The Margravate of Moravia, a sister state of Bohemia, and one of her
crown-lands, contains an area of 8,583 square miles. The population of
Moravia is 1,868,971 Bohemians and 719,435 Germans.
The third crown-land of Bohemia is the Duchy of Silesia, with an area
of 1,987 square miles. The population is divided as follows: 180,348
Bohemians, 325,523 Germans, 235,224 Poles.[2]
Although statisticians found in Austria, in 1910, only 6,435,983
Bohemians, it is generally known that the actual figure is higher by
several hundred thousands. Singularly enough, the test in Austria
of one’s nationality is not the mother tongue of the citizen,
as elsewhere, but the lingual medium which one employs in daily
association with others. This medium the statisticians designate the
“Verkehrsprache”--the “Language of Association.” The first decennial
census, under this novel system, was taken in 1880, and the results
thereby obtained pleased Vienna so well that the method has remained
in use ever since. When the matter was debated in parliament in 1880
the Bohemians and other Slavs indignantly protested against it as
unscientific and as a device dictated by political motives. A census
so taken, they contended, was calculated to raise by artful means the
numerical strength of the Germans and to deduce from it the superior
importance to the state of the Germanic element to the disadvantage
of the non-Germans.[3] It was argued that the mother tongue of the
citizens should serve as the test of one’s nationality, not the
language in which the Slavic workman may be compelled to address his
German employer or a Slavic subaltern his German military superior.
But, as usual, Slavic opposition was over-ridden. Even fair-minded
Austrians condemned the system as unscientific. Innama-Sternegg, for
instance, deplored the fact that the empire should have recourse to the
“Verkehrsprache” test for political purposes. On this ground Austrian
official figures should be scrutinized with extreme caution. It has
repeatedly been proven by private census-takers that the official
census is unreliable, and that it grossly underestimates the numerical
strength of the Bohemians.
From an agricultural state, that it was until recently, Bohemia is
rapidly changing into an industrial state. Two of the most valuable
products, which make for the wealth of industrial countries, namely,
coal and iron, the hills of Bohemia contain in abundance. Among her
specialties, which have acquired world-wide renown, are decorated
and engraved glassware, beer (Pilsener), high-class cotton textiles
and linen goods, grass seeds, embroidery, hops, fezzes worn by the
Mohammedan people of the Orient, toys, etc.
From times immemorial, Bohemia has been the battle-ground between the
Slav and the Teuton. A glance at the map of Central Europe will tell
the story. Most westerly of all the Slavic peoples, the Bohemians are
surrounded on the north, west, and south by Germans. Only on the south
and east frontiers are there strips of territory that connect them with
kindred races. More than once the Germanic sea has threatened to engulf
them in the same way that it swept away the Slavic tribes that lived
north of them in Lusatia and of whose existence nothing now remains
but the Slavic names of rivers and cities. The struggle for supremacy
in Bohemia may be said to have begun the year the fabled leader Čech,
in the gray dawn of history (about 450 A.D.), migrated to the country,
having dispossessed the non-Slavic tribes of Boii, from whom Bohemia
acquired her name. The Hussite wars in the fifteenth century are
popularly believed to have been waged to free men’s intellects from the
spiritual trammels of Rome; yet in the last analysis it will be found
that the Hussites, in making war on the invaders who poured into the
country from Germany, rejoiced in vanquishing alike the foes of their
race and the oppressors of their conscience. Such, at least, is the
conviction that one acquires in perusing those chapters of the history
of the country that treat of the Hussite wars.
Jointly with Moravia, Bohemia formed the nucleus of the Bohemian State;
this state had never ceased to be Bohemian-Slavic in character, though
at times ruled by alien kings. The whole of Silesia and both Lusatias
(Upper and Lower) also constituted part and parcel of this state, yet
the latter were never so closely affiliated with Bohemia as Moravia
had been, because the inhabitants of the Lusatias were not by origin
or preponderatingly Bohemian, but of Polish and Serb (Wend) ancestry,
having been largely Germanized at the time they passed under the rule
of the Bohemian Kings in the fourteenth century.
Generally speaking, the Bohemians inhabited the flat lands of the
interior, while the Germans overflowed the border line on the south,
west, and north, forming an almost uninterrupted chain of settlements.
As a matter of fact, however, there is no compact, unmixed German
territory in Bohemia, which is exclusively German and into which the
Bohemian workman, going in search of employment to the mines, mills,
and shops in the northwest, has not penetrated, and in which he has
not domiciled himself. The invasion of Bohemian workmen has virtually
rendered bilingual every such Germanized district where industrialism
flourishes.
So intermixed are the two races on the border line that a person
cannot say confidently that his ancestry is either pure German or pure
Bohemian. Observe, for example, the names of Bohemian leaders: Rieger,
Brauner, Grégr, Zeithammer. They have an unmistakable Teutonic ring.
Again, note the names of Schmeykal, Tascheck, Chlumecky, and Giskra,
who lead the German cohorts. These clearly betray Slavic origin.
It has been remarked sarcastically that the Bohemians were really
German-speaking Slavs. Certain it is that their association of more
than a thousand years’ duration with Teutonic neighbors resulted in
their accepting many of the latter’s customs and western culture. Then,
too, foreigners have noticed in Bohemians a degree of aggressiveness
that they claim is singularly lacking in the make-up of the other
Slavs. This trait, aggressiveness, may have been inherited as a result
of an almost ceaseless struggle for national existence. It is not
improbable, however, that the racial mixture above mentioned may have
been one of the contributing causes.
Fear of the Teutonic peril has always harried the soul of the nation.
Every historian, every poet, every patriot has admonished the people
to be on their guard. One of the oldest chorals extant contains the
pathetic invocation to the patron saint of the country. “St. Václav,
Duke of the Bohemian Land, do not let us perish nor our descendants.”
In course of time many Germans and denationalized Bohemians were
Bohemianized, so that it is hazardous to guess whether in Bohemia and
Moravia more Germans adopted the Bohemian language than Bohemians the
German. The final sum of this process of assimilation seems to be that
the Bohemians constitute more than two-thirds and the Germans less than
one-third of the entire population of the kingdom.
As regards the ownership of land, Bohemians hold about three-fifths of
the soil, in Moravia three-fourths. If it is true that the people with
a future is the one that owns the land, then the future of Bohemians is
clearly assured. Looking backward, it was very fortunate for the nation
that in the days of its deepest abasement the peasant was not allowed
to dispose of his holdings at will, otherwise the inrush of the Teutons
would have still more reduced the national area.
If we accept literacy as one of the tests of the culture of a people,
it will be found that the Bohemians rank highest among the Slavic
races, surpassing even Austrian-Germans and Hungarian Magyars.
According to the official reports of the Commissioner of Immigration
in Washington, the number of illiterates among Bohemians is less than
3 per cent., Slovaks 25 per cent., Serbo-Croatians, 38 per cent.,
Poles 40 per cent., Little Russians (Ruthenes), 63 per cent. Among the
non-Slavic immigrants from Austria-Hungary to America the percentages
of illiteracy are as follows: Germans 4 per cent., Magyars 12 per
cent., Italians 23 per cent., Jews 23 per cent., Rumuns 29 per cent.
It may not be uninteresting to note, as indicative of the position held
by Bohemians among the Slavs, the number of newspapers circulated in
Slavdom.[4] The Lusatian Serbs, a remnant of a once populous Slavic
branch in Germany, support 11 publications; Slovaks, 53 (4 of which
are dailies); Slovenes, 110 (5 dailies); Bulgars, 300 (19 dailies);
Serbo-Croatians, 350 (37 dailies); Poles, 600 (78 dailies); Bohemians,
1,400 (34 dailies), and Russians, 1,800 (315 dailies). From this
statistical fragment it will be seen that a little country like Bohemia
takes very favorable rank when compared with the great Russian Empire.
At home the Bohemian is looked upon as a progressive agriculturist, and
American tourists who have traveled in the country have been favorably
impressed with the orderliness of the farms and the high state of
cultivation of the land. In the great agricultural belt formed by
the States of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and the
Dakotas there are large settlements of Bohemians (about one-half of the
Bohemian population in the United States devoting itself to farming),
and their farms are known to bear favorable comparison with the
homesteads owned by land-tillers of Scandinavian and Teuton ancestry.
The fact that a particular faith was denied him and he was required
to accept a different creed, has made the Bohemian one of the most
liberal-minded of men,--in many instances a sceptic and a scoffer.
Possibly there is no other foreign nationality in the United States
that can boast translations in the vernacular of Thomas Paine and of
other advanced thinkers as early as the Bohemians.
Economically the Germans are stronger than any other one race in the
empire. Much of their unquestioned primacy in the realm of commerce
and industry is due to the fact that everywhere they enjoy special
favors from the government. Then, too, the Slav, who is by preference
a land-tiller (as is also the Magyar), is still a novice in business.
The vast economic interests of the Jews are found wholly on the side
of the Germans. Ernest Denis believes that German primacy in commerce
may yet continue for some time to come, because the districts inhabited
by them in Bohemia offer greater inducements to the investor and the
capitalist, owing to the wealth of mineral riches found along the
northwest frontier. It is, however, Denis’ opinion that the existing
inequality in the distribution of industrial wealth will diminish as
years go by; democracy, marching as it does everywhere at the expense
of the upper classes, will level it down and give the Bohemian
majority its share in commerce and industry.