Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol3, 1919.djvu/32

 Bolsheviks, and Gaida soon had them making eastward as fast as they could into the very hands of the Czech, Cossack and Allied forces advancing from Vladivostok.

In the meantime the Czechs in the Ural District, after taking the important Bolshevik centre at Ekaterinburg, found themselves faced with forces that were giving increasing evidence of German organization and officering. They did succeed in capturing the city of Kazan and making away with seven hundred and fifty millions of gold that the Bolsheviks had intended to turn over to Germany. But, after that, the superior forces of the enemy and the lack of fresh troops to relieve them and the unreliability of the raw Russian troops forced them to withdraw step by step. They were purposely maintaining the Volga front with the important cities of Samara and Orenburg against the coming of the Allies, but when weeks went by and the Allies gave no sign of coming to their help, they decided to withdraw from the entire region around the Volga and establish such a front as they could themselves hold without the help of the Allies.

From a military stand-point the outlook along the Urals is far from bright. To be sure, the entire Czech Army Corps numbering about eighty thousand men is now united, and with the fresh troops that have arrived from the East it is expected that Perm will be taken, and a new and shorter front established from that city south to Ufa. But even that front cannot be held very long by the Czechs alone, as they now have about two-hundred and fifty thousand well-organized troops against them. The new Russian army will be of little help without months of training, and the Allies are not to be seen.

The Czecho-Slovaks have in the meantime gained the recognition of the independence of their home-land, and now look forward to returning to a free Bohemia. The Allies have given them splendid diplomatic and political support, and have made fair promises of military support to the Czechs without number. But the only Allies that the Czechs have seen to date are a few official governmental and military agents.

The Czecho-Slovaks have made Siberia and one of the wealthiest regions of Russia “safe for democracy”. No one denies that there are great political and technical obstacles in the way of an armed Allied expedition into western Siberia; but also no one who knows the situation here, who has seen it with his own eyes, will deny that now is the golden opportunity to save Russia and set her on her feet; no one will deny that the Czechs have rendered an incalculable service to the cause of democracy, and that their victory so dearly won, stands in imminent danger of being brought to nought.

In Bohemia there is a fable. And in this fable there is a mountain—the mountain Blanik. And in the mountain Blanik, in the hollow middle of it, in the dark, the Czechoslovak army stands. And to the north of Bohemia there are Germans, and to the west there are Germans, and to the south there are Germans. And age after age the Germans triumph. Age after age they destroy the Czechs and the Slovaks. But age after age the Czecho-Slovak army still stands in the mountain Blanik, in dream, in readiness. And a moment comes. It is the moment of moments. There is the most danger. There is the most chance. And the mountain Blanik opens; and the Czecho-Slovak army marches out, ready to the moment, armed to the moment, soldiers, commanders, all; and Bohemia lives.

So speaks the fable. But where is the mountain Blanik? In the fable it is in Bohemia. In fact it turns out to be in Bachmach in Russia, and in Irkutsk in Siberia, and in Vladivostok on the shore of the Pacific.

William Hard in the Metropolitan.

Don’t be deceived ; the brains of that Slav race, that great race which extends all the way through Siberia, are to be found neither in Moscow, nor at Petrograd. nor at Belgrade, nor at Sophia, but at Prague. From this city went forth all the regenerators of the Slav race. In a war of intellectual trenches, so to say, they won with a wonderful tenacity triumphs on triumphs.