Page:Bohemia under Hapsburg misrule (1915).pdf/143

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THE BOHEMIAN CHARACTER
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perialistic success. Count Lützow says that the evil seed of hatred and distrust sown by the oppressors in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries bears evil fruit up to the present day. Bohemian peasants even now instinctively distrust the nobles of their own race who are in full sympathy with the national cause. This antagonism has frequently contributed to the failure of the attempts of the Bohemians to recover their autonomy.”

There is a great difference in an individual or a people that has been accustomed to accomplishment. The attitude in Bohemia has been that of pessimistic resignation. Their devotion to certain ideals and causes is magnificent, but the inability to organize unanimously is indicated by the eleven political parties, most of which are nationalistic and none of which has the active co-operation of the masses. They follow an ideal rather than a person, and the symbol of the ideal is always a person who is dead. The look is thus backward rather than hopefully forward. Hus is the great hero, but also Comenius, Palacký, Havlíček, and many others of more or less remoteness are the real leaders, and the reinstatement of national selfdirection and the Bohemian language are the ideal objects.

In Bohemia these result in an impracticalness