Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol3, 1919.djvu/278

 state In Wisconsin no religious qualification is necessary for office or to constitute voter; all that is required is for the man to be 21 years old and to have lived in the state one year”.

Wisconsin, for a long time, stood at the front of Čech effort in the United States. The weekly Slavie made familiar in every household the names of Milwaukee, Racine, Caledonia, Manitowoc and Kewaunee. The Germans called Milwaukee the German Athens, the Čechs baptised Racine, where stood the cradle of the Slowan Amerikanský and later Slavie, the Čech Bethlehem.

At one time or another, Wisconsin was the home of Vojta Náprstek, John Heřman, John Koříček, J. B. Letovský, Václav Šimonek, Vojta Mašek, Charles Jonáš, Ladimir Klácel, Franta Mráček, John Borecký, John Karel. Here were projected and came into existence, at the promptings of the Slavie, the first Čech language schools; here, too, were organized the Slovanská Lípa chain of societies. When the newer states, Nebraska and Kansas, had been thrown open to settlers, the hardy Wisconsin pioneer was ready to advise his less experienced countrymen in those states.

It gives me great pleasure upon my return from Czecho-Slovakia to write for the Czechoslovak Review a short account of my impressions and experiences, while on the staff of General Štefanik. As some of you know, Captain Wheeler and myself went to Siberia on the staff of our beloved General, Milan Štefanik, and after seeing a little service with your boys in the Ural Mountains, we were ordered to proceed from Siberia to France and thence to Czechoslovakia, via America. We arrived in America last March and after a short stay, proceeded to Paris where we again joined General Štefanik, who had come from Siberia by way of the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean. After we had spent a week or more with General Štefanik in Paris, he went to Italy and ordered us to go to Czechoslovakia and await his arrival; he intended to get there by aeroplane from Udine, Italy, where he was to spend a few days with his fiancée.

I cannot explain my feelings when early one cold morning we found we had passed over the Austrian border and were on Czechoslovak territory. We stood at last on the soil for whose freedom we had been fighting, the land of the people whom we had come to love and honor. We had heard stories of the beautiful country we were going to visit, but the ride that morning—we arrived at Prague about two o’clock in the afternoon—was indeed a revelation. Beautiful forests with the marks of intelligent forestry shown in the alignment of the trees, rolling hills and delightful valleys which were in full cultivation every where, showing the marks of the industrious farmer of your country, here and there old castles built centuries ago, all made a picture which neither Captain Wheeler nor myself can adequately describe. We had come through the beautiful, the truly magnificent, Alps of the Tyrol, but neither the scenery of Switzerland, nor of Austria presented such wealth of resources and potential power, as that of our adopted country. One need not ask after having been there why the Hapsburg dynasty held so tenaciously to that wonderful country.

Lieutenant Lakomý, Secretary to General Štefanik, was on the train with us. He was going to Prague once more to see his wife and children whom he had neither seen nor heard of for over four long, weary years of war and privation. There they were at the station, when we arrived in Prague. Words could not express the joy and happiness that beamed all over our dear friend’s face. The faith and fortitude shown by him on the entire trip, for he was with us from New York to Prague, are the things that have made your people what they are today: one of the most honored nations of the world. A committee from the Foreign Office was at the station and soon had us comfortably lodged in a hotel in Prague. We could hardly wait to eat a few bites of food, before we went out again to ramble around the beautiful old town and see the castle of which we had heard so much, where at last a real Czech, a real man, was holding the reins of the govern-