We are
brothers and allies."

Still some German Czecho-Slovaks think they will ultimately overthrow
the new State and get into the saddle again. And they make a solid and
dangerous political bloc. Benes said they were much more amenable than
a year ago, but in the Parliament House--an adapted concert-hall--I saw
all the carpenters at work in a litter of shavings and broken wood.
"The German benches," said the editor of the "Narodni Listi," who was
showing me round the institutions of Prague.

Czecho-Slovakia holds now, besides her natural constituent races, a
considerable number of Russian exiles, and these have their Russian
daily paper at Prague and a number of local Russian enterprises. With
the calming down of Soviet Russia, some of these Russians would
naturally return home, but a few have taken root and will remain. It
is not an uncongenial soil for the average Russian. Then the
Government has agreed to take ten thousand of General Wrangel's
soldiers, and will endeavour to settle them on the land. 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. They have left the Pope, and have in return been
excommunicated. Apparently excommunication has not a great terror,
however. National Catholicism without an infallible Pope is not far
removed from Greek Catholicism and even Anglicanism. Austria and
Hungary are Roman Catholic, but Czecho-Slovakia will remain either
Protestant or National Catholic.

The abandonment of the German language is also a remarkable phenomenon.
The common will is to abandon it. Unfortunately, the Czech language is
of limited use, but there is now a remarkable passion for learning
English, and there are thousands of students at the University classes.
This boom is due to President Wilson. The Russian language is also
extensively known among the ex-soldiers who sojourned so many years as
prisoners or as legionaries in Russia. The French language having lost
much of its value has not so many students. The "Narodni Listi," which
is the principal Czech newspaper in Prague, prints two columns in
French every day for the convenience of foreigners who do not
understand Bohemian.