CZECH NATION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 September 1938, Page 8

CZECH NATION

SPIRIT OF SELF=RELIANCE PHYSICAL FITNESS. EFFECT OF SOKOL MOVEMENT. “A fortnight ago 1 saw a fit nation,” writes Mr Wickham Steed in an article in “The Listener,” in praise of what has been accomplished for the Czech nation by its Sokol movement. Answering the question “What are the Sokols?” Mr Steed says that the story begin back in the sixties of last century.

A cultivated young Czech named Tyrs went to Greece, became inspired by the old Greek ideal of physical beauty and fitness, and wondered how he could teach this ideal to his own people of Bohemia. The Czechs had already been persuaded by a handful of moral leaders that if they wished ever again to be free and independent they must be fitter intellectually than their German fellow-countrymen. They developed such a passion for learning that by the end of the 19th century the degree of illiteracy among them had fallen below one per cent. Tyrs and another Czech thought that a movement for the freedom of the Czechs and their cousins, the Slovaks, could be linked with the Greek ideal of physical culture and fitness in a sort of gymnastic brotherhood and sisterhood. In the uniform Tyrs designed for his followers the round cap had a falcon’s feather • stuck into it. The Czechoslovak word for falcon is “sokol” and from this the movement took its name.

NO CLASS DISTINCTION. “In this movement there were no class distinctions,” writes Mr Steed. “All its members paid their own expense. In their towns and villages they practised musical drill, with graceful rhythmic exercises, and soon found thaj their bodies were becoming handsome and fit. Once every six years these So'kol groups met in congress at Prague to do their exercises in common. Groups of Sokols from other Slav countries joined them, so that the congresses became festivals of interSlav brotherhood.

“In 1926 President Masaryk invited me to witness the first great Sokol congress that could be held after the war. A quarter of a million Soloks attended it as a festival of national rebirth. But Masaryk, their presidentliberator, told them that the test of their spiritual fitness was yet to come; that they must be brotherly and sisterly toward their German and other fellow-citizens, as well as among themselves; that they must love freedom for its own sake, and democracy as the political form of freedom; and that their ideal must be, as he put it, ‘Jesus, not Caesar.’ “The Czechoslovak Government was not blind to hostile developments in Germany and made its preparations, so that when the Sudeten German agitation began to boil up in earnest it was ready,” says Mr Steed. It had always the Sokol spirit and training of the people to rely on. Neither that spirit nor that training is militarist or aggressive; yet, thanks to both, the bulk of the Czechoslovak nation is fit, self-reliant and afraid of nothing. ' “To pass in one day from the somewhat nervous atmosphere of London into the atmosphere of Prague, as I did 10 days ago, was like beginning a rest cure. One looked in vain either among the people of Prague or the 500,000 men and women Sokols who thronged the city for any trace of fright, although they had just been through the severest crisis in the history of their republic. “That crisis reached its climax at the end of the third week of last May. Germany did not march up any large, units of troops, such as whole divisions, to the Czechoslovak borders. The method was to send up separate regiments and battalions from 12 different parts of Germany. Knowing this and expecting a surprise attack, the Government, to avoid further disturbance of Europe, decided to call up only enough reservists to make sure that a sudden German attack could not succeed. Only one whole class of the reserve was called up, 90,000 men together with 84,000 specialists. SWIFT MOBILISATION. “On the evening of Friday, May 20, these men were ordered to join their posts. By 3 a.m. next morning 70 per cent of the 90,000 were at their posts, and the rest joined them before 10 a.m. The 84,000 specialists turned up in 12 hours or less instead of 24. Out of the whole 174,000 only 18 failed to report themselves. By dawn on May 21 the German command across the frontier knew that a sudden attack would have no chance of success. By Monday, May 23, some of the German troops were withdrawn. The crisis was over, thanks, in part, to the promptitude and efficiency of the Czechoslovak army.” Mr Steed describes the Sokol festival he saw in Prague last month when 28,000 stalwart Sokol men marched on the 45-acre stadium and took their places for drill and exercises in exactly 15 minutes, leaving again afterward in eight mighty columns 60 abreast in exactly 12 minutes. “So here was the flower of a nation, physically and morally fit, in the service of three great ideas —freedom, independence and democratic brotherhood,” he says. “During the ’whole week in Prague neither I nor any observer heard one word of provocation or saw one defiant gesture. It was an uplifting experience. “The Czechoslovaks can put 900,000 well-armed men into the field at a moment’s notice, and they are not afraid. Indeed as the aeroplane flew over north-western Czechoslovakia on its way back to London I wondered whether the world might not one day see that the Czechoslovaks, with their splendid Sokol spirit, had saved both themselves and other nations of Europe from disaster.”