Page:Slavs on southern farms (1914).pdf/22

 ism can, in a measure, be gathered. An English translation by Dr. Vincent Pisek is as follows:

In contrast to the harshness of SejHej [sic] Slované, with its clanging battle challenge, another popular Bohemian national song, “My Homeland,” breaths a peacefulness and love of race, of home, and of land that is truly beautiful. This song shows us the other side of the Bohemian character. An English translation, also by Dr. Pisek, is as follows:

As we study these people, their political, social, and literary history, and begin more fully to appreciate their character and their dominating ambitions—really begin to know them—we cease to marvel at the rapidity of the progress they are capable of when given a real chance. More than this, we suddenly begin to realize that they too possess some of the higher traits of civilized humanity. It becomes harder to carelessly class them as “undesirable immigrants,” for even the most prejudiced of us in the South are forced to recognize in them some merit, as they have proved that they can do on southern farms what we ourselves are apparently unable to do.

A deeper feeling of sympathy also awakens in us as we realize in our more sober moments that with the coming of the Slavs to the South we are recruiting in part the army upon which we must depend to build the greater nation through the building of a greater South. With the awakening of that greater sympathy, even though