MORE BALKANS THAN EVER.

Hokitika Guardian, 7 January 1922, Page 4

MORE BALKANS THAN EVER.

BY ALEXANDER M. THOMPSON PRAGUE, Nov. 4 People in Great Britain who regard the peace treaties as the positive and unalterable end of the wa r would be astonished by the tone of the talk which one hears ig this part oi the world. A shrewdly summarised the general spirit of it to me/ to-day. “The Balkan States, with their complicated intermingling of irreconcilable races,” he said, “have always been, a centre of disturbance in Europo, and the effect of the Austrian Empire’s break-up lias been to convert us all into Balkan States.” What ho meant was that the removal of the Austrian tyranny over thel Empire’s heterogeneous subjects had given freer play to their racial differences and animosities, with the result' that all the mixed peoples included in the) new States are strenuously bustling for the advantage of loir own nationality.

Here, in C/.eeho-Slovakia, which is perhaps the most homogeneous of the new States, there are, according to estimates supplied to me by the Government. some 7,000,000 Czechs, 2,000,( 00 Slovaks »,000,000, Russians 200,000 Jews, 80,000 Poles and 200,000 foreigners of sorts.

Within a few miles in Central Europo ,ono finds villages peopled by totally different races. I am assured that north of Budapest, there are villages actually peopled by Bulgarians, divided from their place of origin by hundreds of miles and three countries.

At this period of the world’s history when it is more than ever needful for world understanding that the peoples should unify their media of communication, we have a hundred and one dialects and the multiplication of tongues. Prague aspires to become a worldeapital, yet insists on the preservation of a language which is understood nowhere in the world except within a portion of the country and one or two cities of the United States.

The Czech language is not understood in Slovakia. The Slovak people who are included in the Republic speak a Czech o-Polish dialect equally foreign to Czechs and Poles. [ have asked tor directions from individuals in the streets here who knew n|o word of German or any language but Czech.

The country itself had been compelled in deference to racial susceptibilities to adopt an impossible title which is cumbrous and unknown though all the world would have known and recognised it by the ancient title of “Bohemia.”

Budapest has an ambition to supercede Vienna as the capital of the Danube States, but piously insists on the maintenance of a language which is Asiatic in origin and bears no sort of relationship to any of the European tongues.

This modern craze for the revival of racial tongues lias an appealing sentimental side, hut it is a nuisance to travellers, a hindrance to international trade, a terrible handicap to the countries which patriotically insist on it, and a very real danger to international peace.