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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



WHAT HAVE THE BOHEMIANS ACCOM- 

 PLISHED AS A NATIONALITY? 



It may be well to quote on this subject 

 a paragraph from an American author, 

 Robert H. Vickers (History of Bohemia, 

 8°, Chicago, 1894, p. 319) :* "The fixed 

 rights, the firm institutions, and the un- 

 failing gallantry of Bohemia during 

 eight hundred years had constituted a 

 strong barrier against the anarchy of the 

 darkest ages. The manly independence 

 and the solicitude for individual political 

 rights always exhibited by the Bohemian 

 people have rendered them the teachers of 

 nations ; and their principles and parlia- 

 mentary constitution have gradually pen- 

 etrated into every country under heaven. 



"They protected and preserved the 

 rights of men during long ages when 

 those rights were elsewhere unknown or 

 trampled down. Bohemia has been the 

 birthplace and the shelter of the modern 

 politics of freedom." 



But Bohemia has also been for centu- 

 ries the culture center of central Europe. 

 Its university, founded in 1348, at once 

 for the Czechs, Poles, and Germans, not 

 only antedated all those in Germany and 

 Austria, but up to the Hussite wars was, 

 with that of Paris, the most important of 

 the continent. In 1409, when the Ger- 

 man contingent of the university, failing 

 in its efforts at controlling the institution, 

 left Prague to found a true German uni- 

 versity at Leipzig, the estimates of the 

 number of students, instructors, and at- 

 tendants who departed average over 

 10,000. 



WYCLIEEE ENCOURAGES THE CZECHS 



Sigismund, the emperor and deposed 

 king of Bohemia, in writing of it, in 1416, 

 to the Council of Constance, says : "That 

 splendid University of Prague was 

 counted among the rarest jewels of our 

 realm. . . . Into it flowed, from all 

 parts of Germany, youths and men of 

 mature years alike, through love of vir- 

 tue and study, who, seeking the treasures 

 of knowledge and philosophy, found 

 them there in abundance." 



Last, but not least, Bohemia led in the 



*See also W. S. Monroe, Bohemia and the 

 Czechs, Boston, 1910. 



great struggle for freedom of thought, 

 religious reformation. Encouraged by 

 the writings of Wycliffe, in England, and 

 by such meager sympathy from conti- 

 nental Europe as they could obtain in 

 those dark times, the Czech puritans, re- 

 gardless of the dire consequences which 

 they knew must follow, rose in open, bold 

 opposition to the intellectual slavery in 

 which nearly the whole of Europe was 

 then held. They paid for this with their 

 blood, and almost with the existence of 

 the nation ; but Luther and a thousand 

 other reformers arose in other lands to 

 continue on the road of liberation. 



For a small nation, not without the 

 usual human faults, and distracted by 

 unending struggles for its very existence, 

 the above contributions to the world dur- 

 ing the dark age of its rising civilization, 

 would seem sufficient for an honorable 

 place in history. 



THE CHARACTERISTICS OE THE CZECHS 



As to the modern achievements of the 

 nation, they follow largely in the foot- 

 steps of the old. Notwithstanding the 

 most bitter struggle for every right of 

 their own, the Czechs have extended a 

 helpful hand to all other branches of the 

 Slavs, in whose intellectual advance and 

 solidarity they see the best guarantee of 

 a peaceful future. They have extended 

 their great organization Sokol, which 

 stands for national discipline, with phys- 

 ical and mental soundness, among all the 

 Slavic nations, and they are sending 

 freely their teachers over the Slav world, 

 and this while still under the Habsburgs. 



To attempt to define the characteristics 

 of a whole people is a matter of difficulty 

 and serious responsibility even for one 

 descended from and well acquainted with 

 that people. Moreover, under modern 

 conditions of intercourse of men and na- 

 tions, with the inevitable admixtures of 

 blood, the characteristics of individual 

 groups or strains of the race tend to be- 

 come weaker and obscured. 



Thus the Czech of today is not wholly 

 the Czech of the fifteenth century, and to 

 a casual observer may appear to differ 

 but little from his neighbors. Yet he 

 differs, and under modern polish and the 

 more or less perceptible effects of cen- 



