Word: wenceslaus
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...election eve, Czechoslovakia's slightly right-of-center National Socialist Party edified voters with a great protagonist of Western culture, Mickey Mouse; they screened Disney pictures in front of their party building. On the other side of Prague's Wenceslaus Square, the Communists showed newsreels of murder and torture in German concentration camps. Mickey lost...
...whole, were not unruly. Small groups, chiefly students, ventured an occasional "Heil Benes!" or "Heil the Republic!," but most celebrants merely walked the streets silently, wearing black neckties and armbands, and occasionally Czech colors and Masaryk caps. Police ripped off these symbols of mourning and hope. Czechs made for Wenceslaus Square, for centuries their gathering place in times of emotion. They found it blocked off by mounted police and gendarmes...
...Wenzel Number Four" is an English allusion to 14th Century King Wenceslaus IV of "Bohemia whose exploits included not only harpooning maidens young and spry but also ordering that his Queen's confessor, the legendary St. John of Nepomuk, should be thrown into the vltava for refusing to reveal to His Majesty something which Her Majesty had confided to the saint at confessional...