Page:The Bohemian Review, vol2, 1918.djvu/100

 pathy of the Italian Goverment and his hope that they would reach complete victory. M. Franklin-Bouillon expressed the full sympathy of the French Government with the aims of the Congress. Since then Lord Robert Cecil, the English minister of blockade, upon the occasion of the third anniversary of the Italian entrance into war, declared that his government left the solution of the Austro-Hungarian problem to the nations and populations concerned. And now Secretary Lansing, speaking expressly for President Wilson, adds the approval of the American government.

Before the Third Liberty Loan campaign opened, committees were organized in Chicago and several other cities with a large Bohemian population to ensure that citizens of Bohemian birth did their share in furnishing the government with the money needed for the prosecution of the war. The Bohemian National Alliance, the principal organization of the Czechs in America, put forth its whole influence on behalf of the loan and in particular saw to it that the smaller scattered settlements of Bohemians did their duty. Speakers were sent out from the headquarters and from the district centers to urge upon every man of our race that he had a double motive to contribute liberally to war funds—as a loyal American and a son of Bohemia. It is possible now to give some idea of the participation of our people in the loan.

I have at hand reports from about 100 Bohemian settlements. I left purposely aside figures from the larger cities, Chicago, New York, Cleveland, Omaha, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Detroit, Baltimore, Cedar Rapids, Pittsburgh, etc. The figures which are the basis of my calculation are from small mining centers and from remote farmer settlements.

One hundred of these communities of Bohemian immigrants reported 7701 subscriptions. It is necessary to keep in mind that in the very nature of things my statistics cannot include all the subscriptions made by our people even in these settlements, for the subscriptions of many did not pass through the hands of our committees. Bohemians did undoubtedly better than figures given here indicate. The total amount subscribed by these 7701 individuals was $1,154,150, an average of approximately $150 to a subscriber. There are many variations between different states.

Take Texas with some 100,000 people of Czech descent, mostly immigrated from Moravia. Some of our people there own their own farms, but more are renters. Last year was a year of poor crops in Texas—some of the counties inhabited by Bohemians had a poor crop of cotton, some had a total failure. Places like Bucholts, Cameron, Holland, Ennis, West and other Bohemian settlements, did not raise enough to support the farmer and his stock. But when the government issued its third loan and when the Bohemian National Alliance made its special appeal, these poor renters tried to do their share. I have a letter telling how our people who had a failure of crops last year went to the banks at Shiner and other places and borrowed money at six per cent, so that they might buy bonds paying $4 1⁄4$ per cent. Reports from 28 Texas communities give a total of 3103 subscribers buying $320,000 worth of bonds. This covers hardly a sixth of the total number of settlements in Texas, so that a conservative estimate of what the Bohemians in Texas did for the third loan would be two million dollars.

Now from a farming state let us look at Pennsylvania, a mining state, as far as our people are concerned. The Bohemians there are largely socialists. They were coal miners in Bohemia, exploited victims of German capital. But while so many of them are socialists for economic reasons, they are anything but German socialists and they abhor the stand of the American Socialist party as to the war. They have been most zealous supporters of the Bohemian National Alliance in its work of liberating Bohemia from German domination and they proved their sentiments in the Liberty Loan campaign. I have figures for nine of these coal mining settlements; 4789 men subscribed $54,000, an average