Page:The Bohemian Review, vol2, 1918.djvu/207

 personally acquainted with the habits of many peoples can not but have noticed among the Slavs, and especially in Russia. The Slavs, and particularly perhaps the Russians, are hearty eaters. This connects in all probability again with their relatively high average of physical condition. In Russia it may also be in part a result of the exacting climate, which calls for plenty of fuel. In the culturally most advanced of the Slavic countries, Bohemia and Moravia, the hearty appetite is connected with and partly converted to a very considerable culinary refinement. All this may be a small matter, yet it is characteristic and very evident to a traveller who comes into intimate contact with the Slavs, from Germany, for instance, or Switzerland, and other countries.

That the Slavs, particularly those of the north and those of the Balkans, are capable of much endurance, has been well shown by the Russians in the Napoleonic, some of the Turkish and the present wars, and by the Serbians and Bulgarians in their past as well as recent wars with Turkey, in the late Serbian struggle and retreat together with the astonishing following rejuvenation, and on many other occasions. This once more is not to be looked upon as any special endowment, but rather as a manifestation of the sound, unspoiled as yet, constitution of this people. The high and as yet artificially but little checked death rate among them contributes to this by eliminating most of the weaker.

Mental characteristics.—This is a dangerous field to tread upon, and would be quite prohibitive to those not personally and thoroughly acquainted with the Slavs, as well as with the more important groups of non-Slavic Europeans. To those, however, who have been fortunate enough to gain close personal knowledge of these various groups, it unquestionably appears that the Slavs as a whole possess certain mental characteristics or shades of characteristics which are better developed or more general than among other groups of the white world. Morever, judging from the remarks and reports of early observers, they were always distinguished by the same features of behavior.

These characteristics are, in the first place, kindness, sociability and hospitality. A typical Slav without these qualities is not imaginable. TogethereTogether [sic] with these goes, however, only too frequently overtrustfullness, which, particularly in Russia, has often been abused by imposters to the dettriment of the masses and led repeatedly to near a disaster. The Slav has further an inherent love of music, song, dance, and bright colors; yet at the same time, curiously enough, frequently an inclination to mild melancholy—perhaps in compensation.

He is also often individually jealous, sensitive and unruly; but these with some other faults of his are wrongly taken for “racial” characteristics—they are mostly the outgrowth of inexperience and isolation. The inborn antagonist of the Slavs, the Germans, have seen to it that these faults were enlarged upon, and other peoples have in large part learned of the Slav through the German. It is thus, no doubt, the mischievous notion that the Slavs are less capable of self-government or leadership than other and especially the Teutonic stocks, has originated. Yet the Germans acknowledge freely that they themselves carry a goodly proportion of Slav blood, and as history amply shows have always exhibited an insatiable desire for more; besides which they boast illogically of the Slav as destined to be the “fertilizer for the German race.” The real capacity of the more cultured Slav for self-government and leadership is perhaps best demonstrated in Bohemia. The history of Bohemia shows us that in that intensely Slav country, notwithstanding all the German encroachments and machinations, a single native dynasty, that of Přemysl, has lasted—not counting its prolongation in the female line—for nearly five centuries without interruption; and the same Slavic country has produced Žižka, one of the greatest military leaders of all times; Jan Hus, the leader of religious reformation who antedated and outweighed Luther; Comenius, the world leader in education, etc. The development of government as well as that of leaders, when viewed abstractly seem much more matters of circumstances and education than of special endowments of any particular group.

One of the best and most general characteristics of the Slav is a fondness for work, coupled with dexterity. This is manifest not only in husbandry and agriculture, but in all vocations, except perhaps what may be expressed by the term business. He