OUR CZECHOSLOVAK ALLIES

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 42, 13 November 1918, Page 6

OUR CZECHOSLOVAK ALLIES

WHY THEY ARE ON OUR SIDE.

Early in the sixteenth century (writea '51." ior the New Y6rk "Outlook," the Turks, threatened to cnfculf Europe. They did advance to the walls of Vienna. It wns necossary to meet them with central* ised power. 'This necessity induced Huugarv, Austria, and Bohemia to finite m what was intended to. be a free federation. Accordingly the States of the Bohemian nation conferred the crown* which was elective, on Ferdinand ot Hapsburg, Archduke of Austria, afterwards Emperor Ferdinand I, who- was at the same time elected King'of. Hunlater, to the resentment of the Czechs, Ferdinand proclaimed his crown hereditary- Tltere were consequent risings. In 1618 they began the i'airt.v Years' War by electing a. Protestant Prince as King, in opposition to J; erinand 11, then reigning. At the White Mountain (1020) Ferdinand won, and took terrible vengeance. He immediately beheaded 27 Bohemian nobles, and exiled 659 others. He confiscated all their possessions. He.called in adventurers, and founded a new nobility.. 4 Gradually 'the dynasty aimed at the construction of a single State, with arbitrary government, despite the agreement by Austrian rulers to maintain Bohemia's external an internal indepenence. (That the Czech spirit has remained independent was shown when, in IS7I, alone among parliaments, the Bohemian Diet protested against Germany's annexation. of Alsace-Lorraine.) True Bohemia, has its own- provincial Diet, but it is far from having full autonoinv. At the beginning of the war in 1914 the ringleaders in the Austrian and Hungarian Governments knew, that the majority opposed the war. Hence Vienna Government consulted no Bohemian deputy or leader, and, to check outspoken opposition, directly war was declared, it suppressed independent newspapers, imprisoned thousands of Czechoslovaks, sentenced many to death, and confiscated their property. This intensified Bohemian hatred or Austria, and in November, 1915, a committee of exiles in Paris demanded complete Bohemian independence. An immediate echo came from the American headquarters at Chicago of the 2,000W0' Czechoslovaks in this country. At the' ■head of the Paris committee is Dr. Thomas .Masaryk, prbfessor of philosophy at the University of Prague, now in supreme command' of the Czecho-Slovaks-and probably to be the first President of the Czccho-Slovak republic. Dr. Masarvk is now in America. ' • ' After tho war began thousands ot .Czecho-Slovaks, drafted into the Aus'trian and Hungarian armies, deserted. Other thousands surrendered wholesale to tho Russians, begiuning at the Battle of Lemberg in September, 1914. and endiii" in Julv, 1917, in the Brusiloit drive in Galicia. Many of these Czechoslovaks were organised into small unite of the Russian Army. ' Last March tho Bolshevik Government entered 1 into a treaty with the Czechoslovaks in Russia, by which they were to be allowed to cross Siberia unmolested and embark for France. _ Some thirteen thousand reached Vladivostok, and nianv more were following, when 6uddenly. at the instigation oJ Austria-Hungary and Germany,' Trotsky ■ ordered the Czceho-Slovak troops -to be disarmed and sent to internment camns as prisoners. \ustrian and German former prisoners > along the line of the trans-Siberian railway together with the Bolsheviki. therennim attacked the Czechoslovaks. Though loosely organised and poorly armed, the Czechoslovaks, ancered at this trcachery. struck back. They- won —and especially beennse they had local svmpathv. They look possession of place after place, indeed of most of the TransSiberian line, and when in June it was clear that preparation had been made in Vladivostok against them, occupied that citv. They are the vanguards of- ft new Allied' force. Tlu« war contains no more dramatic episode than the Czecho-Jouik salvation of Siberia and Russia.