pressed, the minds of the people quieted down, and only here and there a few immature young priests tried to excite the people against the laws and against our Czech brothers. These disturbers were properly dealt with by church authorities.
I am convinced that when bishops are appointed to the vacant sees in Slovakia, discipline will be restored among Catholic priests, and in place of the present anarchy there will be peace and order in the Catholic Church.—There are good hopes that the question of new bishops will be settled soon and that the Holy See will fully meet the desires of the Czechoslovak Republic.
For the last few weeks certain mewspapers wrote much of the ministry for the administration of Slovakia, and other newspapers in Slovakia demanded reconstruction of this ministry. I wish to avoid a discussion of this topic, but I must say that some of the papers went beyond what wes fair, that they described conditions in Slovakia as if Slovakia was going to pieces or as if it was about to separate from the Bohemian lands. This alarm was due to ignorance and was perfectly unnecessary; neither had it any other effect than to furnish foreign states with false news from our own sources which tended to injure the republic.
Slovak politicians, especially from the social democratic side, submitted a plan for the reconstruction of the department for the administration of Slovakia. I welcome the plan, just as I would welcome any plan that would tend to improve our administrative efficiency. The suggestion to form an advisory committee may be worked out so as to have in the department a committee of professional councillors, representing various parties; here would be taken up all questions of administration and political life. I shall prepare soon a detailed plan on this line.
As far as Carpathian Russia is concerned, a commission has been sent out to determine the language boundary between Slovakia and the autonomous province of Carpatho-Russia.
The enumeration of the population of Slovakia was carried out without any incidents. The completed figures brought no surprise to the Slovaks. What we knew of Magyar statistics long before this was now openly proved. The present census proved that the natural increase of Slovaks was kept up steadily. The total population as ascertained at the recent census is 2,940,374; Slovaks number 1,940,980 (66.3%), Magyars 665,703 (22.7%), Germans 143,322 (4.7%), Rusins 134,762 (4.5%), all others 55,308 (1.8%). Thus Slovakia is by an overwhelming majority Slovak and it belongs primarily to the Slovak people. Now let our people realize this numerical superiority and resolve that in the future they will lead in their own territory not merely in numbers, but also in wealth and power. Let the Slovaks take possession of the heritage which just fate awarded to them, and let them make up in the twentieth century for what they lost in the last thousand years through adverse circumstances and the enmity of foreigners.
HALEK’S EVENING SONGS.
A regrettable error occurred in the last issue in the printing of Dr. Štýbr’s translation of Hálek’s Songs. Two stanzas belonging to song No. 6 were misplaced so that they appeared in print as part of song No. 3. The two songs should have read as follows:
3.
Though all the world has gone to sleep,
The heart wakes in the body,
And God himself knows that the heart
Ne’er sleeps for anybody.
The whole God’s world is silence-bound,
The heart still goes, well rated,
And God himself knows that the heart
Gets never fatigated.
Sleep is the conqueror of thought,
Night is day’s alternation—
But in the breast the heart e’er wakes
And guards its love’s sweet passion.
6.
My sweethart, come, kneel down with me
Now is the time for us to pray—
The moon has risen o’er the woods
And my time has just passed away.
But, darling, do not clasp Thy hands;
Embrace me as I Thee with mine—
And thus, instead of clasping hands,
Two hearts will in one prayer join.
Thy lips then press Thou close to mine;
From one mouth let the prayer rise—
Let me the words press on Thy lips,
And Thou send them to paradise.
Our prayer shall be strong, indeed,
Our offer purest in that case—
For angels, too, when they do pray,
Are praying just in such embrace.
In view of the fact that the French government will open offices in New York, Chicago and other cities for the purpose of attracting tourist trade to French resorts and battlefields, it would seem advisable for the Czechoslovak Government to advertise the famous watering places of the Republic, like Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad). Even the poor, bankrupt Vienna is advertising its hotels in American daily papers.
