Page:Bohemia – The Submerged Front.pdf/3

428 great war more promptly appreciated than it was in Prague. Here the people knew it meant an attempt to enforce German supremacy in Europe if not in the whole world, and they also appreciated the full danger even of German failure if it brought about the compromise, which is now being subtly advanced, of a Middle European Empire, which meant for the Bohemians the loss of the little freedom they then enjoyed.

The destruction of Bohemian independence after the battle of the White Mountain was an illegal act never acquiesced in and simply carried out by the overwhelming weight of numbers. And so naturally enough today, the Bohemians are basing their demands for self-government and independence not merely upon the abstract right of all men to these precious things, but upon laws and covenants which have never been repealed or abrogated with their consent. Under the Austrian constitution of later years all nationalities were declared equal before the law and the throne. But this provision meant little, and by the Ausgleich of 1867, by which the Germans and the Magyars secured absolute dual control, it came to mean nothing at all.

A very few days before the outbreak of the Great War the last measure of Bohemian autonomy was destroyed. By one sweep of the pen the Emperor dissolved the so-called Council of the Kingdom, and subsequently an imperial commission was created to govern Bohemia. The members of this body, called upon to exercise autocratic powers, were aliens and outlanders in spirit or by heredity and generally in both.

One feels drawn towards the Bohemians for their idealistic point of view. They are perfectly familiar with the economic wrongs and the exactions which their country has suffered at the hands of the Austrians, but always subordinate these injuries to the threatened loss of the language and the nationality which they hold so dear. Again, one is struck by the enthusiastic loyalty of all Bohemians in this country to America and to American ideals. There are more than sixty Bohemian newspapers published among us, and for years past each one of them has carried in every issue a call upon all their readers to secure American citizenship as quickly as possible, and this they have done almost without exception.

It is, of course, the question of language and of nation-