Page:Charities v13 (Oct 1904-Mar 1905).pdf/227



In studying any group of "strangers within our gates," it is necessary to know intimately its pre-emigration history. I know of no nation of which this is more fundamentally true than the Bohemians. They have had such a stormy national struggle, and the bitterness of it has so entered into their lives that it is impossible rightly to judge them apart from it.

For the last two hundred and fifty years they have been oppressed by a pitilessly despotic rule. In the days of their independence, before 1620, they were Protestants and the most glorious and memorable events of their history are connected with their struggle for the faith. The history of their church is, in fact, the history of their nation, for on the one hand was Protestantism and independence; on the other, Catholicism and political subjection. For two centuries Bohemia was a bloody battleground of Protestant reform. Under the spiritual and military leadership of such men as Jerome of Prague, John Huss and Ziska, the Bohemians fought their good fight and lost. After the battle of White Mountain in 1620, national independence was lost, and Catholicism was completely forcibly imposed upon the country. All Protestant bibles, books and songs were burnt, thus depriving the nation of a large and rich literature. Those who still clung publicly to their faith were banished from the country, their property becoming forfeit to the state.

After hundred and fifty years, when Emperor Joseph of Austria gave back to the Protestants some measure of their