Page:The Bohemian Review, vol2, 1918.djvu/93



Six years ago, America began a series of mental voyages of discovery on the good ship Associated Press, voyages which have revealed the little nations of Europe to the eyes of the great nation of the western hemisphere.

These voyages began with the first Balkan war, and the first discovery made was that the little nations could fight. Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia “crushed” Turkey, whipped an army which its German trainer had just pronounced invincible, advanced almost to the gates of Constant inople, and liberated several millions of Christian subjects from Turkish tyranny. America read, chuckled and cheered. She gave Bulgaria far too much credit for the work, and Greece and Serbia too little, but that was a minor matter. States whose names were hardly known to the average citizen of this country at the beginning of 1912 had proved themselves the possessors of armies greater than those which marched under Napoleon, and of a soldierly genius equal to the best.

The second Balkan war muddled American public opinion somewhat, but brought out some more noteworthy facts. In that struggle, America learned that the oppressors of the little nations were not all Moslems, that Austria-Hungary and Russia were holding Serbs and Roumanians in a bondage which they hated as much as the Greeks of Smyrna hated the overlordship of the Turk, and that the first named of these great powers was actively stirring up trouble in the Balkans. In spite of the foolish pro-Bulgarism shown in the earlier combat, this country was quick to realize that Austria-Hungary had egged Bulgaria on, and rejoiced at the defeat of the lesser bully and the disappointment of his patron.

Then came the great war, the attempt to strangle Serbia in the east, the brutal bludgeoning of Belgium in the west; and America gained a new understanding of the importance of the neglected lesser peoples. The Bohemian uprisings and mutinies gave us a new understanding of their extent. It became clear now that here was a little nation—little, yet three times as populous as America in 1776—no part of which was free, an entire people bound to a system and a dynasty which they loathed, and which repaid their loathing with wholesale massacre.

From this time on, the voyages of exploration of these new coasts have been unceasing; and with the aid of Thomas G. Masaryk, Andre Cheradame and President Wilson, the American people have succeeded in getting a pretty fair map of the newly discovered territory. They know now that down across the center of Europe, between Germany and Russia, stretches a zone of little nations—Letts, Lithuanians, Poles, Bohemians, Magyars, Roumanians, Serbs, Croats, Bulgars, Greeks. At the beginning of this war, not one of these nations, save Bulgaria, was wholly independent. All the others had country men in bondage, like the Serbs, or were entirely submerged, like the Bohemians and Poles, or had traded liberty for the chance to play petty tyrant at the expense of still weaker neighbors, like the Magyars.

In a word, the zone of small nations was likewise the slave zone, the prison house of Europe; and the war has assumed the character of a crusade to knock off the fetters and let the oppressed go free. This much progress, at least, has been achieved, that the problem is now partly understood, and that the imprisoned peoples have only a single jailer—the Pan-German empire. But it is to be feared that in America, the factors which make this war of liberation