ith lowering skies, is a very fine view. Here lie the old
kings of Bohemia--one of them apparently "Good King Wenceslas." Here
at a little distance are the mysterious walls with sentries posted at
the gates--walls curiously and accidentally associated in the minds of
thousands of children with Longfellow's lines:

I have read in some old, marvellous tale
That a midnight host of spectres pale
Beleaguered the walls of Prague.

Not a good place in which to lose yourself at night--outside these
walls--as a party of us found on our first expedition there.

In the royal palace and offices are now accommodated the various
ministeries of the new republic. Up in this purer air live also the
President, M. Masaryk, and some of the diplomatic representatives of
foreign powers. It is no doubt rare in this lazy age to find a new
State administered and governed from the top of a crag, a steep climb
on foot. But Czecho-Slovakia and Prague are governed from a mountain,
and have the mountain point of view, which is the view of youth and
vision.

The new State has some thirteen millions of inhabitants, and the
majority of the people speak both Czech and German. German is
naturally discouraged as being anti-national, and it is now only used
in emergencies. All names of places have been Slavonized. Even
Carlsbad and Marienbad are now Carlovivari and Mariansky Laznie. Where
names of places have to be printed both in German and in Czech--German
goes into small letters and Czech into large. After the armistice was
declared in 1918, it only took a few hundred Czechs to overthrow the
Austrian power and proclaim a new national republic. It was a
bloodless revolution.

France and England were benevolently disposed toward a Czech republic,
but America, thanks to the influence of the Slavophile millionaire,
Charles Crane, with Wilson, and to the personal prestige of Masaryk,
did most to confirm and strengthen Czecho-Slovakia. Gratitude to
America is expressed everywhere, and Prague, in 1921, is perhaps the
one capital in the world where Wilson's name and fame are still
undimmed. Is not Wilson's face in bas-relief on the wall of the main
station, "Gare Wilson," supported, curiously enough, by the admiring
figures of two Bacchantes wreathed in the vine? It counts more to be
an American in Prague than to be English. Crane's son is Minister for
the United States; Crane's daughter-in-law, as painted by Mucha, is
engraved on th