Page:The Bohemian Review, vol2, 1918.djvu/53

 Czech Nation, for the Czechs have in the old country their own accredited and regularly elected deputies. But the Slovaks of Hungary have no elected representatives, and those who emigrated to America must speak for the entire race.

The principal business before the Slovak Congress, outside of a number of organization matters, was the ratification of the Chicago resolution for the creation of a branch of the Czechoslovak National Council. It was approved unanimously and the following gentlemen were elected for the Slovak representatives: Albert Mamatey, President of the League; John Janček, an editor from Russia and newly elected secretary of the League; G. H. Mika of the Slav Press Bureau; Rev. J. Kubášek, Rev. Joseph Murgas, Andrew Shustek, John Pankuch and Milan Getting.

In only two of the cantonments are Czechoslovak soldiers of the National Army found in large numbers, and that is Camp Grant at Rockford, Ill., and Camp Sherman at Chillicothe, Ohio. The boys at Camp Grant are not far from Chicago, and so they drop in quite frequently and receive visits from friends at the camp. Their officers know who the Bohemians are and that their hearts are anything but Austrian.

It has been somewhat different at Camp Sherman. There the boys are too far from Cleveland to keep in close touch with it, and their officers did not seem to be able to differentiate the Czechs and Slovaks from Austrians or some other little known races of Eastern Europe. Nothing will make a Bohemian more mad than to be taken for an Austrian. The boys at Camp Sherman felt that it was up to them to do something. They wrote to the Bohemian National Alliance in Chicago for books and pamphlets on Bohemia, and having received a sufficient supply distributed it with such good effect that few men now in that large cantonment are hazy about who the Bohemians are.

Recently an order came to the camp to send home all alien enemies. That seemed to include Bohemians and Slovaks, not naturalized, because they happened to be born in the domains of the late Francis Joseph. The more energetic spirits felt that it was not enough to say each for himself that he does not want to go home. Concerted action was necessary. Fortunately there happened to be at the camp Professor Adolph Miller of Oberlin College, an old friend of the Bohemians. He made arrangements for a meeting in the Y. M. C. A. hut, and had Father Oldřich Zlámal of Cleveland come down and address the Bohemian and Slovak boys. Nearly 1,500 soldiers were present. About 800 were not American citizens, and of that number less than fifty availed themselves of the chance to go home; but as Professor Miller testifies, even of them a majority really left, because they had dependents.

That seems to be a very creditable showing. If the soldiers in a New England or Southern cantonment were told that they were excused, would 94 per cent ask to be allowed to stay?

The boys in Camp Sherman organized a Czechoslovak Club for the purpose of spreading knowledge about their race among the soldiers, and each member pledges to contribute one dollar a year to the Bohemian National Alliance. The club will also arrange for meetings and Bohemian speakers. The first two speakers were Vojta Beneš of Chicago and Charles Bernreiter of Cleveland.

The whole thing is a very small incident in the great panorama of war. But it illustrates the lesson that Bohemians and Slovaks have a great deal of constructive and organizing ability. They are not one of the dumb, passive races. When you come across them, you will know them.

The main task of people of Bohemian descent in the United States, at least of all those who cherish tender memories for the land of their fathers, is to convince the people of the United States that the Czechoslovaks are entitled to freedom and that the weight of this country should back their demand for an independent Bohemia.

A few men, officers of the Bohemian National AlliancAlliance [sic], give all their time to this work. But there are others who snatch what time they can from their regular duties to tell the citizens of their city and state about the Bohemians. Every Bohemian is proud of Aleš Hrdlička, curator of the Smithsonian Institute and the greatest living authority on the American Indian. Dr. Hrdlička, who by the way insists on having his name written with the diacritical marks of Czech spelling, writes learned articles and delivers lectures not merely about the Indian, but also about the Bohemian, and gains friends, wherever he goes, for the Bohemian cause. Thomas Čapek, president of the Bank of Europe of New York City, is one of the very few authors of Czech descent writing in the English language. All his leisure is devoted to presenting the Bohemian and Slovak cause to America in book form. Professor Bohumil Šimek of the University of Iowa, a man born in a mud cabin on the Iowa prairies, and with two sons in the American army, is as good an American as you can find anywhere among the state universities of this broad land. And yet he loves the land from which his parents came and is never weary of answering a call for a speech from social and business and learned organizations anywhere in the Mississippi Valley.

Another scholar of American birth, but Bohemian ancestry, is Miss Šárka Hrbková, professor of Slavic languages at the University of Nebraska. Miss Hrbková enjoys the distinction of being the state chairman of the Women’s Committee of the Nebraska State Council of Defense. In her many addresses and newspaper interviews she never forgets to speak a good word for Bohemia.

There are others, too numerous to mention, sound Americans all, yet eager to do what little may lay in their power for the race whose blood