Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol3, 1919.djvu/44

 man kings.’ Blessed was, Mr. President, your work which will be an epoch in our history, blessed shall be our nation. Welcome to you, our hero and victor, whose name generations upon generations shall called blessed.”



President Masaryk’s arrival was expected with many secret hopes by the Germans of Bohemia. They looked upon him in somewhat the same light as upon Wilson; they believed him to be an idealist who could be easily deceived by protestations of innocence and appeals to high sounding principles. The Germans were disappointed in Masaryk, as they had been disappointed in Wilson. In his first presidential message Masaryk assured the German speaking citizens of the Czechoslovak Republic that they would have full civic rights, full opportunity to carry on their distinctive national life and that a wide scheme of local self-government would satisty all their just demands; but on the question of yielding to the separatist movement and conceding their desire to join Germany Masaryk was as firm as the rest of his countrymen. No concession is possible in the matter of cutting up the national boundaries of Bohemia and leaving to the tender mercies of the Germans several hundred thousand Czechs in northern Bohemia. The whole question has lost its practical and urgent character, as all the districts claimed by the Germans have submitted to the rule of the Prague government. The so-called government of German Bohemia was compelled to abandon its headquarters in Liberec; it fled first to Saxony and then to Vienna. Now only Rudolf Lodgmann, styling himself president of the provincial government of German Bohemia, sends out from his safe retreat in Vienna complaints against fhe rapacity of the Czechs who would not give up to the Germans one-third of their territory.

After the Allied army representatives in Budapest notified Count Karolyi to withdraw Magyar troops from Slovakia as delimited by them, Czechoslovaks troops under