Page:The Bohemian Review, vol1, 1917.djvu/12

 done in the land ruled by bayonets and machine guns. Masaryk, a man sixty-five years old, fled from the accursed Austria never to return to it. He knew he could come back to his native land only when it was free.

His plans are revealed in the document he gave out to the world in the fall of 1915. The future Bohemian state will look upon this document with the same reverence which Americans accord to their Declaration of Independence. In it he says: “All Bohemian political parties have up to this time been fighting for a qualified independence within the limits of Austria-Hungary. But the occurrence of this terrible war and the reckless violence of Vienna constrain us to claim independence without regard to Austria-Hungary. We ask for an independent Bohemian-Slovak State.”

It was a full year before he took this momentous action which will forever remain one of the landmarks in the history of Bohemia. There was much preparatory work that had to be done first. He needed assistants and he needed money. Great man though he is, the task before him could not be carried out by one man alone. He found Czech exiles in Switzerland; he established relations with emigrants in Paris and London and Russia. He told them that the hour had come to strike a blow for free Bohemia. Let those that are physically able enlist in the Allied armies and thus fight for their native land; let others collect money and care for the families of volunteers and let others still assist him in his work of making Europe hear the cry of enslaved Bohemia.

His call reached across the ocean. Nearly ten per cent of the Czech people live in the United States. The war roused them from their absorption in earning a livelihood, it swept away their bickerings and petty disputes and inspired them to render some signal service to their unfortunate native land and to their enslaved, perishing brethren. On the very day when Austrian cannon were first fired against Serbia, Bohemians in Chicago organized a relief fund which in a few months collected nearly $20,000. But it was soon evident that it would be useless to send this money to Bohemia, for the Austrian Government would appropriate it for their Red Cross and save its own money. As a matter of fact most of these relief funds have been since applied for the benefit of Czech prisoners of war in Russia and Serbia.

Bohemians in the United States realized that the fate of their people was in the balance. Sympathizing absolutely with the cause of the Allies they held no doubt that in the end it would be victorious. But what would even Allied victory avail the Czechs should they alone of all the Slavs be left under the Hapsburgs having the Germans and Magyars for their partners? So the emigrants in America felt that something must be done by them. They organized the Bohemian National Alliance, collected some money, renounced forever Francis Joseph and all his works, protested against the German campaign in the United States for an embargo, but all the time they felt the insignificance of their efforts. With great joy they accepted the definite task which Masaryk assigned to the Bohemian speaking people of America, namely to furnish the money for the prosecution of his mission in the Allied capitals to gain them for Bohemian indepedence.

One man against the Hapsburg Empire. For Masaryk’s plan for the liberation of Bohemia involved the total disruption of that “mosaic of nations” which had occupied the central place on the maps of Europe for four hundred years in substantially its present form. Long before the German Empire arose, when Italy was but a geographical expression, when few people knew ought of Muscovy, the Austrian, Bohemian and Hungarian lands composed a powerful realm in the heart of Europe under the sceptre of the Hapsburgs. It had existed so long that age alone seemed to justify its existence, and statesmen could not conceive of a map of Europe without this ancient monarchy. In fact in the earlier days of the war English and French political writers seeking for means to do away permanently with the menace of Prussian militarism generally suggested the enlargement of Austria by the inclusion within its boundary of Catholic South Germany in the vain hope of restoring the ancient rivalry of Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns and reducing in that fashion modern Germany to impotence.

Masaryk had to convince the statesmen and the people of the Allied Powers that this archaic solution of their great problem was quite impracticable.