Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 254, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 October 1918 — Rise of Czecho-Slovaks Romance of war [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Rise of Czecho-Slovaks Romance of war

Recognition as An Independent Nation BringsNewStrength to Remarkable Fighting Forced >

r*— —-i HERE has been no more romantic episode in the present war than the role played therein by the Czecho-Slovak troops who Hare now endeavoring to hold the fort in Siberia for the cause of the entente and civilization against the forces of bolshevik anarchy united to German barbarism. Compelled to fight for their Austrian and. s Hungarian oppressors against their Moscovite kinsmen, they took every opportunity of surrendering and of deserting in the early stages of the Struggle, especially in the battles that raged in Galicia. Welcomed with open arms by the Russians, scores of thousands of them volunteered to serve under the czar’s flag against the nations by whom they had been subjected to intolerable tyranny, writes F. CunliffeOwen in New York Sun. The Czecho-Slovaks fought hard and well to the very last for the cause of the entente, and when the bolshevik! betrayed Russia and her allies by concluding a dishonorable and utterly contemptible peace at Brest-Lltovsk they withdrew into the interior and awaited events. Latst spring they decided that they could best help the members of their race in the dual empire by making their w r ay across Siberia to America and thence to the French front.

<They made their way into Siberia, helped everywhere by the respectable inhabitants, who were wearied to death of the bolshevik! and of their ansi chical and terrorist activities. They did not, however form one large body. They were too numerous for that. As a unit their march eastward would have offered too many difficulties in the way of food and transport. They separated into several well disciplined armies. An advance guard even managed to reach Vladivostok and then got into touch once more with the outer world, and especially with the recognized leaders of Czecho-Slovak nationalism, foremost among whom is Dr. Thomas Masaryk, the eminent scholar and statesman, who lay long at Prague under sentence of death and who is now- in America.

Recognized as a Nation. . At Vladivostok the commanding officers of tile Czecho-Slovak vanguard learned that their people had been recognized as' an independent nation by the powers of the entente and that the latter had pledged themselves to the emancipation of Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia from the despotic rille of Austria-Hungary and to their formation into a sovereign state. They also were apprised that Doctor Masaryk had been elected by the Czecho-Slovak leaders as their president and chief and had been accepted as such by the governments of the entente. It was brought home to them Uiat they had been raised to the status of allies of France, Of the United States, of Great tliat their military services would be more useful to us in Siberia and iq Russia than on the French front. And they were Instructed to turn back to

re-enforce the comrades whom they had left behind them pending the arrival of troops of the entente. Several American regiments have already been disembarked at Vladivostok, as well as a large Italian contingent. French troops have been hurried thither from Tonkin and Indo-China and a large British force from India. The bulk, however, of the allied army which is to preserve Siberia, with all her boundlesk industrial and commercial possibilities and her * literally inexhaustible latent riches, for the Russian people from the encoriomiC and political despotism of Germany is being (urnlshed by Japan. Released Prisoners Oppose Them. The Czecho-Slovak forces have retained their arms. But they are handicapped by the lack of ammunition and above all by the absence of artillery, both light and heavy. They have against them not alone the bolshevik!, but also considerably more than 100,000 German and Austrian prisoners of war who after their capture were interned in Siberia, who were released under the terms of the bolshevik treaty of peace at Brest-Litovsk And who have been since then furnished by the bolshevik government and by the German military authorities with arms, munitions, artillery, supplies, money and even airplanes. They constitute a formidable enemy. Fortunately for our cause, the bulk of the people in Siberia are for us. The white population of Siberia is composed in the main part of a class immeasurably superior in intelligence, education, progressiveness and blood to the Moscovite mujiks, who form 95 per cent of the population of European Russia. We of the entente owe a debt of gratitude to these gallant Czecho-Slovaks who have remained to champion our cause in European and Asiatic Russia. Were It not for the fight which they have, put up In Siberia against Germany and the boisheviki the Teuton domination of that enormous territory, almost a continent in itself, would be well nigh complete and almost beyond reclamation.

If Germany had control of Siberia she could afford to surrender, not alone Belgium and the Invaded districts of France, but even all Alsace and" Lorraine, away back to the Rhine; to forego any idea of dominating Bulgaria and Turkey; in one’ word, to abandon well nigh all her most loudly proclaimed and most cherished ambition in other directions. Would Be Immune to Boycott. It would place within her reach all the raw materials she needed for her industries and all the markets that she required for ttjeir exploitation. It would- render of any economic boycott that we might organize against her after the war—that boycott which she dreads above all the other forces that we can bring to bear against her. It would restore to her a prosperity and an economic strength that would allow her to treat as of no importance her failure to obtain indemnities. It would culminate in her political and commercial mastery of China, with the latter’s busy population 0f.400 millions, and it would render her a standing menace to the island empire of Japan, to America’s rich dependencies in the Philippines, to France’s great colonies In Indo-Chlna and to the British empire of India. It would pave the

way, Indeed, for Germany’s mastery of Asia, which would give her that world supremacy which is the goal of the kaiser. Repairing Great Wrong. s It must never be forgotten that in restoring sovereignty and Independence to the Czecho-Slovaks we are not creating anything new, but merely repairing a great wrong. Few nations have contributed more to the prosperity and to the progress of central Europe than Bohemia, whose people were in an advanced state of civilization when Germany was a region of bogs and of robber barons. '

Their university at Prague, founded in 1348, is the oldest seat of learning east of the Rhine, and it served as a model of most of the universities subsequently created on the continent. The Czechs are an ancient race. They were flourishing in Bohemia away back in the fifth century before Christ, and they have always been noted for their progressive spirit, for their longings in the direction of liberalism and democracy, and above all for their industrial and commercial enterprise, thanks to which they have been for the past 400 years the economic backbone of the Hapsburg monarchy. They were Independent, and therefore unfettered, until they foolishly elected Emperor Ferdinand of Austria as their ruler in 1520, not only because be was married to the daughter, and heiress of their last king of the dynasty of St. Wenceslaus, but also because he solemnly pledged himself to respect their national rights and liberties. Needless to add that Ferdinand I failed to keep his promises. This is a -peculiarity of the house of Hapsburg. When he found that his powers, which were absolute in Austria proper, were restricted in Bohemia he proceeded to abolish the latter’s national privileges one by one. Nearly a hundred years later the Czechs, led by their territorial aristocracy, organized a revolt against the despotism of the Austrian emperor, Ferdinand JI? who had shown himself far more dangerous and hostile to Bohemia as an ally than as an open enemy. The Czechs were defeated in the memorable battle of the White Mountain, which marked the end of the independence of Bohemia as a nation.

Always Oppressed by Teutons. From that time forth the Czecho-Slo-vaks have been a constant subject of oppression and tyranny of the governments of Vienna and of Pesth, encouraged and abetted by the Hohenzollern dynasty, which has ever seen* in Czecho-Slovak nationalism and economic importance an obstacle and abarrier to its openly avowed designs of extending its sovereignty from Berlin to the Mediterranean, at the head of the Adriatic. Well nigh every ruler of the dual empire has pledged himself at one period or another of his reign to restore to the Czechoslovaks their national Independence and their autonomy on the same footing as Hungary and to have himself crowned at Prague with the crown of St Wenceslaus and invested with the sceptre, the orb and the mantle of that famous ruler and patron saint, as king of Bohemia. In no case have these promises been kept, not even by the present Emperor Charles, who gave an undertaking of tills kind on his accession to the throne of the dual empire.