THE CZECHOSLOVAKS.

Western Star, 3 September 1918, Page 1

THE CZECHOSLOVAKS.

Now that the Allies, ledi by Great Britain, have declared for the Czechoslovaks, it is interesting to, recall the statement of Professor R. W. SetonWatson, the authority on the .races of Eastern Europe, published shortly after the outbreak of the war. He says: “ The Czechs are beyond question the moist progressive, the most highly civilised, the most democratic of. all Slavonic nations. The stubborn spirit of John Huss is still alive among them to-day. and: their recent achievements in music, art, and industry are in every way worthy of the nation which has produced Comenius and Dvorak, and first lit the torch of Reformation in Europe. . . . But the liberation of the Czechs would not be complete unless their close kinsmen, the Slovaks, were included. . . . The Slovaks have long suffered from the grass tyranny cf Magyar rule. Their schools and institutions have been ruthlessly suppressed or reduced in numbers, their Precs muzzled, their political development arrested, their culture and traditions hampered at every turn,. The Slovaks are a race whose artisticand musical gifts, whose innate sense of color and poetry, have won, the sympathy and admiration of all who know them; and, their systematic oppression at the hands of the Magyar oligarchy is one of the greatest infamies of the last 50 years-. In this war Britain has proclaimed herself the champion of the small nations, and none are more deserving of her sympathy than the Slovaks. Unless our statesmen renounce that principle of nationality which'they have so loudly proclaimed:, the Slovaks cannot be abandoned to their fate.”