miles, with a population estimated in 1919 at between 3,000,000 and 4,000,000. In all these countries the population is of the Slavic race, though in Bohemia there is a large proportion of Germans. The Czech, or Bohemians, are by far the most important of these various peoples, both in numbers and culture, and are now the dominant political element. The capital of the Republic is in the Bohemian city of Prague, whose population is about 550,000. In culture and the educational level of its people it ranks with the most progressive cities of Europe, having two universities, one Bohemian, the other German. In the whole of the Bohemian population the percentage of illiteracy is only 2 per cent. Another important city is Pressburg, in Slovakia, also the site of a modern university. Slovakia, of a much lower cultural level, is inhabited by an agricultural people, of simple manners and a lower standard of living.
The frontiers of the Republic, though not definitely agreed upon in the beginning of 1920, were roughly as follows: Hungary on the N., on the W., Hungary to the Danube, along the Danube to the outlet of Eipel, along the Eipel to Zombat, thence to the mouth of the Ung river, along the Ung to the Uzsok Heights.
The Czechs, or Bohemians, had behind them a history as a free people to inspire their struggles for independence in modern times. Bohemia had been an independent kingdom in the Middle Ages, becoming a part of the Austrian Empire in 1526. The Slovaks, who, in the 9th century, formed the nucleus of the great Moravian kingdom, were subjugated by the Magyars in 907, after the bloody Battle of Pressburg, and have been very much oppressed by the Hungarian kings.
In recent times the movement for independence was most strongly organized among the Czechs. For many years there existed among them a secret revolutionary organization, popularly known as the Mafia, the name being taken from the well-known Sicilian order of the same name. At the head of this underground movement was Dr. Szamal, and Dr. Voita Benes, the latter now a prominent member of the official government. Little is known of the activities of the Mafia because of the secrecy with which they were carried on, no one member knowing more than two of his comrades, but it was famous for the perfection of its intelligence system, its spies being installed even in the imperial household and in all the offices of the Cabinet ministers.
With the outbreak of the World War, in 1914, the movement for Czech national independence began to manifest itself in the open. A National Council appeared shortly afterward in Paris and sought recognition from the Entente nations and the United States. That the people of both Bohemia and Slovakia stood squarely behind the movement became only too evident to the Austrian Government, from the behavior of the Czech and Slovak contingents that were sent to the front. At first they were sent to the eastern front, against the Russians. In at least several instances the Austrian defeats were due to the wholesale defection of the Czechs and Slovaks. On one occasion a whole regiment marched out of the Austrian trenches, with the regimental band playing a revolutionary march, and joined the Russians. So common became these desertions that finally the Czech and Slovak contingents were sent to the Italian front, where they were placed in positions entailing heaviest losses. To these losses the Austrian Government afterward pointed as proof of the loyalty of the Czech and Slovak troops. But throughout the war the disloyalty of these elements in the Austrian forces was a continuous source of military weakness, and accounted for their vast inferiority to the Germans.
The attention of the public of the Allied countries was first attracted to the national aspirations of the Czecho-Slovaks when, after the Russian disintegration following the Revolution (March, 1917), the Czech and Slovak contingents which had deserted on the eastern front suddenly emerged as the only remaining cohesive force in the Russian Army. They formed the backbone of the July offensive, which represented the last effort of the Kerensky Government to carry on the Russian operations against the Central Empires, but were not strong enough to make a success of this vast effort. Later, after the downfall of Kerensky's moderate Socialist Government, the Czecho-Slovaks refused to join the Bolsheviki and received permission from the latter to make their way to western Europe through Siberia. Regretting this promise, the Bolsheviki endeavored to disarm the Czecho-Slovaks en route, whereupon the latter, asserting themselves, turned upon the Bolsheviki and succeeded in driving them out of a greater part of Siberia, and thus formed the backbone of the subsequent intervention of the Allies in Russia.
The brilliant exploit of the Czecho-Slovaks in Siberia attracted world-wide attention to them, and led to official recognition of their movement for independence by the Allies and the United
