Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol3, 1919.djvu/189

 chambers of commerce speak for the man ufacturer and the merchant. In the meantime, the Government is undertaking emergency public works to reduce the number of unemployed, and it has appropriated millions of crowns for these works, particularly in the city of Prague.

Radical as certain features of this legislation may appear to some Americans, considering European standards and the advanced standing of the labor movement in particular, as well as its tremendous influence, it is simply what the times call for, if violent upheavals are to be avoided. After all, we always must remember that the laws of social development were not suspended on the day we were born, and that history is also a record of transition from one order to another. The problem for the statesman and the sound thinker is to seek an orderly way, one which can be pursued with the minimum of suffering to society as a whole, and to the individuals composing it. The art of real statesmanship may be said to consist in bringing about new social formations without violence, and without bloodshed. This, so far, the Czechoslovak Republic has accomplished. It seems to have taken a leaf out of the book of Anglo-Saxon history, as exemplified both in Great Britain and the United States, and the most marked feature of which is, perhaps, the fact that in most cases fundamental changes in government and society were accomplished peacefully. Certainly the methods adopted by the Czechoslovaks are diametrically opposed to Bolshevism. The latter, if it has come to stand for anything, means revolutionary changes by violence, by civil war. It stands for the dictatorship of the proletariat, and for the soviet system of government. There is not a trace of that in the measures I have enumerated. On the contrary, everything is being done in an orderly and legal way; by the parliamentary methods so well known to western democracies and to the United States.

Czechoslovak statesmen will be careful to prevent anything resembling militarism from striking roots in the Republic. The Czechoslovak army still standing in Siberia is very democratic, as is inevitable from its origin, having been organized voluntarily by the men themselves for the purpose of fighting for the independence of their native land, and against German, Magyar, and Prussian militarism. President Masaryk himself is squarely opposed to militarism which means rule by an army clique, and the subordination of civic ideals to those of the military martinet. In a recent speech in Prague the President declared that the new nation must have a democratic army based upon free and voluntary discipline, and convinced of its mission to defend the country against external enemies. This democratic army will be solely for purposes of defense, and will naturally be governed by the exigencies of the international situation, and whether or not an international organization can be achieved which shall do away entirely with the necessity of any armies except for purely police purposes.

Woman suffrage is already an accomplished fact in the Republic. Even now eight members of the National Assembly are women, among them Dr. Alice Masaryk, daughter of the President, well known in America, and who, during the war, was held by the Austrian authorities in jail for a period of nine months.

Under European constitutional practice the power of the president is usually meagre indeed. It seems likely, however, that the Czechoslovak state will somewhat follow American examples. Thus, in accordance with a recent recommendation of the Constitutional Committee of the National Assembly, the President shall have the right to name and dismiss cabinet ministers, negotiate and ratify international agreements and treaties, shall be present and preside at the meetings of the Council of Ministers, having also the right to make recommendations to the National Assembly in matters of state. This does not mean that parliamentary control shall be done away with, and that the President shall have anything like autocratic powers. But it does mean that he is to possess a larger freedom of movement than usually a European president has.

The new Czechoslovak Republic is the greatest experiment in really liberal and progressive government ever undertaken on the European continent, and it is entitled to the sympathy and aid of the great American democracy.

At the last city elections in Baltimore August Klečka, member of council from the seventh ward, was reelected on the Democratic ticket in spite of the fact that the Republicans carried the city.