Page:The Bohemian Review, vol2, 1918.djvu/141

 others simply went over to the Confederacy and received commissions as officers in the rebel army. The foremost military leader of the South, Lee, is an example, while Jackson, Beauregard, Johnston, Longstreet and Pickett are others.

What was the treatment accorded to the captured Southerners? Jefferson Davis, a graduate of West Point, was the head and front of the secessionists. When he was taken prisoner he was handcuffed. How did the North treat him? As a prisoner of war, though he never was in actual confinement. When Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, Grant did not treat or consider Lee a deserter, but on the contrary regarded him as a prisoner of war.

Instances of similar character could be cited without number, but the inevitable conclusion that must be reached in each case is, that all the Confederates captured by or surrendered to the Union Army were at all times regarded and treated as prisoners of war. The North demanded such treatment for these men and they received it. The United States war code of this period sheds much light on the subject, and the point emphasized is, that captured Southerners should be treated as prisoners of war. War codes, as understood by the present civilized world, are the results of experiences in the treatment of adverseries by various nations heretofore engaged in wars. Most of them are unwritten, but others are written. The Hague Convention is a written war code and the signatory powers thereto are presumed to be bound by it. On the other hand an unwritten code is constituted of the accepted usages during a war between civilized nations which have been handed down from one generation to another. They form the fundamental law of the world, sort of a “common law”.

Based on the rules and usages of civilized warfare the Huns are convicted of the basest breaches of faith; judged by the rules of international law they stand guilty of gross violations thereof. The pledged word of their governments is not worth the “scrap of paper” on which it is written, and judged by the Hague Convention the Bodies are convicted of unusual and cruel barbarities and wilful breaches of faith.

In his Independence Day speech at Mt. Vernon President Wilson says, that the Central Powers are “Governments clothed with the strange trappings and the primitive authority of an age that is altogether alien and hostile to our own. The Past and the Present are in deadly grapple, and the peoples of the world are being done to death between them It is our inestimable privilege to concert with men out of every nation who shall make not only the liberties of America secure, but the liberties of every other people as well.”

Thus again the old fact is illustrated, and sadly in this instance, that the Germans desire the extermination of the Slavs, so that the lands of the Slavs might be incorporated into Mittel-Europa. But they will not attain their objectives. The Czechoslovaks will battle to the very last man to gain their cherished object, freedom for Bohemia and its inhabitants. When going to battle against the Huns, they sing that ancient hymn composed in times of former wars against the TeoutonTeuton [sic]:

The name “Czechoslovak” is getting to be somewhat more familiar to the people of this country. What all the propaganda and newspaper writing could not accomplish was effected by the Czechoslovak soldiers in Siberia. The American people today are familiar with this new word, although one may well doubt, whether the great majority of the people who read the headlines only and not the detailed accounts know even now who the Czechoslovaks are. A good many of them still think that the Czechoslovaks are one of the many political parties in Russia, parties with terrible names like the Bolsheviki, Mensheviki or the Social Revolutionists.

A good many people who know the meaning of the word “Czechoslovak” have no idea of its pronunciation. At a Czechoslovak meeting held in one of the larger Eastern cities with a considerable Bohemian population, the chairman, a former governor of the State, insisted over and over on praising the brave and patriotic “Ze-ko-slo-vaks”.

But the best one comes from Italy. It seems that the editor of an Italian daily, full of zeal for the new Ally of his country, wrote an article in which he intended to approve of the attitude of his government toward the liberation of the Czechoslovaks. But unfortunately the unaccustomed name tripped him up and he spoke of the new Italian Ally as the “Greco-Polaks”.