Page:Guide to the Bohemian section and to the Kingdom of Bohemia - 1906.djvu/7



f the extensive and manifold realms ruled by the house of Habsburg no part is perhaps less known in England than the ancient kingdom of Bohemia It is indeed only quite recently that it has been possible for Englishmen to acquire any knowledge of Bohemia from other than German sources; and as racial warfare between the Slav and the Teuton is the keynote of Bohemian history, information dérived from hostile sources would be—as was recently wittly written— as useful as a biography of the great duke Wellington written by a Frenchman!

Modern research has proved that at least part of Bohemia has had a Slavic population almost from the earliest historical period. This as is known is equally true of a large, adjacent part of Northern Germany, whose ancient Slavic population has long been Germanised.

That similar frequent attempts have in Bohemia been unsuccessful is no doubt largelly due to the geographical