The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 4/Two distinguished Slovak visitors

TWO DISTINGUISHED SLOVAK VISITORS.

In March and April the Slovaks of America had the pleasure of welcoming two delegates of the Slovak Parliamentary Club, the Rev. Ladislav Moyš, until recently chief of the Uzhorod District, and John Pocisk, member of the National Assembly.

While the Czechs have had a good many visitors during the past year, some of them with various official missions, the Slovaks of America had to be satisfied until now with reports of their own delegates as to conditions in the old country. Their only visitors from abroad were two men who came last winter to agitate for the policy of separation from the Czechs; they were not very successful in their object, but they managed to create some ill feeling and squabbles, especially in Slovak Catholic churches.

Though they claimed to represent the Slovak People’s (Catholic) party, they were repudiated by it, and the two visitors who arrived in March brought credentials from the Slovak Club in which all the Slovak political parties are represented. The Rev. Ladislav Moyš is a Roman Catholic priest who has ben a Slovak patriot during the days of Mayar rule, when to be a good Slovak involved much persecution. Upon the overthrow of Mayar rule he was placed in charge of one of the counties of Slovakia from which position he resigned prior to his mission to America. His companion John Pocisk is a workingman of Bratislava, a leader of the Slovak social democratic party. This partnership and good comradeship of a Catholic priest and a socialist leader is typical of conditions in the Czechoslovak Republic, where men of the most divergent political and religious views heartily co-operate with each other for the good of their country.

Father Moyš and Mr. Pocisk spoke practically every night since their arrival in March, and always to crowded meetings of their countrymen who were eager to hear from eye-witnesses a trustworthy account of the present conditions in Slovakia. They told their countrymen with reference to relations of Czechs and Slovaks that the Czechs had always ben ready to agree to any political demand of the Slovaks; but the Slovak leaders realized that only close union with Czech brothers would preserve the Slovaks from the aggressive designs of the Magyars. So while all local affairs in Slovakia are completely in the hands of the Slovaks themselves, it was not thought desirable to erect Slovakia into a separate province with its own diet, as the Slovaks of America originally planned it.

At a meeting of the Slovak League, held in Pittsburgh on April 9, a report to the same effect was made by Albert Mamatey, president of the League, with the result that the Slovak League approved of the manner in which the leaders of the Slovak nation arranged their relations with the Czechs. Thus the danger of a misunderstanding between the two branches of the Czechoslovak nation which the Magyars zealously tried to bring about has been fortunately done away with.