CZECHOSLOVAKIA 



13; 



Photograph by Maynard Owen Williams 



CHILDREN OF P1LSKX (PLZEx) IN THE YARD OF Till- FAMOUS BRKWERY : 



CZECHOSLOVAKIA 



"Plzen" was always Czech for "Pilsen," but now that independence has come to the 

 Czechs, they see no reason why the German language should retain a monopoly of their 

 geographic nomenclature (see page 143). 



To the Czechs, Slovakia is the wild 

 and woolly East End of the republic, its 

 intricately engraved egg-shells and bright 

 pottery as exotic as Navajo art to a man 

 from Fourth Avenue. Yet even this 

 former crossroads of commerce between 

 Krakow and Budapest and between War- 

 saw and Vienna is not immune from the 

 cosmopolitanism that robs beauty spots 

 of distinctive character the while it 

 broadens their horizons. 



AT A MOUNTAIN RESORT IN THE HIGH 

 TATRA 



Far down the long dining-hall a Hun- 

 garian orchestra, which has been playing 

 a barbaric melody, suggestive of a tiny 

 camphre beside some lonely road, with 

 the gaunt, swarthy faces of. the men cast 

 into high relief by the ruddy glare and 

 with brightly clad figures o\ Tsigane 

 women moving about in the deep shadows 

 of towering trees, now plays Handel's 

 "Largo" with delicacy and feeling. 



Across the room a woman, whose 



beauty is as unstudied in effect as it is 

 painstaking in method, is smoking a per- 

 fumed Russian cigarette, whose glowing 

 tip only occasionally challenges the spar- 

 kle of jewels on fingers and breast. Her 

 companion, an officer in the neat uniform 

 of the Czech army, bows cordially to a 

 serious- faced man, who has devoted 

 much time to tanning his bald head with 

 all the care and enthusiasm with which 

 another would color a meerschaum pipe 

 to the same warm tone. 



Nearer at hand .there sounds the girl- 

 ish laughter of lovely twins in evening 

 dress. I had seen them earlier in the day 

 returning from a climb, their fair young 

 faces flushed with exercise. 



Their heavy blond hair, now elabo- 

 rately arranged, was then confined in 

 yellow silk toques and they were dressed 

 in long bine sweaters, trimmed with 

 white angora, knee-length skirts and tan 

 stockings, with another darker pair of 

 heavy wool rolled down to the tops of 

 their business-like Alpine boots. 



