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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