The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 4/Number 6/Jail

Tailor: Hi! hist! hi, neighbor, a word with you!

Carpenter: Go your way, and leave me in peace.

Tailor: Only a word. Is there nothing new?

Carpenter: Nothing except that it is forbidden to speak of anything new.

Tailor: How is that?

Carpenter: Step up to this house. Take care! Straightway upon his arrival the Duke of Alba had an order isued by which two or three who speak together in the street are declared guilty of high treason without a trial.

Tailor: Alas, preserve us!

Carpenter: Under pain of life-long imprisonment it is forbidden to speak of affairs of state.

Tailor: Alas for our liberty!

Carpenter: And under pain of death nobody shall say aught against the actions of the Government.

Tailor: Alas for our lives!

Carpenter: And fathers, mothers, children, relatives, friends and servants are invited with a promise of great things to divulge to a specially established court what goes on within the very household.

Tailor: Let us get home.

Carpenter: And the obedient are promised that they shall suffer no injury either to body, or honor, or possessions.

Tailor: How merciful! Why I supposed—etc. etc. *** According to Goethe’s “Egmont” this was enacted at Brussels in the year 1567, but it was enacted in reality on countless occasions in the lands of the Bohemian crown in the years 1915 to 1916.

To-day we hope that it was the last persecution, just as that in Brussels in the year 1567. Errors in policy are a crime, and every crime brings a fearful revenge in its wake.^[1]

It can safely be asserted that time after time in the course of the last 300 years our nation was afflicted by persecutions as other countries by earthquakes.

A very thorough-going persecution fell to our lot immediately after the battle of the White Mountain; it was a persecution which might be called an imperial one. It was aimed at the rebellious lords, but the Czech nation almost breathed its last as a result of it. And it was the first misfortune,not for us, since nations always outlive their dynasties,—but for those who carried it out. A river of blood began to flow between them and us,—and such blood never dries up.

The persecution which followed it was also interesting, and might be called a religious one. Its victims were books and people whose confession of faith was different from that prescribed by the holy Roman Catholic Church; and this again was a misfortune for the Church.—The Hussite spirit had always smouldered amongst us under the ashes.—The holy Church made efforts to keep it smouldering. The subsequent persecution which might be compared with a continual earthquake, because it lasted long over a hundred years, was a persecution by the lords and was directed against the serfs. It is true that it did not fall upon the nation as a whole, but on the other hand, an enormous number of individuals were its victims.

The persecution by Metternich was one of the mildest. It was directed not only against us Czechs, but against all the nations in Austria, and indeed, against a large part of Europe. It was milder because it allowed people freedom of movement; they were permitted to eat, drink, sleep, keep awake, dance, swim, walk, skate etc. .—but, to make up for this, their spirits were enclosed in a dark room where windows and doors were blocked up so as to prevent light and fresh air from getting in. After the year 1848 began the political persecution which dismissed inconvenient officials and teachers, confiscated books, suppressed newspapers, locked up editors, sent strict governors to Prague, placed Czech people before German judges, and also continued for a respectable number of years, proceeding sometimes more severely, sometimes only leniently, sometimes vanishing for a period after which, having rested, it immediately began afresh. And so we experienced the persecution in the years 1915—1916, which might be designated as a military persecution.

It is certain that the human spirit which contrives to expound accurately all the periods of ancient Roman history, and bears in mind the dynasties of ancient Egypt, will very easily forget the events of those preceding years. It is therefore desirable that we, who had a little to do with it, should speak. We must make known our impressions for the purpose of supplying reliable material for the history of these two years. Yes, provisions must be made for our historians.

​The frame-work is something like this: At the outbreak of war the late Emperor surrendered a part of his authority as a ruler to the military staff, whose main representatives, in addition to the commander-in-chief, Archduke Friedrich, were Conrad von Hotzendorf, Marshall Metzger and Colonels Slameczka and Gregori. The general staff applied its watchful eye not only to the enemy outside, but, as is of course natural, also to the mischief-makers within. And then was made that tragic error which had far-reaching results.

In the erroneous supposition that, when war was declared against the only three foreign Slav states, Austria-Hungary, a group of states with a majority of Slav races, would not meet with assent to, and appropriate enthusiasm for war among its Slav majority, although that majority, as the mobilization showed, loyally rendered unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,—the general staff began to look with mistrust upon the Slav nationalities, later also upon its Italian subjects and later still upon the Roumanians, and blaming the former civilian administration,—it existed only in name. Having become the obedient helper of the military authorities during the war,—for lax patriotic training, defectively inculcated Austrianism, tolerated particularism, careless lenience in dynastic and religious affairs, blindness towards all kinds of centrifugal tendencies, it undertook this training itself, and desired to carry it out in the military manner, quickly and thoroughly.

Certainly, one other circumstance was very significant in its eyes. In the German Reichstag, Bethmann-Hollweg made a speech in which he referred to “the reckoning between the Germanic and Slavonic races”, a phrase to which no contradiction was forthcoming from Austria, with its Slav majority. The three Counts, Tisza, Berchtold and Sturgkh, were silent; silent too were the nationalities fighting beneath the two-headed eagle against the Russians, Serbs, and Montenegrins,—and this silence must have been noticed by the military authorities,—again an erroneous supposition which accentuated the tragic error; the leading Counts had probably overlooked the Chancellor’s remark and the Austrian nations could not become articulate,—there was no Parliament, there was no public platform. But this silence was regarded as malice and a token of secret hostility towards the position of the Empire.

And so the patriotic training began. In the kingdom of Bohemia, in Galicia, in Croatia, Dalmatia, everywhere the military showed the civilian administration what it had neglected, and how things ought to be done. A new spirit was introduced into the schools and among the teachers. Reading-books which contained a reference to the kingdom of Bohemia were confiscated; the emblems of the territories of the Bohemian crown,—confiscated; national colours, whether on clothes, on match-boxes, on bags of confectionery, forbidden; popular tunes and national songs, as ancient and innocent as the livelong day, were forbidden; collections of songs were seized, books, old miscellanies, verse, prose were also seized; newspapers appeared full of blank spaces, and published articles, supplied to them by the police; they had to publish them too, in a prominent spot under pain of immediate suppression; and they appeared, only to be suppressed in the end after all; suspicious people,—oh, the gallant governors, the gendarmes and the Government police had a tremendous amount of work to do then!—were taken away and interned in concentration camps; recruits had a Uriah-like p. v. (Politisch verdachtig^[2]) inscribed on their military papers and those two letters ensured their bearers a continual strict control and other agreeable attentions upon all battle-fronts, whether in Russia, in Serbia, in Roumania, in Italy; people of all classes and ranks lived under continual police observation; taverns, cafes, theatres, public places swarmed with police spies, and espionage penetrated even into families; there was a deluge of anonymous accusations on all sides, and as a result of them, cross-examinations, domiciliary searches, arrests and imprisonments took place; childish leaflets were, heaven alone knows how, circulated among the peaceful population, and it fared ill with anyone of whom it could be proved that he had possessed, read or even looked at anything of the kind.

All civilian rights were suspended. There were no personal liberties, there were no constitutional liberties. There were only military tribunals and they worked as they were obliged to work. Czech people were tried and sentenced by judges who did not know a single word of Czech; nobody was safe either by day or night. There was a deluge of halters, life-long terms of imprisonment, hundreds and hundreds of years of jail, confiscation of property; those who were locked up included women, students, female clerks, authors, members of parliament, bank managers, officials of the most diverse branches, grocers, workmen, journalists, clergymen of all denominations. Everybody was under suspicion, the whole nation was under suspicion.

A sultry stillness settled upon the whole kingdom of Bohemia. Cowards began to accommodate themselves to the prevailing conditions, and met the rule of terror halfway. At Prague anecdotes and jokes came into being, and with the rapidity of light they sped through Bohemia and Moravia, conjuring up smiles from the faces of a nation which had become unaccustomed to mirth. Slowly but firmly there developed a feeling of national solidarity, an instinct for national honour and national justice, and joyous ​hopes grew like wisps of fresh grass underneath a heavy boulder.

But all this took place quietly and in secret. Outwardly, it was burdensome to breathe, the atmosphere was full of horrible uncertainty. If anyone counted upon the enforced outbreak of a revolt, after which it would have been possible to have recourse to still more violent measures, those who so counted, suffered a disappointment. The nation held its peace.

No persecution, since that following the battle of the White Mountain, was more cruel than this military one carried out in the kingdom of Bohemia in the years 1915—1916; both of them are worthy of each other, and in fact our persecution is a new epitome of all persecutions to which we have been subjected during the last 300 years.

As long as the Russians remained in Galicia and Count Thun was acting as governor in Prague, the persecution did not venture to make any steady advance, as it were. Now and then it seized hold of some old huxter-woman, of whom it had been ascertained that she had told people how close the Russians already were, and that they would be “here” within a fortnight,—she had been told so by some tramp or other, the old woman received, I believe, 14 months. Or, an official person, a constable or a police-agent was walking along the street and in the second story of a house heard somebody scraping away at his violin practice,—practice indeed? That is the Russian hymn,—and nothing was of any avail, the pupil-teacher could explain this and that, and call upon the whole of heaven as a witness, the oficial person said Russian hymn,—and the pupil-teacher received 8 months. But the persecution was still, so to speak, only dallying,—as if a hungry tiger were catching flies. It gave a grab with its paw only occasionally if some large object came into its vicinity; the news could then be read in the papers that this or that well-known person “had moved” to Vienna. But an oppressive uncertainty had already setled upon the land of Bohemia.

After the break-through at Gorlice, all was changed. They began to coax Prince Thun into believing that he was seriously ill; his sight was weak, they said, and was being impaired by his official duties at so responsible a spot. The Prince denied this energetically but vainly. He did actually fall ill and retired.

On May 21st, 1915, Dr. Kramář was arrested. He “moved” to Vienna.

A day or so after that I was travelling to Prague for the Whitsuntide holidays. In the train I met Deputy Choc. We still knew nothing about it. We talked of this and that, until suddenly it occurred to Choc that Hofrat So-and-so was travelling in the same carriage with us, and that he would go to him and discover the latest news. He soon came back; he had promised to say nothing, but he would tell me,—they had arrested Kramář. Said I, that is impossible.—Yes, the Hofrat declares it is so.—We were silent for a while. Then I pointed out to him that this would be a Harakiri of Austrian policy in Bohemia; that everyone knew how consistent an advocate of that policy Dr. Kramář had been in the last fifteen years; that no Viennese Government could be so short-sighted as to do anything of the kind; that Dr. Kramář was persona gratissima in all Viennese circles,—Choc only shrugged his shoulders; the Hofrat had declared it was so.

“Well then, we shall all have our turn,” I remarked to Choc.

“We shall, never mind.”

In the meanwhile, the Hofrat’s secret was known to the whole of Prague. And in a considerably enlarged edition. Altogether, nowhere had so many legends come into existence as at Prague in those two years. On the very same evening I heard it definitely asserted that the whole of the National Council had been removed in chains to Vienna, that old Dr. Mattuš had protested, but in vain, that Prince Thun had been arrested, that the Czech University had been suspended for some protest or other,—the people were not satisfied with reality and so they invented fables.

The arrest of Dr. Kramář, however, was the only certainty which I took back with me to Vienna.

Now, the nature of man is such that he does not fathom the ways and methods of Fate, he does not know that one of its apparent oversights may in time produce the most desirable results, he ceases to believe in it and wants to correct its mistakes. So it was that immediately upon my return I proceeded to a certain highly placed personage to explain to him what I had explained in the train to Choc, and asked him to intervene. The highly placed personage was able to do so, that much I knew.

I arrived. His excellency was engaged, he was not there. His secretary received me. He shook hands, smiled, asked me how I was,—I plunged in medias res. Such and such a thing had hapupened. An error, a mistake, a blunder, a misfortune. The secretary at once assumed an appearance of very serious gloom, and his voice changed from that of an amiable friend and assumed a dry official tone. “There you are, as long as Thun was governor, he kept Kramář safe, and Kramář, supposing himself God’s equal, thought that nothing could ever happen to him, that nobody would dare to interfere with him. But Thun went, the correspondence of Kramář was seized, and the result is that he is locked up in the military prison.”

​I pointed out the results that this action would have in Bohemia,—the secretary turned red and remarked: “The nation will calm down and come to reason. Those who led it, have led it astray. Politicians, authors,—yes, you are all guilty. Look here, I have a dog; when I come home, he is lying on the carpet sleeping happily in the sun. I begin to pity him; why, poor old fellow, you are so neglected, nobody troubles about you,—and he then begins to growl and to pity himself, as if he really were most badly off. The Czech nation is not badly off,—on the contrary, but you, authors, politicians and—”

“Wait a moment, doctor, just a brief comment upon this canine idyl of yours. The dog,—that tallies. But the room and the carpet do not tally, and as for the sun, we have never been in it at all. However, that’s all, I will not go to his Excellency. Good-day.”

This canine idyl had thoroughly warmed me up. And it opened out extremely distant perspectives to me; I now saw clearly all that had happened, was happening and would happen. . . . .

The reports about Dr. Kramář grew more and more copious. It was said that he was being cross-examined by Dr. Preminger,—who was Dr. Preminger? A man from Czernowitz. The Imperial Counsellor Penížek assured everybody convincingly whom he met: “Dr. Kramář can think himself lucky to have fallen into the hands of a Jew from Bukowina whose heart is in the right place.” Good. There was even a rumor that the case would not be tried at all. Then it was asserted that there would be a trial, and that it would last several days. Lieut. Preminger was said to be on his way to Prague and was cross-examining somebody somewhere. Stuergkh was said to have been conferring in the matter. A deputation of Young Czech delegates had been received in audience by the General Staff. Everything, it was said, would turn out well.

Both Czech Ministers were retaining a firm hold upon their posts, a fact which also aroused a certain amount of confidence. Could they have remained, if there had been anything serious against Kramář? Certainly not,—for with the person of Dr. Kramář the whole nation would be affected. And if there were nothing? They would be still less able to remain. At any rate, that was how the people judged it, but the Ministers themselves found a different solution,—they remained. They did this, it was said, to avert still worse matters which were preparing, and some of which might prove fatal. And these too, they averted, so it was said. It will be the task of history to decide which would have been better and more honorable. Today we can assert with the determinists that what happened had to happen, and we can add that it is a good thing it happened as it did, otherwise things would not be as they are today.

That was a beautiful spring. Day by day the sky was a clear blue, the air was fresh, the birds sang, the armies of the Central Powers advanced victoriously further and further through Russian-Poland, fortress upon fortress fell, every report announced swarms of prisoners, captured cannon, machine-guns, motor-cars, provision stores, clothes, boots,—there was joy on all sides, for the newspaper strategists announced that the war would soon come to a victorious end and peace was upon the horizon,—only above the lands of the Bohemian crown hung a black cloud, and the atmosphere beneath it was sultry, we breathed heavily, very heavily.

It was the morning of June 17th. I left my office, collected my letters and proceeded home. The landlady of the neighboring house, Mrs. Helena Krásná, was leaning out of the window, she beckoned to me and called out: “There are officers in your house, they want to take you away to Prague”, and, as a matter of fact, a motor-car was standing in front of the building. Also, some man or other was cautiously following me, not leaving me out of his sight; I had not noticed him previously.

Already? I thought to myself. And why can it be? I did not know, but the continual feeling of uncertainty such as was possessed at that time by every man whose language was Czech, had not left me since the arrest of Dr. Kramář. Perhaps it was some accusation,—at that time they were showering down like drops of rain in spring, perhaps it was my mere existence, perhaps it was as Dr. Herben put it: some General or other is sitting down looking at a map, you pass by him and sneeze, the General turns round and you are immediately guilty of the crime of interfering with military operations,—well, it was possible that I had sneezed in this way.—who knows. We shall see.

I entered the house, the little fellow from the street behind me.

In the room there were three officers, a Captain, two Lieutenants and a little volunteer Officer, obviously a Jew, with a foxy look. They clicked their heels and introduced themselves. “Lieutenant Dr. Preminger” said a man of medium size with scanty fair hair and pale blue eyes. So that is he.

“What do you want, gentlemen?”

“Could we see the letters that you have from Dr. Kramář? And could we have a general look around among your things? Here is the written order.” And Preminger handed me a paper.

A stamp, a signature, a hectographed text, only the name and address written in. “Certainly.”

The man from the street stood in the ante-room. “Nobody is allowed to leave the house,” Dr. Preminger instructed him.

Out of a box I took a bundle of letters which Dr. Kramář had written to me from the Crimea sixteen or seventeen years ago, and I gave them ​to Preminger. “You will allow me, gentlemen, to have my lunch, I suppose?”

Preminger bowed. “In the meanwhile we will have a look at the books, everything is of interest to us, both written and printed matter.” They sat down and took down from the shelves; I had my lunch in the next room. I was calm and said to myself: whatever it may be, I must show no weakness. I ate slowly, from outside could be heard the measured snorting of the motor-car, in the next room my guests were engaged in conversation. “I tell you that the Roumanians will go against us, I was ten years in a Roumanian regiment and I know them,” expounded the Captain.

“I don’t believe it,” declared Preminger and closed one of my books noisily.

I was finished and went in to them.

“I will take these letters with me,” remarked Preminger and he thrust some letters of Kramář into his breast pocket. “And now we will see whether anything else will suit us. First of all show us all your correspondence.”

“War-time? Or all of it?”

“The whole lot.”

I began with the dead. Winter—“Who was he?”

“An author, and excellent man.” Further: Čech—”

“Who was he?”

“A great poet. A field-marshall was ordered to his funeral. Vrchlický—”

“Ah, Vrhliky,—I have heard of him. Is he dead too?”

“Slavíček, a painter―”

“Is he dead too?”

“He shot himself”—Šimáček, Neruda, Sládek—

“Dead?” This is a regular graveyard. We want live ones.” remarked Preminger.

“Here. Leger.”

“Why Leger? Why not Ležé?”^[4]

“His name is Leger and he lives at Kolín. A poet.”

Preminger looked suspiciously at the letters. “At Kolín? Not at Paris?”

“Ah, you mean Louis Leger? No, I have nothing from him.”

He laid aside our Leger disappointedly. “And you have no letters at all from abroad?”

“Yes. Here is a letter from Denis.”

“Oh, that’s something,” and he took the letter out of my hand.

“It’s no good to you. The letter is already several years old. Denis thanks me in it for the dedication of my book The Apostles.”

“We shall see,” and Denis’ letter joined those of Kramář. “Nothing else from abroad?”

“Nothing else.”

“Now for home affairs.”

I opened drawers, undid bundles.—hundreds and hundreds of letters tumbled out, congratulations, literary matters, bills, telegrams, personal communications, cuttings from papers, rough drafts of poems—all in Czech, and these piles were shared out among the three officers, of whom only the Captain understood Czech: They looked at the signatures and dates, and asked questions.