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BOHEMIA UNDER HAPSBURG MISRULE

A Study of the Ideals and Aspirations of the Bohemian and
Slovak Peoples, as they relate to and are affected
by the great European War

Edited by

THOMAS CAPEK

Author of "Slovaks of Hungary," etc.







[Illustration]

New York      Chicago      Toronto
Fleming H. Revell Company
London and Edinburgh

Copyright, 1915, by
Fleming H. Revell Company

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 125 N. Wabash Ave.
Toronto: 25 Richmond St., W.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street




  Dedicated

  _To the Cause of
  Bohemian-Slovak Freedom_




          "_I trust in God that the
  Government of Thine affairs will again
  revert to Thee, O Bohemian People!_"

  JOHN AMOS COMENIUS.

  (In exile.)




PREFACE


The object of this volume is to make Bohemia and her people better
known to the English-speaking world. The average Englishman's and
American's knowledge of Bohemia is very vague. It is only within
recent years that Anglo-American writers have begun to take a deeper
interest in her people. Among the more prominent students of Bohemian
contemporary life should be mentioned: Will S. Monroe, Emily G.
Balch, and Herbert Adolphus Miller, in the United States; and A. R.
Colquhoun, Richard J. Kelly, F. P. Marchant, James Baker, Wickham H.
Steed, Charles Edmund Maurice, W. R. Morfill, and R. W. Seton-Watson
in England. Count Luetzow has written in English a number of works on
Bohemian matters.

While it is yet too early to foresee the precise results of the Great
War, one may judge of coming events by the shadows they cast before
them. A close observer of the Austrian shadows is justified in thinking
that the Bohemian people, so long suppressed, stand on the threshold
of a new destiny. This destiny points to the restoration of their
ancient freedom. If the Allies win--and every loyal son of the Land
of Hus fervently wishes that their arms might prevail, notwithstanding
the fact that Bohemian soldiers are constrained to fight for the cause
of the two Kaisers--Bohemia is certain to re-enter the family of
self-governing European nations. The proclamation which the Russian
Generalissimo addressed to the Poles may be said to apply with equal
force to the Bohemians: "The hour has sounded when the sacred dream of
your fathers may be realized.... Bohemia will be born again, free in
her religion, her language, and autonomous.... The dawn of a new life
begins for you.... In this glorious dawn is seen the sign of the cross,
the symbol of suffering and the resurrection of a people."

At the close of the Franco-Prussian War, Frenchmen erected in the
Place de la Concorde in Paris the Statue of Strassburg, which they
have kept draped, as a sign of mourning for the loss of their beloved
Alsace-Lorraine. The Bohemians have grieved for their motherland much
longer than the French for the "Lost Provinces." Bohemia put on her
mourning garb in 1620, the year her rebel army was defeated by the
imperialist troops of Ferdinand II., at the Battle of White Mountain
near Prague, the capital of the kingdom. May it not be hoped that
the joyous moment is near when her sons can substitute for the black
and yellow of Austria the red and white of Bohemia--the colors that
Charles Havlicek loved so well. "My colors are red and white," declared
this fearless patriot to his Austrian tormentors. "You can promise me,
you can threaten me, but a traitor I shall never be."

Never during the three hundred years of Austrian misrule were
conditions so propitious for throwing off the shackles of oppression
as now. In the darkest hours of national humiliation, the children of
Hus and of Komensky (Comenius) did not despair. "We existed before
Austria," Palacky used to tell them, "and we shall survive her."
May not the words of the "Father of his Country," as Palacky was
affectionately called by his countrymen, come true, in view of what is
taking place in the Hapsburg Monarchy to-day?

With what form of government would Bohemia make her re-entry into the
European family of nations--as a free state, as a dependency of Russia,
as a ward of the Allies, or incorporated in a federation of the states
remaining to the Hapsburg Empire?

It was a favorite theory of Palacky that the Austrian nations would,
for their own protection, have to create an Austria, if she were ever
destroyed. But what Palacky has said may no longer be true, because
the events of 1914 have created issues and opened up possibilities
undreamt of in his times. Palacky, let it be understood, had in mind a
Confederated Austria that should form a bulwark for small races against
German expansion from the north and the west.

It has been intimated that the Allies might agree to create Bohemia and
Hungary as independent buffer states to curb German aggression, just
as Belgium and Holland are buffer states between Germany and France.
If this war has shown anything, it has demonstrated the usefulness of
a small state like that of the Belgians. Albania, it will be recalled,
had been brought into being by Austria and Italy, not for humanitarian
reasons, we may be sure, but to menace and weaken Serbia, of whose
growth they were jealous.

Another probability is that Russia might demand, as one of the prizes
of war, the cession of the northern part of Austria-Hungary, which
is wholly Slavic. She might contend that she could not carry out her
traditional policy of guardianship of the Slavs, unless her kinsfolk
came under her influence, if not actually under her rule.

Francis Josef waged two wars in the past, both of which ended
disastrously for the empire. Yet from both of these wars good has come
to his subjects. The campaign in Italy, which resulted in the defeat of
the Austrians at Magenta and Solferino in 1859, dealt a severe blow
to the bureaucracy, liberating, incidentally, the Italians who were
trampled under foot by Radecky. As a result of the war with Prussia
in 1866, the Magyars came to their own. Hungarian autonomy dates from
1867. Now it is the turn of the Bohemians to profit from Austria's
predicament.

Self-government is not only an ideal but a necessity to Bohemians. Why
should Bohemia, in addition to paying for her own needs, make good the
deficits of lands which are passive, and in whose domestic affairs she
has no greater interest than the State of New York has, for instance,
in the local constabulary of Nevada? Year after year Bohemians justly
complain that Vienna wrings millions in taxes from them that it spends
on lands that are passive. It is partly this feature of the case, the
high revenue flowing from the Bohemian Kingdom, which has made Vienna
hostile to the home rule agitation. Is it reasonable to suppose,
however, that if Austria could not wholly suppress the national
aspiration of Bohemians in times of peace, under normal conditions,
she is more likely to accomplish it if she returns home from the war
exhausted, humiliated, perchance vanquished?

It may seem hazardous to forecast Austria's future in the event of the
Allies winning. But this much is already apparent, that the Austria of
1914, the government of which rested on the mediaeval idea that one
white race was superior to another white race, is doomed to perish.
Austria needed a crushing blow from without, such as a lost war, to
send toppling the ramshackle structure that has menaced for so long
a time the security of the Slavic inhabitants. For, though rent by
internal discord, the monarchy obviously lacked forces powerful enough
to effect its own redemption. If the Teutonic forces are beaten, the
logical sequel will be the breakdown of the Germanic hegemony and a
corresponding rise of Slavism. With Poland resuscitated and Serbia
strengthened, Vienna, it is certain, will be powerless to hold the
Bohemians down.

But no matter what may happen, whether Austria-Hungary will remain
Hapsburg, whether the Allies will impose their will on her destiny, or
whether the Russians will become the masters of the North Slavs, let
us hope that the future map-makers will not be military conquerors, as
was the case at the Congress of Vienna in 1814, or statesmen of the
Bismarck type, who, at the Berlin Congress in 1878, were determined
to separate the people of one race, instead of uniting them. Let the
map-makers be ethnologists who will, wherever practicable, deliminate
boundaries according to racial, not political lines, giving German
territory to the Germans, Magyar territory to the people of that race,
Slavic lands to the Slavs.

Bohemia would not assume the serious task of self-government as an
inexperienced novice. Bohemia is one of the oldest states in Central
Europe. As a kingdom she antedates the German kingdoms, not excepting
Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria. Some of these were yet minor states when she
already played a conspicuous role in the affairs of Europe. In point
of population the United States of Bohemia--including Bohemia herself,
Moravia, Silesia, and Slovakland--would have within her borders a
population numbering about 12,000,000. The combined area of the three
first-named states is almost twice the size of Switzerland. Prague, the
capital, had in 1910 581,163 inhabitants. As a wealth-providing and
revenue-yielding country Bohemia stands unrivalled among the Hapsburg
States.

  T. C.

  NEW YORK




CONTENTS


  I. HAVE THE BOHEMIANS A PLACE IN THE SUN?        17
  Thomas Capek.

  II. THE SLOVAKS OF HUNGARY                      113
  Thomas Capek.

  III. WHY BOHEMIA DESERVES FREEDOM               123
  Professor Bohumil Simek.

  IV. THE BOHEMIAN CHARACTER                      130
  Professor H. A. Miller.

  V. PLACE OF BOHEMIA IN THE CREATIVE ARTS        153
  Professor Will S. Monroe.

  VI. THE BOHEMIANS AND THE SLAVIC REGENERATION   160
  Professor Leo Wiener.

  Addenda. THE BOHEMIANS AS IMMIGRANTS            176
  Professor Emily G. Balch.




I

HAVE THE BOHEMIANS A PLACE IN THE SUN?


Bohemia (German Boehmen, Bohemian Cechy[1]) has an area of 20,223 square
miles, and is bounded on the north by Saxony and Prussian Silesia; on
the east by Prussia and Moravia; on the south by Lower Austria; on the
west by Bavaria. According to the census of 1910, 4,241,918 inhabitants
declared for Bohemian and 2,467,724 for the German language.

Historians recognize two epochal events in the life of the nation.
The first begins with the outbreak of the Hussite wars, following the
death of King Vaclav IV. in 1419; the second, with the battle of White
Mountain in 1620. The period intervening between the first two events
is referred to as the Middle Age. That which preceded the Hussite wars
is called the Old Age, and, that which followed the defeat at White
Mountain, the New Age.


THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE

The Margravate of Moravia, a sister state of Bohemia, and one of her
crown-lands, contains an area of 8,583 square miles. The population of
Moravia is 1,868,971 Bohemians and 719,435 Germans.

The third crown-land of Bohemia is the Duchy of Silesia, with an area
of 1,987 square miles. The population is divided as follows: 180,348
Bohemians, 325,523 Germans, 235,224 Poles.[2]

Although statisticians found in Austria, in 1910, only 6,435,983
Bohemians, it is generally known that the actual figure is higher by
several hundred thousands. Singularly enough, the test in Austria
of one's nationality is not the mother tongue of the citizen,
as elsewhere, but the lingual medium which one employs in daily
association with others. This medium the statisticians designate the
"Verkehrsprache"--the "Language of Association." The first decennial
census, under this novel system, was taken in 1880, and the results
thereby obtained pleased Vienna so well that the method has remained
in use ever since. When the matter was debated in parliament in 1880
the Bohemians and other Slavs indignantly protested against it as
unscientific and as a device dictated by political motives. A census
so taken, they contended, was calculated to raise by artful means the
numerical strength of the Germans and to deduce from it the superior
importance to the state of the Germanic element to the disadvantage
of the non-Germans.[3] It was argued that the mother tongue of the
citizens should serve as the test of one's nationality, not the
language in which the Slavic workman may be compelled to address his
German employer or a Slavic subaltern his German military superior.
But, as usual, Slavic opposition was over-ridden. Even fair-minded
Austrians condemned the system as unscientific. Innama-Sternegg, for
instance, deplored the fact that the empire should have recourse to the
"Verkehrsprache" test for political purposes. On this ground Austrian
official figures should be scrutinized with extreme caution. It has
repeatedly been proven by private census-takers that the official
census is unreliable, and that it grossly underestimates the numerical
strength of the Bohemians.

From an agricultural state, that it was until recently, Bohemia is
rapidly changing into an industrial state. Two of the most valuable
products, which make for the wealth of industrial countries, namely,
coal and iron, the hills of Bohemia contain in abundance. Among her
specialties, which have acquired world-wide renown, are decorated
and engraved glassware, beer (Pilsener), high-class cotton textiles
and linen goods, grass seeds, embroidery, hops, fezzes worn by the
Mohammedan people of the Orient, toys, etc.

From times immemorial, Bohemia has been the battle-ground between the
Slav and the Teuton. A glance at the map of Central Europe will tell
the story. Most westerly of all the Slavic peoples, the Bohemians are
surrounded on the north, west, and south by Germans. Only on the south
and east frontiers are there strips of territory that connect them with
kindred races. More than once the Germanic sea has threatened to engulf
them in the same way that it swept away the Slavic tribes that lived
north of them in Lusatia and of whose existence nothing now remains
but the Slavic names of rivers and cities. The struggle for supremacy
in Bohemia may be said to have begun the year the fabled leader Cech,
in the gray dawn of history (about 450 A.D.), migrated to the country,
having dispossessed the non-Slavic tribes of Boii, from whom Bohemia
acquired her name. The Hussite wars in the fifteenth century are
popularly believed to have been waged to free men's intellects from the
spiritual trammels of Rome; yet in the last analysis it will be found
that the Hussites, in making war on the invaders who poured into the
country from Germany, rejoiced in vanquishing alike the foes of their
race and the oppressors of their conscience. Such, at least, is the
conviction that one acquires in perusing those chapters of the history
of the country that treat of the Hussite wars.

Jointly with Moravia, Bohemia formed the nucleus of the Bohemian State;
this state had never ceased to be Bohemian-Slavic in character, though
at times ruled by alien kings. The whole of Silesia and both Lusatias
(Upper and Lower) also constituted part and parcel of this state, yet
the latter were never so closely affiliated with Bohemia as Moravia
had been, because the inhabitants of the Lusatias were not by origin
or preponderatingly Bohemian, but of Polish and Serb (Wend) ancestry,
having been largely Germanized at the time they passed under the rule
of the Bohemian Kings in the fourteenth century.

Generally speaking, the Bohemians inhabited the flat lands of the
interior, while the Germans overflowed the border line on the south,
west, and north, forming an almost uninterrupted chain of settlements.
As a matter of fact, however, there is no compact, unmixed German
territory in Bohemia, which is exclusively German and into which the
Bohemian workman, going in search of employment to the mines, mills,
and shops in the northwest, has not penetrated, and in which he has
not domiciled himself. The invasion of Bohemian workmen has virtually
rendered bilingual every such Germanized district where industrialism
flourishes.

So intermixed are the two races on the border line that a person
cannot say confidently that his ancestry is either pure German or pure
Bohemian. Observe, for example, the names of Bohemian leaders: Rieger,
Brauner, Gregr, Zeithammer. They have an unmistakable Teutonic ring.
Again, note the names of Schmeykal, Tascheck, Chlumecky, and Giskra,
who lead the German cohorts. These clearly betray Slavic origin.
It has been remarked sarcastically that the Bohemians were really
German-speaking Slavs. Certain it is that their association of more
than a thousand years' duration with Teutonic neighbors resulted in
their accepting many of the latter's customs and western culture. Then,
too, foreigners have noticed in Bohemians a degree of aggressiveness
that they claim is singularly lacking in the make-up of the other
Slavs. This trait, aggressiveness, may have been inherited as a result
of an almost ceaseless struggle for national existence. It is not
improbable, however, that the racial mixture above mentioned may have
been one of the contributing causes.

Fear of the Teutonic peril has always harried the soul of the nation.
Every historian, every poet, every patriot has admonished the people
to be on their guard. One of the oldest chorals extant contains the
pathetic invocation to the patron saint of the country. "St. Vaclav,
Duke of the Bohemian Land, do not let us perish nor our descendants."

In course of time many Germans and denationalized Bohemians were
Bo