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had been faulty and that their hopes were destined to disappointment, their ardor for the plebiscite cooled and they seem now to be returning to their first tactical idea, namely, that to gain time is to gain everything.
Various newspapers circulated reports that the plebiscite would be postponed and the Poles afterwards attempted to demoralize the people by the assumption that the plebiscite never would take place at all.
The plebiscite, however, enforced by the Poles themselves must be carried into effect, unless the Poles will voluntarily resign all claim to that entire district, and the Czechoslovak Republic must insist on its being carried out. It would be a further mistake, if the decisive authorities should imagine that the present intolerable situation and eventually a further delay would cause harm only to the Czechoslovak Republic and its adherents. It is not only in the interests of Czechoslovakia that the present state of affairs in Teschen should cease, it is Europe itself which has the most serious interest in the matter and which needs peace on every hand. Every postponement, every delay is a new menace to that peace. Procrastination is playing with fire. The Czechoslovaks realize the danger, they see it better than others can and they appeal to the Allied friendly states to use all their authority at the Conference that the plebiscite, having once been ordered, shall be carried out as speedily as possible.
Czechoslovakia, having been compelled to accept this method of solution, asks for the assistance of the Allied nations with whom she fought the great fight of the World against a common enemy, she asks them to stand by her in Truth, and in Right and then her people may surely hope—nay firmly believe— that in one of their most vital and moral questions and after so much suffering and persecution—victory will finally be theirs, for they seek it and toil for it in truth and morality, for they believe that the millions of lives and careers that the World’s War destroyed were not sacrificed in vain, but that they have given birth to a new justice based upon a new morality.
Stefanik
At home his dreaming eye,
It was as if he would there read
His own fate in the sky.
To journey far he dares—
I’m going to seek my star, he says,
And searches in the stars.
Nor Lyre nor the Cross—
“Where is the star of mine?’ he thinks
And prying on he goes.
The world in fire lies;
But through the gloom and doom he sees
A great new star arise.
This is my star,” he cried,
And with a strong voice he calls his boys:
“To arms on my side!”
As the billows on the sea,
Yes, on his country shines at last
The Star of Liberty!
And flew in a wingéd car—
From heights he embraced his country dear
And fell down as a star.
Antonín Klášterský is one of foremost of the younger Bohemian poets He has made available John Hay, William Cullen Bryant, James Russell Lowell, Joaquin Miller, and many others to the Czechs and Slovaks. This poem “Štefanik”, Mr. Klášterský himself translated into the English.