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A girl who was born without hips or eyebrows and who in childhood was regarded as a freak, now finds herself, at the age of eighteen, exactly in the mode, thus proving that all things come to those who wait. Czecho-Slovakia is discovered. The American forces spent three days taking Château-Thierry and three years trying to learn to pronounce it.
These traverse the whole story of the Slavs, and especially that of the Czechs, but not, however, omitting the story of Russia, from the baptism of Vladimir to the emancipation of the serfs. Czecho-Slovakia will raise the banner of a new Pan-Slavism and Slav unity.
Take Italy as an extreme example. If Italy can reasonably be expected to pay $4,000,000,000, surely Germany can and ought to pay an immeasurably higher figure. Or, to put it slightly differently, how can Italy be expected to submit to payment of this great sum and see Czecho-Slovakia pay little or nothing? At the other end of the scale there is the United Kingdom.
Benes, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, deputy-President in Masaryk's absence. It was on his initiative that the Little Alliance of Czecho-Slovakia and Jugo-Slavia was founded, with the support of Italy and eventually including Roumania.
The faith is kindled here that whilst many other nations are going mad, Czecho-Slovakia may keep her head and be one of those who by her example and leadership will save Europe from disruption and chaos. As at Constantinople, there is great over-crowding. There are three times as many people on the pavements as on the pavements of Vienna or Prague. The Marshalkowsky is a-flocking from end to end.
There are already too many non-Slavonic elements in Czecho-Slovakia, and Russians will help to neutralize some of the Magyar and German influences. At least, such is the hope. As a step in this direction, there has developed also an important Church movement. A large portion of the Roman Catholic clergy have split from Rome and founded a Czech National Church.
Anyway, I do not anticipate any strained relations between the Republics of Czecho-Slovakia and Poland on this account; both countries are more interested in a yet older fossilized form of creation coal to wit. With the best will in the world it is difficult to rise to any enthusiasm over the majority of Bohemia's rulers in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
In the hotel where I stayed the head waiter in one room was a Bohemian; and I am glad to say that he called himself a Bohemian. I have already protested sufficiently, before American audiences, against the pedantry of perpetually talking about Czecho-Slovakia.
The liberated peoples of the Baltic states, Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, Jugo-Slavia, and the Near East, were in a dreadful state of starvation and economic wreckage. A great, responsibility and pressing duty devolved on America, Great Britain, France, and Italy to act promptly for the relief of these peoples who had become temporarily, by the hazards of war, their wards.
As regards the interior troubles of Czecho-Slovakia, much is made of the Slovak separatist movement, and the Germans exploit the supposed racial animosities of the two Slav tribes. The Slovaks also obtain some sympathy from our "Save the children" missionaries, who naturally prefer unspoiled peasants to educated foreigners of any kind.
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