Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol3, 1919.djvu/34

 professors who felt a strong Czech consciousness educated the whole generation of the present leaders of Bohemia. In 1848 students of the Prague University were leaders of the revolution and for a few days were masters of Prague, and since that time the Prague University has been the mainspring of opposition against German domination. And when finally the Czechs secured from the Austrian Government the concession that the ancient university should be divided into a German and a Czech university, the glory of the old school returned. In spite of the fact that the government refused to erect modern buildings for the Czech university and was stingy with its appropriations, while it was generous to the German universities of Austria, the Czech university of Prague numbered in recent years nearly 5000 students and became the center of education and of political and national life of the Czech people. The new Czech university in 1882 called to the chair of philosophy Dr. Thomas G. Masaryk. His nimename [sic] came to mean to the new university what the name of Hus meant to the university of 500 years ago. Masaryk never became rector—who is elected annually—for the Austrian Government would never have consented to it, but in spite of that Masaryk has been the spiritual leader of this institution.

The Prague University again became an international school, or rather a new Slav school, and fully 10 per cent of the students came from Slav lands. PolanPoland [sic], Russia, the Ukraine, Jugo-slavia and Bulgaria. The leaders of every oppressed Slav nation have nearly all passed through a course of training in the Czech university and have felt the impress of Masaryk’s great mind.

In addition to its technical side the Prague University cared for the education of the masses of the people by giving university extension courses in all the cities of Bohemia and Moravia. Thus when Masaryk declared fight on Austria, the whole university, its graduates and the whole nation were back of him. The fight for Czechoslovak independence is thus not merely a political fight, but also a cultural fight against the German kultur.

In the provisional Czechoslovak Government, all three members were connected with the Prague Universty: Masaryk as professor, Dr. Beneš, the Foreign Minister of the provisional government, as associate professor, and General Stefanik, Minister of War and a noted astronomer, as a graduate of the university. The movement among the Czechoslovaks in the United States was led by two former students of the Prague University, Dr. Fisher, president of the Bohemian (Czech) National Alliance, and Joseph Tvrzický, its former secretary.

The commander of the Czechoslovaks in Russia is Dr. Gajda, a graduate of the medical school of the university, and practically all the Czechoslovak officers in Russia are professors, physicians, lawyers, who graduated from the same school.

The faculty of the university was early in the war called upon by the Austrian Government to deprive Masaryk of his title of professor and to repudiate him, but it refused to comply with the demand. When two Czech leaders, Kramář and Rašín were found guilty of high treason and deprived of all their honors and titles, the university conferred upon them once more the degree of doctor of law.

Thus the history of Prague University is but a condensed history of the nation. This scholarly institution is the living document of the Czech people. In addition it has exerted a tremendous influence on other nations, especially the Jugoslavs. It may be said without exaggeration that the inspiration of the fight of the opressed nationalities of Middle Europe against German domination came from the university of Prague.

There is no doubt that the free Czechoslovak Republic will finally erect worthy buildings for the school which has meant so much for its people. And from Prague currents will radiate east, southeast and northeast by which the best culture of Bohemia and Western Europe will be communicated to the East.

An American engineer, employed by the Stevens railway commission in Siberia, has some interesting things to say about the Czechoslovaks in a letter written to his family, and dated at Harbin, August 22, 1918. Writing about his experiences on the Usuri River front he says:

Put in about ten days here with the Czechs—looking over track and bridges that had been blown up by the Bolsheviki whom the Czechs had chased to this point in a few weeks’ time since taking Vladivostok. They gave me the finest kind of treatment and are certainly strong for the United States. I was in the front line trenches on three different days, but there was nothing going on, except some artillery firing, as both sides were marking time after the battle which took place the day before I arrived. In that fight the Czechs lost 80 men killed and 25 missing; the Bolsheviks, consisting mainly of German and Austrian prisoners, outnumbering the Czechs three to one, lost over 1000 killed and no prisoners. The Czechs take no German and Austrian prisoners; Russians they do take prisoners and treat them as kindly as we do our prisoners, but Austrians and Germans, if they surrender, are shot at once. I asked one Czech officer, if he thought that the twenty-five missing men were prisoners. He said: “No, we shoot ourselves or