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
History
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
In sex morality we must remember that the Bohemians are European and
not American, but on the streets of Prague there is less public display
of immorality than in Chicago. Modesty is observed as an important
virtue. The Bohemians, like all other people, have prejudices that make
it difficult for them to see clearly values not measured by their own
standard, but there can be no question but that their standard measures
up well with any people in Europe. The important thing to civilization
is whether they have any peculiar traits of mind or character that
will be a contribution to progress. I think that the Bohemians have
this in common with the other Slavs to a very marked degree and in a
direction which has hitherto been entirely unrecognized, and this is
the contribution to democracy.
However else the Germans may justify the present war, they sincerely
believe that on their success hangs the salvation of civilization from
the barbarism of the half-civilized Slav. Professors Eucken and Haeckel
have voiced a widespread indignation that England could so far forget
her ideals as to join with Russia against the forces of enlightenment.
Americans, even those whose sympathies are hostile to Germans, dread
success of the Russians. The socialists who are opposed to all war feel
convinced that Russia is a menace to all their plans. In fact they
have tacitly admitted more than once that it might be necessary to
resist encroachments of Russia by force. It is my contention that the
Slavic people, of whom the Russians are the largest group, have more
to contribute to what the world needs next than any other people, and
that all that is best in socialism will find its fruition among them as
nowhere else.
A learned Bohemian friend, in reply to my letter to Bohemia, in which I
spoke of the political progress America was making, said that it could
but fill the heart of a Bohemian “with a feeling of sad resignation”;
but he adds, “I am not pessimistic enough to give up all hope that
Providence may have yet some good things in store for the Slav. What
keeps me up is a certain hazy impression that human development may
sometime be in want of a new formula, and then our time may come. I
conceive ourselves under the sway of the German watchword which spells
Force; and as watchwords, like everything else human, come and go,
perhaps the Slavs may sometime be called on to introduce another, which
I should like to see spelled Charity.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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