English Translation

9 would have mixed many times and in the narrowest possible way with each other, if not the Czech people had taken in extremely much German blood and thus so much understanding for German culture. I can hardly represent all these cultural attachments better than by a quote from a Czech newspaper editorial by the chief author Jan Scheinost published a few days ago in the "Narodni Politike" of January 1944 entitled "Schick- sal und Vortrag". I would like to repeat this quote a little longer, because I assume that the words of a Czech in this case are more convincing than if a German says such a thing. Jan Scheinost writes among other things: "The focus of our destiny was and remains in Central Europeanism. And this is not only political and social, but also ideal. We experienced all the spiritual struggles, profits and losses of the German people in the same way as no other of his national neighbours, we paid for his losses, we profited from his spiritual changes, etc." Further: "If we leave aside the fact that, except for very few exceptions, we experienced the Gothic age in one breath with the Germans, so to speak, we must notice that, for example, the German Reformation of Luther found in us incomparably more followers than the Swiss or French, and that the first English Reformation, which by Wicleff, who was the leading spiritual motive of the Hussite wars, almost brought our people into a catastrophe, and it was a miracle that this did not happen. And later on who it was the German and not French Romanticism, Herder and not Rousseau, and the German idealism of Hegel, who enlightened the best Czech minds and therefore also had a decisive influence on Czech cultural life. Today it will be many years that V.B. Nebesky's "Antipods", "Protichüdci", which has not yet been well recorded and appreciated, appeared. We read with astonishment her wonderful verses and we can see with what a fierce and ardent creative passion German idealism filled this great Czech poet. The most interesting, however, are the later years of the 19th century: We did not digest English liberalism