Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/373

nourishment supplied to needy children, etc., etc.

The development of the work is hindered by the financial straits in which the communities find themselves as a consequence of pre-war and war-time administration as well as by the increased needs of all communities. Self-help cannot possibly meet the demands made.

The “revolutionary” National Assembly was purely Czech: The Germans and Magyars were at that time, although co-citizens, in revolt against the Republic: they refused to recognize it and proclaimed certain districts as independent; the Magyars indeed even took up arms against the Republic.

And yet the Constitution has given equal electoral rights to all. By taking part in the elections they have acknowledged their citizenship to the Czechoslovak Republic; they have recognized that the nation of Hus, of Comenius and of Masaryk is loyal and ready for friendship, that even when the Czechs had absolute political power in their hands they did not abuse it even against those who were for centuries their foes and, until quite recently, their sworn foes.

It is very difficult for foreigners to understand the composite and complicated conditions of our country and all the more so as they gain their information about us from the press of our enemies. It is a great thing to be the heart of Europe, but it is at the same time a responsibility and a danger.

England is separated by sea from all other states; it is secure like America which need fear no enemy at its gates even on its short southern frontier. Spain, France and Italy likewise have scarce one vulnerable frontier.

But we are surrounded completely on all sides by foreign powers. We are like an island in the midst of surging waves, we feel the shocks as though they were of the breakers. How many foreigners penetrate across the frontiers to us! But we do not force them to abandon their original sentiments of race and nationality. We have always erred rather on the side of charity.

But this center of Europe, perhaps by virtue of its geographical comingling and the position of most varied influences is like a gigantic workshop in which these influences are remoulded and give rise to progressive ideals.

We anticipated the Reformation in Germany by a whole century with our Husite movement led by John Hus who stood for purity of life, liberty of conscience and liberty of conviction. John Amos Comenius, “The teacher of the Nations”, was born in the 16th century. He composed his great life-work—a revolution in the culture of nations with the object of promoting universal peace, and that, at a time when such an idea was still quite foreign to other nations. He not only was the author of the idea but in his immortal works elaborated a method of its realization.

And the Czech Declaration of December 8, 1870, continuing the work of Comenius, proclaimed even then the Wilsonian principle of to-day—the right of nations to self-determination. It stated: “All nations, whether great or small, have an equal right to self-determination and their equality ought to be equally respected. Only by the recognition of equal rights and by reciprocal respect for the unfettered self-determination of all nations can their rights, liberty and fraternity, universal peace and true humanity flourish”.

We have created our own characteristic national Art, we have built up a perfect illiterate—and all this against the will and educational system, we have scarcely an under the displeasure of Austrian Governments.

Our women founded a High School for girls which was the first to be founded in the former Austrian Empire. Vienna afterwards followed our example. All this, too, was done in the face of the opposition of a hostile Government.

Czech women may boast of the oldest rights of suffrage in the whole world. They date from the year 1861. And it is the conscious effort of Czechoslovak women alone that saved these rights from perishing. Of all Central, Western and Eastern Europe (except Finland) it was in Bohemia that the first woman was elected to Parliament. Even today in the midst of stirring times we have not been unfaithful to our traditions. And the Czechoslovak woman is to-day a citizen possessed of full rights.

The progress of our State in the path of peace, right and justice as shown by all our new legislation proves that, even though a comparatively small nation, we remain the heart of Europe, beating warmly for the ideal of the liberty of nations, pure democracy and humanity.