslovak army which had been stationed along the banks of the Visla on their own territory, to retire to the West. This order was given at the beginning of February 1919 and the Czechoslovak representative in Paris was forced by circumstances to sign the unhappy, fatal treaty regarding the provisional frontiers by which nearly the whole of the district with the capital, Teschen, as well as the railway from Teschen to Slovakia was placed under Polish rule.

This treaty set the seal to a great injustice to the people of Silesia and is an affront to the whole Czechoslovak nation.

The people of Silesia received it as a lash across the face and the Czechoslovak nation felt the humiliation. What had happened should never have been allowed to happen. Had not the sons of Silesia fought on the Marne and on the Somme, in Siberia and on the Piave? They fought for the liberty of the world and for the liberty of their own native Silesian land.

Yet the Silesian legionary, after giving his blood in foreign lands returned home only to be forced by the Decision of the Peace Conference to leave his native land and give it up to the Polish invader, He felt it was the role of a coward, but he bit his lips and obeyed.

In the rear of the Czechoslovak army the Silesians were forced to flee from their homes. Horror, shame and ruin went with them. Even the faith which they had cherished for centuries the belief that the liberation of their own nation—the Czechoslovak nation—would bring back liberty to Silesia also, was crushed. From this time a night darker than all the past fell over Teschen. Six months of confusion and horror passed over the unhappy land. From time to time there appeared a glimmer of hope but it