Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol3, 1919.djvu/196

 icanization he also is constantly living in memories and in comparisons, and bear with him patiently when, on account of recalling to his mind things he believes were better in his old home, he cannot promptly see things that may be better here in their proper light.

The process of americanization along these lines is naturally slow and requires a good bit of patience from both sides. It would be unnatural, unreasonable and even immoral to expect the foreigner to forget all that he was before he fell into the amalgamating pot. It would be unnatural and unreasonable because it is physically impossible; and it would be immoral because it is contrary to the law of God. How can anyone ask me to forget my father who is sleeping his eternal sleep in my native land; and how can I think of him and forget the beautiful land where he is resting?

So you see, gentlemen, that americanization, as I say, is much slower process than many of us may imagine, and I do not believe that the hyphen can be expunged within one generation. That, however, does not necessarily mean that the americanized foreign-born citizen should or does love his adopted country less than his american-born fellow-citizen. In the end, whether fully conscious or partly unconscious of the fact, we are all working toward one end in preparing this beautiful and great, but still young and somewhat raw, country for the happiness of our future generations. And while each of us is doing his bit to his best ability, the great melting pot is boiling hot and working over-time. It does not matter much where we originally hail from, as old Omar put it,

And when our labors are done and we shall have laid our weary heads to our eternal rest, then our children will sing together with your children,

and then the process of americanization will be completed.

A short distance from the town of Nový Jičín, in Moravia, nestles the village of Hodslavice.When the emperor Joseph II, issued the Patent of Tolerance, permitting free religious worship to non-Catholics, the citizens of Hodslavice organized an evangelical congregation. Among them lived a wide awake, serious minded young man, who married early in life, as the teacher of their children. The teacher’s pay being insufficient to maintain him and his wife he did odd jobs as tailor, village clerk and farmer.

On June 14, 1798, a boy was born to the Palacký couple to whom was given the name Francis. In those days, instruction in higher schools in Bohemia and Moravia was in German. Francis was sent to a German primary school to prepare himself for entry to a secondary school; the latter school, however, he never attended. Solicitous about the boy’s faith, the father took him across the border to a Protestant lyceum in Slovakia (Hungary). There the boy spent three years, after which period he matriculated in a Latin school in Bratislava (Pressburg). Here Latin and Czech were the languages of instruction. At the age of twenty, his schooling was finished, although his education had just begun. It is interesting to know how Palacký, educated as he had been in German and Latin schools, awakened to the realization that he was a Czech and not a German. In 1813 he visited in Slovakia the home of a schoolmate. It so happened that his friend had in his library a number of Czech books, among them, Komenský’s “Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart” and a magazine containing Jungmann’s article “A Discourse upon the Czech Language.” Jungmann’s patriotic essay decided young Palacký’s nationalism. Other Czech books which came into his hands strengthened within him a love of the despised mother tongue; he resolved then and there, to join the ever growing legion of patriots who consecrated their lives to the regeneration of their nation. Resigning his position as tutor in an aristocratic family in Hungary, he repaired in 1823 to Prague, the mecca and center of the movement for national revival.