Chapter XIV: The Czecho-Slovak Republic

IT was October, and Jozef's godfather had gone again to Bohemia, this time as a delegate representing the Slovak National Council. The Czecho-Slovak National Alliance and its army had been recognized formally some time before as an ally by the great powers and greater events were scheduled to follow.

When he reached beautiful "hundred-towered" Praha, the capital, he found the streets and coffee houses jammed with people. Every face had an expectant look in which anxiety and confidence were blended. Toward the end of the month their expectations were realized. The National Council took over the government of the Czecho-Slovak countries, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Slovakia, all of them formerly belonging to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.

It was a bloodless revolution, for the Austrian Government realized the hopelessness of its position.

All the great sufferings through which they had passed--the hunger, the fear, the grief--were forgotten by the people in the great joy of their liberation. Old men embraced each other; old women wept in each other's arms with happiness that they had lived to see the day. People from all the states, with their slight variations of dialect, were there; Czechs, Moravians, Czecho-Silesians, and Slovaks. The ties of close kinship were felt as never before.

Crowds stood on the big St. Vaclav Square listening to the Proclamation of Independence from the steps of the splendid National Museum. When the reading came to an end, the people, with one voice, sang the ancient Czech choral to St. Vaclav, Bohemia's patron saint.

Almost every hour a new report came: now that the Emperor's Governor had fled; now that the Magyar soldiers, who had been stationed in the city, cared for nothing except to be allowed to return to Hungary; now that the commanders of the local garrison had put themselves at the disposal of the Czecho-Slovak government.

Similar scenes took place in the historical Old Town Square, around the splendid monument of John Hus, that three years before had had to be unveiled by stealth. Men, women, and children felt that the noble past of which Czechs have always been so proud, was come again. Pride swelled their hearts, too, that all that they were gaining had come to them through efforts and sacrifices of their own, so great that the world had been forced to recognize and admire.

On the following day the Slovak delegates were received officially, thus uniting the two branches of the Czecho-Slovak nation.

The first act of the new state was to declare a republican form of Government with Thomas Garigue Masaryk as President.

President Masaryk was to take up his official residence in the immense royal palace so long deserted. Carpenters and others were busy modernizing it.

This palace had lived through unusual vicissitudes of fortune. Already in the tenth century, a stone fortified palace stood there, but it was not until the reign of Bohemia's beloved King Charles I that it assumed something of its present form, being modeled by him after the Louvre of Paris. It was enlarged by King Vladislav, the principal hall being named after him. In Rudolph's time other Halls were added.

After the defeat of the White Mountain, when Bohemia lost her independence, it no longer served as a royal residence, and was practically deserted. In 1757, it was bombarded, to be rebuilt and enlarged by Empress Maria Theresa.

And now the greatest change of all: it was to be the home of the President of a thoroughly democratic state.

Many days following were festal days. People flocked to the churches, particularly to the Cathedral of St. Vitus, which is one of the great works of King Charles.

While the young people looked forward to the future, the old recalled the past.

"Ah, how King Charles in his heavenly home will rejoice," one bent old woman, supported on crutches, murmured.

"And saintly Vaclav, too," scarcely breathed another so emaciated that she looked like a moving shadow. "He'll be proud now that Bohemia is called after him the Realm of St. Vaclav. Ah, I must see once more those precious relics we have kept of him."

With difficulty she made her way to the Cathedral where St. Vaclav's helmet, sword, and coat of mail have been religiously preserved.

Jozef's godfather sent him several picture postcards reminding him of Jozef's hero, King Charles. One represented the historic stone bridge, which Charles had had built with such care that he did not live to see it finished. On this card he wrote:

"All the statues on the bridge have a dazed expression. I wonder what they think of the change."

Another card was of the old walls of Praha, working on which through the King's care saved a thousand men from starving in a time of famine.

"I walked past these fortifications early one morning," was the message, "and hundreds of birds were among the ruins, all singing the news of our glorious resurrection."

The third card showed Karluv Tyn, built by Charles for the protection of the crown jewels and the charters of Bohemia. This beautiful castle stands not far from Praha, on a rock of jasper a thousand feet above the River Mze. To it the King-Emperor sometimes retired for the meditative devotion which he found so helpful. On this card the message was the longest:

"Charles did more than build beautiful castles and splendid cathedrals. He welcomed men of learning and made higher education possible even for the poor by founding the University of Praha, the first university in all of Central Europe. He freed the land of robbers; he secured justice to the peasants by making it possible for them to appeal to the King from the decision of their own feudal lords. His name has come down to us revered and beloved, because of the many evidences of his unselfish, constant thought for the people's welfare."

By a strange coincidence, on the very day that the last postcard came to Jozef in Slovakia, another reached him from his friend, Jaroslav. It was dated from the famous watering place, Carlsbad, in northern Bohemia, where Jaroslav had accompanied his father, who had some business there.

"The Germans here, who have largely control of things," it stated, "are angry at the turn affairs have taken. They clamor about the rights of the minority, they who never considered the rights of the Slavic majority. But I think they are calming down, for they see that they're going to get justice. The Czechs are not revengeful. If we treated them as they treated us--whew!" He said no more of the Germans, but humorously described some of the patients he had seen; some very fat, some very thin, all expecting cure from digestive disturbances.

A few days before he left, Jozef's godfather took one more walk across the sixteen-arched statue decorated Charles Bridge (Karluv most), through the picturesque Little Side, with its quaint old-time palaces of nobles, up a steep and winding street to the Hradcany, as the group of buildings around the royal palace together with it, is called.

From these heights, Praha is seen in all its wondrous beauty lying on both sides of the River Vltava (Moldau). It seems an endless succession of parks, gardens, queer roofs that are the delight of every artist that sees them, and innumerable towers and steeples. Across the river he could see the rocky Vysehrad, the seat of the early rulers. It was there that Libusa, the reputed founder of Praha, made her famous prophecy: "Lo, before me I see a city whose glory reaches to the skies!"

He mused at the great richness not only in Bohemia's real historic past but in her legendary lore; how everything about the city has its story. On the hills towards which he was turned, Vlasta, the leader of an Amazon band, made her stand in the early days against Prince Premysl; near him was the tower of Daliborka, where a noble was once imprisoned and said to have found solace in a violin. Since then ghostly music is said to haunt the place. Of the alchemists who lived near by in the Street of Gold, a street of the tiniest, most brightly-hued houses imaginable, he recalled the strange tales told. In the very courts of the palace, legends mingled with history.

A peculiar feeling that he had never experienced before came over him. To live in Praha, he felt, was not the prosaic, everyday life he had always known; it was living a brightly colored romance too disturbing for him to get used to now. His own dear Slovakia, with its quiet, simple life, was better for him.

The next day the new President arrived from abroad, and was installed in office. That was the greatest day of all in Praha. The feeling of the multitude was expressed by one old man who said, "I shall weep no more for my dead, since they helped make the fairy tale come true that brutal force no longer rules, that a proud, deserving nation is freed at last from a bondage to which so long the world was indifferent."

THE END

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* * * * *

Transcriber's note:

Page vi, "gyspies" changed to "gypsies" (The gypsies, like the)