The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 2/America and the Slav Immigrants

by Jaroslav František Smetánka

America and the Slav Immigrants.

Our declaration of war against Austria-Hungary aroused a brief ripple of interest and comment, but no excitement. We were already pledged to the vigorous prosecution of the war for liberty with all our resources, and the formal recognition of the Hapsburg Empire as an enemy did not double our task nor make our individual burdens heavier.

But it brought America face to face with a puzzling problem. What about the immigrants from Austria-Hungary? Emperor Charles has more subjects here than Emperor William. Although the natives of Germany outnumber the natives of the Dual Empire in the United States, the former are for the most part naturalized, while among the latter, comparatively recent arrivals as they are, a large majority are still aliens. Of the many races of Austria, Bohemians alone compare favorably with the Germans in naturalization percentages. On December 7th hundreds of thousands of Bohemians, Slovaks, Poles, Ruthenians (Little Russians), Croatians, Slovenians, Serbians, Roumanians and Italians became the enemies of America at the moment President Wilson signed the declaration of war. At least so runs the legal theory which in this case, as in so many others, cannot be squared with undeniable facts.

The truth is—and the authorities in Washington, as well as all intelligent Americans are aware of it—that the Slavs, Roumanians and Italians of Austria-Hungary hate the cause of Germany far more bitterly and passionately than native-born citizens to whom Europe is only a name. Our government has found it necessary at first to institute a campaign of education, because the people as a whole did not realize the great issues of the war. But to the Austrian Slav you do not have to explain what militarism is: he remembers the haughty lieutenants strutting around the streets of his native city, rattling their sabres, ogling the women and shoving aside the plain citizens like cattle. The Austrian immigrant knew what Kultur was long before Americans heard that there was such a word. And three years ago, when America looked on the outburst of the slaughter as something that could not concern her, the Czechs and Poles and Jugoslavs and all these other immigrants were full of rage, because their own near relatives over there were driven to death for the greater glory of the House of Hapsburg and of the chosen German race. When finally, alas, so late, this great republic took its share in the great fight for the preservation of democracy and civilization, the Slav and Latin immigrants rushed into the recruiting stations anxious to do not their bit, but their all. Attorney General Gregory stated at a dinner in Chicago on December 16th that in this matter of volunteers the best showing in comparison to their numbers was made by the Bohemians.

That President Wilson realized the injustice of treating the nominal subjects of Charles, resident here, as alien enemies is evident from his proclamation of December 12th. He places no ban upon the natives of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and avoids applying to them the term of alien enemy. Unlike the Germans, the Austrian subjects are free to travel anywhere within the United States and need not register, so long as they remain loyal. Bohemians and the other Slavs and Latins are grateful to the president for his confidence in them and for his generous treatment of them. But the proclamation applies to German and Magyar subjects of Austria-Hungary, just as much as to those whose sympathies are with the United States, and it does not solve the problems raised by our declaration of war against the ally of Germany.

Take the matter of naturalization. Even though the president does not call the unnaturalized Slavs alien enemies, they are so as a matter of law and are prevented from becoming citizens of the United States during the continuance of the war. That is rather hard on thousands of applicants who have properly filed their applications, paid their fees, passed the preliminary examination and investigation, but found themselves turned into enemies, as they awaited the passing of the necessary ninety days. But that is small matter. It if far harder, it is very unfair to tens of thousands of these unwilling subjects of the Hapsburg Empire who are serving in the American army. They came forward voluntarily, proud to fight under the flag of this great country, eager to do their share. Later on other tens of thousands were drafted

Italian Court (Vlašský Dvůr) in Kutná Hora.

Italian Court (Vlašský Dvůr) in Kutná Hora.

into the national army. And now all these “Austrians” in Uncle Sam’s uniform are transformed by the stroke of pen into enemies. Under the present law they cannot become citizens. What are you going to do with them? Then there are many more thousands of these “enemies” on the registration lists. In some districts in Chicago or Pennsylvania they actually make up a majority of the registrants. They will not claim exemption as alien enemies; no fear of that. But the provost marshall was obliged under the law to instruct the local boards not to send to the training camps any one who is an alien enemy, whether he claims exemption or not. That means that in many districts American citizens in the deferred classes, men with families, will be called out in the next draft, while other be called out in the next draft, while in other districts only men without dependents will be selected.

There is a simple remedy for all this unfairness both to the alien and to the American registrant. Less than 20% of the Austro-Hungarian subjects in this country are Germans and Magyars who alone deserve to be classed as enemies, because their kinsmen on the other side fight willingly on the side of our enemies. All the rest, the Bohemians, Slovaks, Poles, Ruthnians, Jugoslavs, Roumanians, Italians, hope for the victory of the Allies. Take away from imigrants of these races the stigma of alien enemy.

Before the House of Representatives there is now pending a joint resolution introduced by Representative Sabath of Illinois, covering this very point. It provides in brief that the Slav and Latin races of Austria-Hungary, enumerating them, shall be expressly declared not to be enemies, and that men of these races resident here shall be eligible to serve in the army and shall be subject to the draft. Of course, the Austrian government will not admit the right of its subjects to expatriate themselves and swear allegiance to an enemy, and when the first Bohemian or Croatian or Roumanian soldier in the American army is captured somewhere on the Italian front, the Austrian authorities will be tempted to execute him. But the threat of reprisals on the part of the American government, as well as the danger of an outburst among the subject races, will prevent any barbarities by Austrian generals.

A law, such as the Sabath resolution, will do more than remedy an unjust and awkward situation. It will have a great effect on the internal situation in Austria. The fact is, unfortunately, that President Wilson’s carefully correct reference to the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the same address in which he asked for a declaration of war was bound to have an adverse effect on the sentiments of the majority of the Hapsburg subjects. Imagine the mental processes of the Bohemians, for instance, during the year that just passed. When it opened, they were ground down by ruthless military rule, their leaders in prison or exile or grave, their newspapers muzzled, political life suspended, their men slaughtered on far away battlefields in a hateful cause, their own bellies empty most of the time—and all of that misery due to their rulers. On January 10 comes the glorious news that the Allies with whom the Czech people sympathized from the very beginning, promised to liberate the oppressed races of Austria-Hungary from foreign domination. A little later comes the great news of the Russian revolution, and as a consequence of it the relaxation of the police regime in Austria, reopening of the parliament and a new political life. And now, rejecting promises of autonomy, spurning threats and blandishments, the Bohemian deputies lead a determined opposition in the Vienna Parliament and boldly demand an independent Czechoslovak state. No pressure of any kind could induce the Czechs to repudiate the promise extended to them by the Allies. Rejecting promises of constitutional reform they took the stand that the Bohemian question could not be settled in Vienna, but belonged before the peace conference. And now, at the end of the year, so momentous in the history of Bohemia, President Wilson, the one man in whom Bohemian hopes were centered, declares that “we do not wish in any way to impair or to rearrange the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is no affair of ours what they do with their own life either industrially or politically.”

We who know the real sentiments of the President, the many difficulties of his exalted position, the widely different and widely scattered audiences to all of whom his speech was addressed, feel that the President of the United States is not callous to the sufferings of the subjects races of Austria-Hungary under the tyrany of their German and Magyar rulers. But over there on the Danube the people cannot know all that. Very naturally Count Czernin made the most of the president’s language, taunting the poor Slavs with their reliance upon foreign statesmen who only use the Austrian races as pawns in a game. If the Slavs and Latins of the Dual Empire become convinced that the Allies are indifrerent to their fate, could we blame them, if they made terms with their German rulers?

Intimations are heard now that the Allies, probably through the mouth of President Wilson, will restate their war aims, in reply to the German-Bolsheviki peace terms. Surely it is not possible that they would say less than they did a year ago when they promised to liberate the Slavs, Italians, Roumanians and Czechoslovaks from foreign domination. But pending any such authoritative pronouncement, a resolution passed in the Congress of the United States declaring the Slavs and Latins of Austria to be friends will encourage wonderfully the dejected spirits of the victims of German-Magyar oppression. It is time for America and her Allies to realize that they have little to hope from the ruling races and from the emperor of Austria, but that thirty-two million Austro-Hungarian subjects will use every means to further the cause of the Allies, if only they feel sure that the Allies will not abandon them in the end.

Let America declare that while it considers Germans and Magyars, the two nations of oppressors, to be her enemies, it looks upon the Slavs and Latins of Austria-Hungary as friends.

J. F. S.