Our Little Slavic Cousins: Russian, Polish, Czech-Slovak

OUR LITTLE CZECHO-SLOVAK COUSIN 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 282