Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/329

joined the National Democrats and strengthened the conservative wing of the party. Evidently, even here the development will lead from mere discussion to a break in the party, to a split between the conservative element of the party and those of progressive tendencies. In the principal organ of the party the progressive tendency battles with advocacy of open conservatism which indicates that the time for a crisis is near. The crisis of the Peoples’ Party has a new and nation-wide significance. The tendencies of the Clerical Party are antagonistic to the republic and seek a return of the monarchy. It is working under an imperfect cloak of individual-idealists endeavoring to harmonize all conservative politics of the republic. That the cleansing process in this instance should be accomplished as thoroughly as possible and as quickly as possible is of interest to the whole state.

Our political outlook is not rosy. All political fractions are experiencing crisis in thoughts, from which they will emerge only through open discussion and a new alignment of individuals and parties. It is not necessary to be pessimistic. Political conditions of the parties are peculiarly akin to those of twenty years ago, to those times when the first individual realistic politics were created. A few years prior thereto it was the ambition of Masaryk, today our Liberator, who said at the end of his book, “The Bohemian Question”, that within all parties and all classes there should be created “a large number of active and thinking men, who, without constant talk and visible connections, each within his own circle, would work for a given goal. As a visible church lives within an invisible church so even we, as a nation will safely live, if a large number of us will band and through a quiet understanding which arises from a proper appreciation of our world position and from a proper judgment of what and how much we shall work.” To-day a historian might put the question—and it is not doubted that future historians will ask it—whether this political principle would not have been more advantageous for Bohemian politics rather than the formation of an independent Realistic Party in 1900, which, as it could not be otherwise, brought with its serious narrowness and dechurchization of this underlying principle of realistic politics. Let his answer be whatever it may, the conviction remains that in today’s transitory condition, similar to that in which our political parties experienced when our “Leader” wrote “The Bohemian Question”, we should at least strive for a realization of his ideals. Even if we gain aught else but that we bridge our political life from a period of a crisis to a period, God grant it, more peaceful, even then much will be accomplished.

It is reported that this government has purchased fifteen million pounds of sugar from Czechoslovakia. It is learned also that the Czechs are depending upon the United States for fertilizers to apply to their season’s sugar crop and that a surplus of from one hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand tons is expected from the fall crop. It is pointed out by economists that America may well trade fertilizer for sugar, since the Czechs have no other security to give for the loan. It is reasonable to think that there are many other ways in which we may extend this sort of reciprocity to the struggling new nations whom we have helped into being and that we may do so to the mutual advantage of both parties. The new nations are in earnest and have gone earnestly to work. We can benefit them and ourselves by helping them.—Mobile (Ala.) Register.