Page:The Bohemian Review, vol1, 1917.djvu/195

 of them is Rieger’s portrait. The young, fiery statesman, bold, clever, uncompromising, who had just ignited the enthusiasm of his people and drew the attention of all Europe by his speech of January 6, 1849, on the first paragraph of the proposed constitution “All authority in the state proceeds from the people”, this man lives before us in Mánes’ drawing as a veritable tribune of the people. A noble, high forehead, large, glowing eye, the whole body with the closed first reveals a great orator. February 8, a month before the parliament was dissolved, Mánes was through with his work. With his first portraits he excelled all that had been done before him in that line and reached a height of accomplishment not exceeded for decades to come. Only in Max Švabinský have the Czechs a portrait painter equal to the great Mánes.

Thus we have reached the threshold of the most modern period of the Bohemian Fine Arts. A separate sketch of this epoch will appear in the of the Bohemian Review.

American policy in this war may be defined as the preservation and the extension of democracy, the formation of some sort of world government, and the destruction of Pan-Germanism. It is a policy which adequately protects the interests of the United States, defends her institutions and offers aid to the nations of the world to free themselves from autocracy. By the second, she guarantees the freedom of the seas for all nations and hopes to do away with the fear of sudden attack and of overarmament by land and sea. By the third, she hopes to make an end of a military autocracy which through national selfishness arms nations and consolidates empires with the single aim of world dominion.

The United States will be—if she is not now—one of the greatest workshops of industry in the world. In fact, she is another England on a grander scale, and in the future will be just as dependent for the transportation over the seas of raw products for her population and for her factories. Soon her soil, like England’s will be unable to support her population, as indeed her soil can now no longer yield forth sufficient raw products to supply her factories. A billion dollars’ worth of raw products for manufacturers was imported into the United States in the course of the last year. American exports are now preponderantly manufactured goods, and this preponderance will increase steadily with time. Therefore the freedom of the seas and open markets for manufactured goods—not markets closed by economic leagues—are a vital necessity to the United States. Whatever endangers these interests endangers American democracy and American industrial life; the first is political and social, the latter is economic.

When the autocracy and militarism of Germany and her offspring, Pan-Germanism, endangered these interests, the United States became involved in the Great War. It is at this point that the Bohemian Question comes within the scope of American interests. The independence of Bohemia has been urged as the first step in the destruction of Pan-Germanism; it would be the first barrier to the expansion of German militarism and economic selfishness. A restored Serbia or a South Slavic state would be the second obstacle; the Dardanelles, neutralized under international control or Russian, the third; the partitioning of Asia Minor, the fourth.

The power of Modern Germany is the result of organization and method drilled into the modern German by autocracy and militarism. In this way, the Prussian army was created and Prussia’s population made submissive. In this way, the German empire was brought under the rule of the Prussian junker. In this way, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey were bound to Prussian Germany. In this way, the Pan-German plan has almost been realized.

What is the aim of the German government, which officially denies Pan-German aspirations, but actually carries them out at each opportunity? It is certain, from German utterances, official and unofficial, that the least which the German government aims to do is to make the balance of