leading to the Hussite movement and subsequent wars."
The hero and the first martyr of this movement was John Hus.
Count Lützoff rightly remarks: "It is probable that the national and religious aspirations of Bohemia would not have attained the world-wide importance they now possess had it not been for John Hus, who is without doubt the most prominent representative of the Czecho-Slav race in the whole of history."
Dr. W . N. Schwarze, in a monograph on Hus which has just appeared, puts the date of the birth of this great Czech reformer at 1369 or 1373, Count Lützoff and others as 1373 or 1375. He was born in the village of Husinec near Prachatice in the southern part of Bohemia and close to the Bavarian border.
"The place of his birth," says Schwarze, "is deserving of notice in that the racial strife which plays so great a part in Bohemian history always raged most fiercely where the domains of Germany and Bohemia meet." So from his early youth John Hus was, so to say, in the middle of the struggle, and his keen intelligence, early awakened, must have been busy with the thought how best to oppose German influence. He took his inspiration from the people.
After completing his elementary and secondary studies in the provincial schools he repaired to Prague, where he took his Master's degree in the University in 1396. Bohemian histories are silent as to the cause which led John Hus to select the faculty of theology for his study. But there seems
