Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/307

The ancient world has no tales of wandering to compare closely with the adventures of the Czechoslovaks now spending restless days on the decks of the transport Mount Vernon as she swings in the currents of San Francisco Bay. The army of Alexander the Great, struggling back from India to their first sight of the sea, the men of Carthage pushing over the Alps with Hannibal to the plains of Italy, even Odysseus voyaging here and there in the Mediterranean cannot touch the romance and wonder of their adventure. These others were personal exploits. One man directed, one man drove, one man planned, one man at last came home. It was different with these Czechs and Slovaks; the great tides of races at war swept them from home. And when the war ends, the great complicated forces of this civilization take them home again. Those early adventures wandered a few thousand square miles at most; these men on the Mount Vernon have the circle of the world for their unwilling vagabondage.

When the war came the rulers of Austria-Hungary forced these men into the service—against their will. They were of the conquered race, compelled to fight the battles of their tyrants. They were not ‘good soldiers’. They were easily “captured” by the Russians and many of them deserted. For a while they were kept in prison camps; then they were allowed to form an army and fight with the troops of the czar—fighting not for the czar, but for the hoped for independence of their race. Then came the Russian revolution and the withdrawal of that country from the war. It meant isolation and inactivity for the Czechoslovaks. These men were not Socialists, but nationalists; they cared little for Russia, still less for any new economic scheme. They were no longer able to fight with the Russians against the Germans, and since the war was not ended they could not return to Austria-Hungary. From then till now has been a weary, dangerous and disheartening time, during which they have been thrown from faction to faction, cause to cause, making the best of a bad present and dreaming always of a future which was never hopeful.

The story of those dreadful days will never be told; horror does not cling to the memory of men. The simple fact is that fighting and scheming and suffering, they came at last across Siberia to the Pacific and into the hands of the Americans. Though the war is over, they could not go home through the lines of the communists. To reach their humble farms they must cross the oceans of the world; and—ironical fact—the argosy in which they go home was once the Crown Princess Cecilie, one of the greatest of the German marine.

On the same ship go 700 German prisoners, also going home. They were captured in Galicia and Poland—dull country lads with no heart in the game—and spent their years of capture in the Siberian mines. They were taken only a few hundred miles from their homes, but they, too, must travel 25,000 miles to see the ridgepoles of their village.

Even now the future is not too bright. The Czechoslovaks go home to a new born country, but they know also that they go home to an existence that will be even more intolerable than before the war. Many of them do not wish to go back to Europe, but they can not stay in America; their legation will not allow them even to land to stretch their legs a bit. Having fought for their country’s independence they are compelled to be its citizens. And the young German prisoners who have heard vague and wild stories of their fatherland may be going home hopefully, but with a dumb uncertainty of the future.

The whole story seems like the vague sketch of a romantic imagination. There is a haphazard, undirected quality about the thing that makes these soldiers seem more like flying leaves or floating driftwood than people who eat and drink and sleep and hope. And yet, the world has seen so many wonderful and fearful things these last years that the Mount Vernon swings unregarded in San Francisco Bay and we pay little attention either to its coming or its going. The world has ben piling up wonders; but in doing so it seems to have lost some of its ancient gift of wonder.

Another link in the chain which binds Chicago and Czechoslovakia are the mural decorations by the celebrated Bohemian artist, Alphonse Mucha, which will be presented to the city of Prague by Charles R. Crane of Chicago and the artist. These are now being shown on the balcony about the grand stairway of the Art institute.

Those who have been thrilled by the spirit of the new Czechoslovakia now see in the paintings of Mucha some of the high spots in its glorious past—stirring events, fully as dramatic as those through which they have just lived. From these paintings we learn that inspiring things were happening to the Slavic people as early as 800. The great preacher Huss moves the court ladies and the peasants in the dim religious light of the Bethlehem chapel; the women of the world casting away their jewels kneel for absolution in the snow before Milič; soldiers hasten over the battlefield to seek forgiveness from Koranda for fighting against the king; a