nt feature of Prague. Occasionally
they have assisted the Christians in their favourite occupation of
slaughtering one another, and the great flag suspended from the vaulting
of the Altneuschule testifies to the courage with which they helped
Catholic Ferdinand to resist the Protestant Swedes. The Prague Ghetto
was one of the first to be established in Europe, and in the tiny
synagogue, still standing, the Jew of Prague has worshipped for eight
hundred years, his women folk devoutly listening, without, at the ear
holes provided for them in the massive walls. A Jewish cemetery
adjacent, "Bethchajim, or the House of Life," seems as though it were
bursting with its dead. Within its narrow acre it was the law of
centuries that here or nowhere must the bones of Israel rest. So the
worn and broken tombstones lie piled in close confusion, as though tossed
and tumbled by the struggling host beneath.

The Ghetto walls have long been levelled, but the living Jews of Prague
still cling to their foetid lanes, though these are being rapidly
replaced by fine new streets that promise to eventually transform this
quarter into the handsomest part of the town.

At Dresden they advised us not to talk German in Prague. For years
racial animosity between the German minority and the Czech majority has
raged throughout Bohemia, and to be mistaken for a German in certain
streets of Prague is inconvenient to a man whose staying powers in a race
are not what once they were. However, we did talk German in certain
streets in Prague; it was a case of talking German or nothing. The Czech
dialect is said to be of great antiquity and of highly scientific
cultivation. Its alphabet contains forty-two letters, suggestive to a
stranger of Chinese. It is not a language to be picked up in a hurry. We
decided that on the whole there would be less risk to our constitution in
keeping to German, and as a matter of fact no harm came to us. The
explanation I can only surmise. The Praguer is an exceedingly acute
person; some subtle falsity of accent, some slight grammatical
inaccuracy, may have crept into our German, revealing to him the fact
that, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, we were no true-born
Deutscher. I do not assert this; I put it forward as a possibility.

To avoid unnecessary danger, however, we did our sight-seeing with the
aid of a guide. No guide I have ever come across is perfect. This one
had two distinct failings.