Page:The Bohemian Review, vol2, 1918.djvu/162

 The United States takes its place beside Great Britain, France and Italy in recognizing the Czechoslovak people as a cobelligerent. It is a policy of wisdom, it is right; we might add that it is a generous policy did we not feel that it is first of all an act of justice. The Czechoslovaks stand with us against the common enemy of mankind. They have shown their bravery in Siberia, in Italy, and in France. In recognizing them as cobelligerents, the allied nations make official acknowledgement of an accomplished fact and discharge a just obligation. New York Times.

We shall have to put the new power securely on the map. We can aid it in many ways. We have a large population of Czechs and Slovenes, who under the international law were up to now subjects of Austria-Hungary. We did not treat them as such. But now they have become citizens of an Allied nation, free to render military service to it or to enter our own armies under a compact such as we have recently concluded with Great Britain and Canada.

Moreover we can make loans to the new provisional government and can equip and supply its troops without clashing with international law technicalities.

Slovakia is at present a nation without territory. Its limits have not been dfineddefined [sic] by the surveyor. But it exists in the hearts and minds of a people who have willed their liberation and have earned it by splendidly demonstrating their capacity for self-government. The indomitable spirit of nationality which the Czechoslovaks in Russia have exhibited is one of the marvels of the war. Fighting for their own future and the future of liberty and democracy in Europe, they have saved Russia from the German oppressor. Their almost miraculous intervention in the nick of time blocked German penetration into Russian Asia and gave Siberia a chance to escape from the clutches of Bolshevism. They have enabled the real Russia to rally against the Teuton invasion. If an Eastern front is re-established, it will be largely their work. Gratitude and policy therefore combine to sanction our recognition of the Czechoslovak nation.—New York Tribune.

It has long since become impracticable to keep track of all that is being written about the Czechoslovaks in the American press. We can only attempt now and then to reprint something that may be of special interest to our readers.

The New York World of September 1st has the story of Charles Pergler, written in a bright, clever manner, characteristic of the author, Rowland Thomas. Mr. Pergler is well known to the readers of the Bohemian Review, being the most prominent American worker in the cause of the Czechoslovak independence. It is hardly necessary to reproduce his biography here. We shall only quote a few particularly witty paragraphs.

"The correspondents down in Washington, and the newspaper and magazine men who are on various service with the Committee on Public Information, get excited when they talk about Charles Pergler. They try to impress it on you that this young country lawyer from some place or other in Iowa, who in less than two years has made himself recognized as the storm center and dynamo of the Czechoslovak activities in the United States—who, without previous training or experience finds himself the diplomatic and political and financial representative here of a budding nation of a dozen millions of people—who is working with all the cool foresight of a statesman and the shrewd practicality of a trust builder and the ardor of a prophet to erect in Central Europe a non-Teutonic state which shall end forever the dreams of dominance of Junkers and Hohenzollerns and Hapsburgs—and all this after finding himself, only a score of years ago, the orphaned son of a poor Bohemian immigrant in the stockyards end of Chicago—those correspondents, to take another toe-hold for this sentence, will tell yuyou [sic] that this man is one of the Miracle Men of the War.

Before they are done talking about him, you will get excited yourself.

But does Charles Pergler himself get excited about it? He does not. At least, he did not when I accused him to his face. He just let loose a silent, crooked smile of infinite amusement.

That smile is characteristic and extremely attractive. Everything else about him is very straightforward—gaze, speech, thought, hearing—straight as shooting ought to be. But when he is amused, the left half of his mouth quirks at one elevation and the right half at another.,. [sic]

So his smile is crooked and attractive. It is as if he saw the ludicrousness of events from two different angles at the same time, and responded doubly and simultaneously. He is like the youngster who sits through two runs of the film. He gets two amusements for only one price of admission

“And you”, I asked, “what is your ambition?”

“To get back to my office and perhaps, some day, work up my way to a seat in Iowa’s highest court.”

“Rather that than have a share in constructing the new Bohemia?”

Charles Pergler smiles his crooked smile.

“There are plenty of Bohemians to do that work,” he said. “I am an American.”

Los Angeles, Calif. I am feeling very fortunate just now because I have been able to arrange for a Czechoslovak exhibit at the Public Library of Los Angeles. In gathering together the material and in arranging it I have had the hearty co-operation of the members of the National Alliance here and also of the Slovak League. The exhibit is not large but it is naturally exciting much attention and enlightenment on the part of the public.