English Translation

Rudolf B e r a n in the Venkov of l.I.1939. "National Unity" (excerpt). "In those days of national tragedy, thanks went through my mind about the different sides of the people's schematics. How diverse, visible and different it is from the history of other peoples ... It contained more tragedies than were to be endured in order to maintain faith in its own people's life. Rarely were the times of peace and happiness, there were many more chapters of peace, humiliation, its own bloody conflict and struggles with the strangers, the victories alternated with severe defeats. We experienced fierce religious struggles with us and with the whole world at that time. We were a tributary state against foreign countries and at the same time part of another empire; how much defiance and villen had to be brought up to resist the seductionist strangers! We had our own rulers and cried out to strangers, we were in bondage to one another, and we returned to the frontier stone of freedom; in freedom we were again in error and old disunity. We have often missed and could not even break the intransigent spirit of national conscience for a thousand years. "