Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/343

President Masaryk of Czechoslovakia predicted increasing power and affluence for the working classes of his country in a conversation with American correspondents today. He said that the present tendency of Czechoslovakia was toward socialization or nationalization.

“Our recent election,” said the President, “means practically socialization, or what some people call nationalization. It means State control of industries and public utilities. The workingman will decide how they shall be conducted.

“For example, workingmen will be among the trustees of banks and will have bonds in factories and so forth. They shall share in the earnings. That is the tendency now. There necessarily will be a great variety of economic development, because some of the workmen are now ready for the change, while others are not.”

Turning to the tense situation existing between the Czechs and the German citizens, President Masaryk expressed hope that a settlement would soon be reached between the factions.

“The German minority,” he said in this connection, “is a real problem for us, but we hope we shall soon come to terms with the Germans, who are in a peculiar position. Having been for centuries in the dominant place, it is hard for them to grasp the new situation. They are living in the old order of things.”—Times—(N. Y.)

Several thousand Czechoslovaks, young and old live in Yonkers, and altogether a million in the United States. Half of them are native American citizens.

Unlike most of the races, that come from Eastern Europe, the Czech emigrants are educated. The percentage of illiteracy among the Bohemians is unbelievably small, less than 6 per cent, which is far lower than the percentage in our own land.

Prague, the capital, is a notable educational center, and its medical schools are held to be among the best in the world, and have been largely patronized by American medical students.

A Yonkers lady of American birth and Anglo-Saxon parentage who sojourned a year at Prague with her sister (who is a nurse and also resides in Yonkers), was heard to describe the city of Prague as a beautiful place to live in under normal conditions.

An article in the current Christian Herald gives an interesting sketch of the new nation and its people.

The famous University of Prague was the only one allowed under the Austrian regime but now two others are about to be organized, one in Brno, the old capital of Moravia, and another in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia.

President Masaryk, the first Chief Magistrate of this new nation, born of tyranny and war, is himself a highly-educated man, a lecturer in the University of London, in the early years of the war, and belongs to the reformed faith. Coming to America early in 1918 he was received with much honor by our people, and was frequently consulted by President Wilson. The Czechoslovak Declaration of Independence, largely his work, is a noble document.

Many visitors from this and other countries have gone to Prague for the great gathering of the Sokols which has been held this week in the noble old capital of the Czechoslovak Republic. They will return with the memory of a delightful and refreshing experience. The display of the gymnastic organisations, assembled for their quinquennial exercises, is in itself a fine thing, attractive to the eye by its revelation of strength, agility, and grace. These thousands of men and women, boys and girls, from all parts of Bohemia and Moravia will assuredly have given an exhibition of individual gymnastics and combined movements which could not be rivalled elsewhere, unless, perhaps, in Sweden, where, also, there is a national cult of physical training. But there is also something more than this. The Sokols are not merely gymnastic clubs. They are associations for the promotion of mental and spiritual, as well as corporeal, excellence; they are meant to develop the character not less than the muscles and the limbs. They have, therefore, a high moral purpose, which goes beyond recreation and sport, and they are all inspired by an ideal of profound national and patriotic significance. Founded sixty years ago, they were intended to keep alive the spirit of solidarity and independence, which seemed little more than a dream then to the subingated and divided Czechs and Slovaks, though it was a dream that had never faded from the popular consciousness through centuries of depression and persecution. It was to give fresh life and reality to this vision that the Sokols were established. Their aim was to bring together the youth and manhood and womanhood of the Czechoslovak lands in a common task of union and organisation. The athletic and gymnastic societies kept before them the aim. not only of freedom, but of progress, as nothing else could have done. De-