Page:The Bohemian Review, vol2, 1918.djvu/89

 The Third Liberty Loan was a wonderful success all over the United States, because an organization was built up that reached every person in the entire country. The most gratifying feature of the latest loan is the unexpectedly large number of subscribers. Among the Bohemian-speaking people of this country there is hardly one single family without a bond, and in thousands of them every member of the family, down to the babies, are the proud possessors of the Liberty Bonds.

Wherever there are Bohemian immigrants, in every state of the Union, there an organized effort was made to line up every one of them for the loan. The Bohemian newspapers were full of reports of Bohemian Liberty Loan meetings and Bohemian Liberty Loan organizations from Hoboken to Seattle. Every local branch of the Bohemian National Alliance| resolved itself into a loan organization. But the greatest effort of all was made in Chicago. The Bohemian branch of the Foreign Language Division had its own press representative who filled the columns of the four local Bohemian dailies every day with the right appeal. One of the most effective means of lining up everybody was the publication from day to day of the “honor list”, names of subscribers. The Bohemian papers deserve a great deal of credit for giving day by day eight and more columns to the boosting of the loan. The results were exceedingly gratifying. While the final figures will not be available for some time, Mr. Felix Streyckmans, director of the foreign language division, gave out the following figures on the last day of the campaign:

The Bohemians seem to have landed in the second place, though it is likely that the final figures will show them to be first. But it should be remem bered that there are more than three times as many Germans in Chicago as Bohemians, and that while there are many millionaires among the Germans, there are none among the Bohemians. One should also keep in mind that all the other four nationalities mentioned are more numerous in Chicago than the Bohemians. The record of the Bohemian branch, reflects much credit on the excellence of its organ ization and on the patriotism of its people.

Bohemians are not easily offended at exhibitions of ignorance concerning their people and their home land. That is the fate of all small nations, especially when they are subject to the rule of foreigner. But no excuse can be found for the wanton, outrage upon their feelings and upon their loyalty to America and the cause of the Allies, committed recently by the College of the City of New York.

This college is presumably an institution of learning. It is, we believe, the largest municipal college in the world. One would imagine that its faculty and its trustees would know from elementary geography that Prague is the capital of Bohemia, that its university is the oldest in Central Europe and that it is a Czech school, though to be sure there is a small German university in Prague artificially kept alive by the Germanizing policy of the Austrian government. They might also be expected to know that Cracow is the ancient capital of Poland, and even though it has come under the Hapsburg rule, it is still a Polish city and its old university is a Polish university. One would think also that teachers and trustees of a great school would know more of the great war than the bare fact that Germany and Austria are enemies of the United States. They might have known, if they read the daily papers, that the Czechs of Bohemia are the bitterest enemies of German tyranny, that they have rendered extremely valuable services to the cause of the Allies, that they are entitled to the chief credit for the sorry role which Austria has played in the present war, that there is one Czechoslovak army| in Russia and another in France fighting on the same side as the United States.

At any rate only ignorance can explain the action of the College of New York in ordering the removal of the banners of the universities of Berlin, Heidelberg, Prague and Cracow from the rafters of the great hall of the college. To couple Berlin and Prague, Heidelberg and Cracow as four of a kind! It would be as logical to remove the banner of Sorbonne as the standard of the Czech university, for surely not even the Paris professors desire more ardently the success of the Allied arms than the professors of Prague.

That so much ignorance about Bohemia should still prevail in this country, even among the teach ers of America, is a great disapointment to all Bohemians. They believed that no intelligent American confounded them any longer with Austrians, that the noble fight of their people was known to all the world. And this is not the only incident of the kind. Joseph Stránský, director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra is a Bohemian and has never given himself out for anything else. But agitation was started, nevertheless, to force his resignation on the ground that he is a subject of an enemy country. Fortunately he had to be given an opportunity to defend himself and was able to confound the mischievious “patriots” whose zeal is only exceeded by their ignorance.

Perhaps the policy of our government is to some extent responsible for these glaring instances of injustice to the Bohemians. Other Allied countries took the stand that hostility may be looked for or suspected from the four ruling races of the German Alliance, the Germans, Magyars, Bulgars and the Turks, but that a member of one of the subject races of  is no more likely to sympa thize with Germany than an Englisman or a Frenchman. In Canada, for instance, to take the country