CZECH 



1684 



CZERNOWITZ 



present estimated at about 7,100,000. At one 

 time all the Slavic peoples had one common 

 tongue; the Czechs, however, have gradually 

 evolved a separate language which has ab- 

 sorbed many German words, but still bears 

 a resemblance to old Slavic. The spoken lan- 

 guage is considered very musical and has a 

 wide variety of sounds. Three centuries ago 

 the Czechs were a prosperous nation, but 

 they fell under the power of Austria and, their 

 nationality was lost. At the outbreak of the 

 War of the Nations in 1914 the Czechs, occupy- 

 ing Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and a part of 

 Hungary, were placed in the curious position of 

 being called upon to fight for a country from 

 which they had long been endeavoring to free 

 themselves ; their sympathies were largely Rus- 

 sian, but they were politically Hungarians. The 

 prosperity they attained may be said to have 

 been in spite of the Austro-Hungarian govern- 

 ments rather than with their assistance. See 

 CZECHO-SLOVAKIA, below. 



CZECHO-SLOVAKIA, chek'o slova'kia, or 

 the CZECHO-SLOVAK REPUBLIC, the most impor- 

 tant state of those which were built upon the 

 ruins of the defeated and disintegrated Austro- 

 Hungarian monarchy. As early as June, 1918, 

 it had been fully organized, with Professor 



LOCATION MAP 



Thomas Masaryk as President. This occurred 

 in Paris, and the entente powers gave it prompt 

 recognition. In January, 1919, it was evident 

 that the entente powers at the peace conference 

 which closed the War of the Nations were heart- 

 ily in sympathy with its aspirations, for its 

 representatives were invited to all deliberations 

 affecting it. It had been founded on one of 

 America's "fourteen points" that were set forth 

 as a condition on which peace should be guar- 

 anteed to the world, namely, "self-determina- 

 tion of peoples." The population of the new. 

 state is about 10,000,000. Of these nearly all 



the people are Czechs and Slovakians, whose 

 language is nearly the same; there are but few 

 Germans, not a sufficient number to alter the 

 conditions of "self-determination." 



The defection of the Czecho-Slovaks was the 

 inevitable outcome of their struggles against 

 Austro-Hungary. They had existed as a part 

 of the old monarchy in the provinces of Bo- 

 hemia, Moravia, Silesia and Slovakia, the latter 

 designation having been applied to a part of 

 Northern Hungary. All this territory was- 

 merged into the new republic, and it comprises 

 about 50,000 square miles. The city of Prague 

 was made the capital; it had been the old capi- 

 tal of Bohemia. 



At the beginning of the War of the Nations 

 the Russian army contained thousands of 

 Czechs and Slovakians, eager to fight against 

 Austria-Hungary. When Russia withdrew from 

 the war in 1917 these soldiers started for France 

 by way of Siberia. In the northland they 

 fought the bolshevik revolutionists and were 

 kept there by the allied powers to guard the 

 Trans-Siberian Railroad. Thousands of others 

 joined the French and Italian armies, and thus 

 had a really notable part in the defeat of the 

 Central Powers. E.D.F. 



Related Subjects. The reader is referred to 

 the following articles in these volumes : 

 Austria Moravia 



Bohemia Silesia 



Czech . - ' Slovaks 



Hungary War of the Nations 



CZERNOWITZ, cher'novits, capital of the 

 former Austrian province of Bukowina, near 

 the River Pruth, 164 miles southeast of Lem- 

 berg. It is a town of commercial importance, 

 with manufactories of machinery, oil and lum- 

 ber and many breweries. The population is 

 very mixed, consisting of Germans, Ruthen- 

 ians, Poles, Rumanians and Jews, and holiday 

 crowds, in their varied garb, are very pic- 

 turesque and interesting. The Austrian oc- 

 cupation, which took place in 1775, made a 

 great change in the appearance of the town. 

 It now possesses many handsome buildings, a 

 flourishing university with over 1,000 students 

 and well-equipped trade and industrial schools. 

 The city was captured by the Russians in the 

 early stages of the War of the Nations, in 1914, 

 lost by them to the German-Austrian forces 

 later, and again taken by the czafr's army in the 

 summer of 1916. At the end of the war Ru- 

 mania presented a claim for Bukowina to the 

 peace conference, as also did the Ukraine. 

 The League of Nations is to determine the mat- 

 ter. Population, 1910, 87,128. 



