Jan Šinágl angažovaný občan, nezávislý publicista

Date: March of 1938 (audio speech, file available)

Ladies and gentlemen. For you citizens of the proud and great America, which [is] overflowing with abundance, used to be a land of promise to hundreds of thousand of Europeans, year after year during this long decay before the Great war. For you citizens of this boundless area of the states.  A small country, my country, the Czechoslovak Republic, situated now in the  middle of the noisy and belching caldron of European unrest. Is almost of little interest.

I have been requested to tell you a few things about [the] national character Of Czechoslovakia, of its people.  Well, it is rather difficult to find the right words, words that would really catch the interest of such a wide community, of all of you who are listening to your broadcast now.

Imagine, that we live here in Czechoslovakia in a country where there is but one car to every one-hundred-twenty-five inhabitants. Here, a man who owns a car is looked upon as some sort of an aristocrat. This of course must influence in some way our national character.

Even that influences a shoemaker. And I should say favorably. Most people go on foot and it is quite good for their health.  Almost delightful, if one is not in a hurry. And because there are not so many cars.  There are not so many roads as there should be in this country of ours.

But, on the other hand there is at least a radio set in every second house. So that we may listen every day to what we like from all the ends of Europe. [If] you know of course, the necessary language. These listening in to the broadcasts is becoming in Europe a past time of great importance. We listen in, and sometimes obey. Plus, it becomes quite an order of the day in these modern European times.

Of course, it is quite different from what you here in America, tuning to New York, or Seattle, Manchester, New Hampshire, or Miami in Florida, and you will always listen to what you understand. But here it is otherwise and cannot be helped anyway. The trouble may be traced back to the fact that there have been people living in Europe a  long time before automobiles and railroads came. That’s why so many languages are to be found here.

The Czechoslovak Republic looks like an anvil, and the people who live there used to play in its history sometimes the role of the hammer, sometimes that of the anvil. In both instances, the character of these people has been hammered into its present form.

The great tide of different peoples and  organizations have met in the region of the present Czechoslovakia. Old Romans, their legions, their law, their order, reached up to the Danube, our thousandth frontier. Old Germans, their hard fighting and bold tribes were our neighbor on our Northern and Western frontiers. And finally, there comes old Asia.  The Slavonic tribes, the forefathers of the present Czechoslovaks, immigrated here in this basin formed by the Carpathian mountains in the East, by the range of the Bohemian mountains in the West and North which stretches up to the Danube in the South. And here, they have stayed now for [one] thousand one hundred years is maybe easily proved.

You will understand that the place we inhabit is not a place which could be held easily by a people with of weak character, or a place in which a people could allow itself to weaken.  But a constant presence of powerful and fighting neighbors was not a disadvantage for our people. It brought us also some great advantages which changed the Czechs into the  most advanced Slavonic tribe, and turned them into pioneers of Western civilization.  The character of our people developed under such circumstances into a character of men on guard.  Watchfulness, modesty, a certain determination, and inventive intelligence are the strongest positive qualities which lie at the bottom of our national soul.

Their origin needs to be traced back to the circumstances I first mentioned. And, all these qualities helped us mostly to our keep our nationality, to regain our political freedom, and to form in a comparatively short period of twenty years, a strong central European country which is the outpost of the Western culture and civilization.

The Czechoslovaks are as the majority people in the white world, individualists. They damn capital which they don’t own.  And they love capital they possess. Even so, in regard to thriftiness, they can be beaten by Scotsmen. Nevertheless, the Czechs are the most thrifty of people. Imagine, you people in America that over small people, workers, small traders, having in saving banks a total of over fifty-billion Czech Crowns which means two billion dollars. And, besides this, about a million families of a total of about three-million-seven-hundred-thousand own their own land. And some six-hundred-thousand families are in possession of a business, workshop, or trade.  An American farmer would surely love to see what a small piece of land must mean to a living to a family of a modest Czechoslovak farmer. In this country, there is no untilled land at all. Every ridge between two fields is used for growing something. The sense of property is very, very strong in these people of ours. Therefore, all those idle talks of Czechoslovakia being a bastion of communism are pure nonsense. The Czechoslovak farmer, trader, or worker are far from certain ideologues.

But the economic development of Czechoslovakia is not finished yet. It is almost at its beginning. Czechoslovakia  forms a bridge to the east. And, this bridge is to be built up technically. Czechoslovakia must build along these lines a super highway and as well as a main railroad both about six hundred miles long. On Czechoslovak territory, communications by four main European waterways may be accomplished namely that of the Danube, Odra, Vltava, and Elbe. By the help of canals, one hundred million people in the North could be connected  with another one hundred million people in the South and East of Europe. In the realization of these plans, lies the economic future of Czechoslovakia as well as the foundation of the appeasement of European relationships.

You know the Czechoslovaks are such an ordinary plain folk. There is only a handful of them. But, when they go in for something it is better to leave them alone.  It happened only about four hundred years ago that the Czech General Jan Zizka, succeeded in fighting against half of the countries in Europe four times as strong as his was.  And he threw them out of our country completely.  Some of you will perhaps recall how during the Great War, a tiny bunch of some sixty-thousand Czechoslovak legionnaires, con-cleared the whole of Siberia, and held for months and months possession of this country as big as the Unites States with six thousand miles of railroad lines against the whole ocean revolutionary force.  Well, I think this is something worth listening to. These people have not changed.  They are still the same sort of fighters when they are forced to it.  But naturally they prefer peace, work on their part, and their business and in their industrial jobs.

Who would not? Are they democrats? Oh, yes of course they are.  These people have been deceived by their nobility and aristocracy.  They do not trust them anymore. They do believe in democracy. And this is not a new fashion with them.  It is about five-hundred years since the people in this country has adopted their democratic principles and even suffered for them, and paid for them with their national freedom.

And so on what terms would we like to live with other nations. Not in wars and fighting. No, rather in peace and work. We seek what we can buy from others and what we can sell to them to secure a decent living.

Oh, we all envy you people of the United States.  What a wonderful country is yours. How great and wise are you men. Let us prey to God that both of our democratic countries be blessed!

For more information, please contact:

John Nash

Email: Tato e-mailová adresa je chráněna před spamboty. Pro její zobrazení musíte mít povolen Javascript.

Phone: 602-926-2182

Komentovat články mohou pouze registrovaní uživatelé; prosím, zaregistrujte se (v levém sloupci zcela dole)