Fraternity-Testvériség, 1952 (30. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1952-05-01 / 5. szám
16 TESTVÉRISÉG The vast amount of anti-Magyar propaganda carried on since the time “the fraternal kingdom” of the Czehs received its commission from Russia bids fair to expect them to do their best in their Moscow-inspired machinations in giving their adopted land a fair dose of the valor that is in the Czeh. The memorandum, issued by the “Slovak Loyalty Movement” in free Austria, gives a very edifying sample of the “democratic” way America is being treated among the Czehs. The scene is laid in the township of Szene (formerly of Hungary), in the year 1928, running as follows: “Czeh professor Ruzicska, in charge of grade III of the civic school, taught in the ‘Obcsanszka neuka’ class that we ‘Slavs are the greatest nation on the earth, the only trouble being that we do not stick together. Behind our back is standing a huge “Obor” on clay feet; it is Russia. Now, if we Slavs stick together, we can give steel legs to this “Obor”, and we shall be the rulers of the whole world. Our greatest enemy is the German. The first is the English Germans, the second the German people, and the third, America! We have to destroy these and we shall attain Slav leadership over the whole world, and the Czeh language will be spoken in all the corners of the earth.’ ” 37) One cannot help wondering whether the members of this Slav Congress have also acquired the knack of this brand of educational training, and whether they, too, do instill into the minds of their children the same kind of “democratic” gospel. Having passed, in the year 1919, a resolution in the Prague Parliament to the effect that there was no God, 37 38> what is there the Czeh of the true Zizkovak type cannot perform in the way of educational enlightenment in these United States? (19) The most enlightened member of the Habsburg dynasty, Emperor Joseph II, while visiting in Bohemia, was shown the site of Whitehill Mountain, where the disastrous defeat of Czeh Protestantism by Catholic Austria took place, putting an end thereby to Czeh independence for centuries. When the Emperor was shown the Catholic church erected on Whitehill to celebrate the victory of the Romanists, he showed great displeasure and said that “he wished to reign over men, not over brutes (in German “Bestien”) who celebrated their own defeat.” 39 40 41> One recalls this incident while reading a column-sized news report in the May 1, 1952, issue of the Christian Science Monitor relating that Thomas G. Masaryk and Eduard Benes, the two key men responsible for the engulfment of a large part of Europe in the deadly embrace of Red Communism, were purged from the high hierarchy of the privileged few personages of Czehland as “consistent enemies of the Soviet Union”, “intriguers” and “desecrators of all that was sacred in the national tradition.” The Monitor draws the conclusion that the two men were purged because their books and memories served to handicap Red efforts directed toward constructive statesmanship, and then goes on serving up to its readers the customary trimmings about Masaryk “the Liberator and Founder-President of Czehoslovakia”, and branding the two of them as “symbols of Czehoslovak independence”, a thing that never existed. A new angle is brought into the report when it states, “Thomas G. Masaryk, indeed, always recommended western orientation, and the Czeh legionaries who defied the Soviets during their march to Vladivostok after the October Revolution were his followers.” Masaryk’s western orientation will be seriously doubted by objective historians possessing sufficient data on his personality and activities. Emil Ludwig, Masaryk’s biographer devotes considerable space to the sojourning of Masaryk and his legionaries on Russian soil, and provides the reader with a fairly clear picture about them. We learn that a French general was dispatched to Masaryk by Premier Clemen- ceau of France to urge him to join the hardly pressed allied front in Rumania, rendering thereby invaluable aid to the cause of the western allies. Masaryk flatly refused all cooperation. In his own words: “I found that the soldiers (on the Rumanian front) were already on short rations. How could I allow a whole army to share their food?” 40) Masaryk had a far different role in his mind for his brave legionaries, as he freely admits: “I had thought that, in memory of 1871, Foch (the commanding general of the French armies) would march to Berlin. Then I should accompany him at the head of my army. We should march by way of Dresden to Prague, I as a dictator, which indeed I was, after the soldiers had proclaimed me as such. At the head of 60,000 men, I was master of the situation.” 41) Manning the regimental bands of Austria- Hungary had given scant opportunity to Masaryk’s valiant legionaries for military training, and fighting bloody battles had little attraction for them. In World War I they sneaked over to the enemy lines as fast as their legs would carry them, and, in order not to spoil their fine military record, they successfully negotiated World War II by amassing a casuality list of exactly 6,683 dead.42) 37) Memorandum of the "Slovak Loyalty Movement", p. 1. 38) The Slovak Council, Should Great Britain go to War for Czehoslovakia?, p. 44, quoting the Narod- nie Noviny, No. 64, 1930. 39) Count F. von Liitzow, A History of Bohemia, p. 310. 40) Emil Ludwig, Defender of Democracy, Robert M. McBride Co., New York, 1936, p. 154. 41) Ibid, p. 165. 42) John Kiernan, Information Please, 1952, p. 231.
