Word: czechs
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Eduard, save up your pence, For Adolf soon will be over the fence. So runs the insolent jingle which Nazi sympathizers among Czechoslovakia's German minority sporadically plaster on Czech frontier barriers. No one need explain to worried Czechs that Eduard is their president, Eduard Benes (pronounced Benesh), that Adolf is their neighbor, Hitler, that the fence is a cup-shaped chain of mountains along the Czech-German border, a chain about the height of Vermont's Green Mountains. Since the Sixth Century this fence has served as a barrier against the eastward push of Teutonic tribes...
...like the ancient Olympics, their background is strongly national. The Czechoslovak Sokol, oldest national gymnastic organization in the world, was founded in 1862 by Philosopher Author Dr. Miroslav Tyrs and Dr. Jindrich Fügner. The name Sokol, meaning falcon, was adopted because it is the traditional name for Czech folk-song heroes. During the years of Habsburg dominance, Sokol groups served to keep Czech nationalism alive. When the World War broke out members filtered into Allied armies, formed Sokol legions to fight their old masters. Today, the Sokol numbers some 800,000 men, women and children...
Thousands of Sokols in their flashing uniforms-shirts of Garibaldi red, grey Czech jackets slung from their left shoulders, little round red caps with falcon feathers-last week poured into Prague's big, bustling Masaryk and Wilson (named after Woodrow Wilson) railway stations, stomped out to the mammoth Masaryk Stadium,* high above the silvery Vltava River and the cathedral towers of the capital. There, in white jerseys and blue trousers and skirts, they twisted and bent in mass exercise. Before the month is over, 160,000 members will have participated in such elaborate drills...
This year's Congress, expected to draw a million Czech and foreign visitors, marks the 20th anniversary of the birth of the nation. An allegorical pageant, "Construction and Defense," to be performed by 3,000 members eight times during the Congress, will picture the republic's 20 years, the Sokol contributions to its development...
Birth, Czechoslovakia, some 600 miles long but only 45 to 175 miles wide, has four provinces. Were it a fish the head would be Bohemia, inhabited largely by Czechs with Germans predominating along the western Sudeten border. The body would be the provinces of Moravia & Silesia, largely Czech populated, and Slovakia, thick with Slovaks, who are Slavs like the Czechs. The tail would be Carpathian Ruthenia...