The Story that Christoph Willibald Gluck was of Czech extraction is an old one and goes back to Gluck himself. The learned librarian of the Premonstratensian Monastery on Strahov hill in Prague, Bohumír Jan Dlabacz, in his Lexicon of Bohemian Artists, which is based for the most part on reliable information, says that Gluck, “the famous reformer of French music,” was born on July 4, 1714, in Weydenwang, Upper Palatinate, not far from the Bohemian frontier; and that “in Bohemia, especially in Prague, he laid the foundations of his musical education. Excelling in his ability to play different instruments, he found, in aristocratic Czech circles, some benefactors who supported him — as he often mentioned — in a lavish way. For this reason everywhere and through all his life he called the Czechs his compatriots and benefactors.” The first biographer of Mozart, František Xaver Nêmeček (Niemetschek) mentions in 1798 that Mozart met Gluck, “a Bohemian by birth” in Vienna. Also in Italy, Gluck was called, like Mysliveček, “il divino Boemo” — “the divine Czech.”

Because it is a “most favored” nation, and one sensitive to distress in parent lands of the many population strands woven into its life pattern, the United States has a firmly established reputation for international philanthropy.

This tradition for world-wide generosity is well maintained today. The President's War Relief Control Board has a war relief agency registered for virtually every one of our fighting or Axis-occupied allies, and even for one erstwhile enemy, Italy. Other organizations cut across national lines to aid the refugees, war prisoners and other dislocated groups of the entire continent of Europe.

A quarter of a century after I left my native country, I had a unique chance to rediscover Russia. As one of the officers accompanying Major General Donald H. Connolly of the Persian Gulf Command on a mission to Russia early this year, I travelled for weeks across that war-torn country. We enjoyed an unprecedented opportunity closely to inspect its three great cities, Leningrad, Moscow, and Kiev, which Hitler had coveted so much.

Kiev actually endured German occupation for more than two years. Moscow flung back the Nazi hordes from its very gates but, most heroic of all cities, Leningrad withstood the most terrible siege in history and is only now resuming its new life.

In Newspapers and in magazines, as well as in books (including The Encyclopaedia Britannica and The American Year Book) these two spellings are encountered, and a divergence of opinion exists as to which of the two is more correct or more desirable. The following explanatory remarks may be useful, as an unpretentious voice from the past, to those who will be in charge of bringing about a satisfactory solution of Central European problems. These remarks are not prompted, in the slightest degree, by the spirit of antagonism or animosity; on the contrary, they are intended as a contribution toward the removal of controversies, from a wider and more exact perspective, based on personal travels and experiences in Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Slovakia, including the period September 10–25, 1938.

The Purpose of this paper is to fill out, with items found in the United States, the portion of Professor Max Vasmer's chronicle, “Bausteine zur Geschichte der deutsch-slavischen geistigen Beziehungen, I,” published in the Proceedings of the Berlin Academy of Sciences for 1939, which deals with the German translator Talvj.

The Bausteine of Professor Vasmer's study are, of course, the members of the first, and so far the greatest, generation of European scholars and men of letters, German and Slav, to take a serious interest in Slavic matters, especially in Slavic philology, antiquities, and and folk poetry. To this generation, it is unnecessary to point out, belonged on the Slavic side such figures as Dobrovský and Kopitar, Šafařík and Karadjich, on the German the brothers Grimm, the historian von Ranke, and even Goethe himself.

Mihaly Babits, modern Hungary's most erudite poet, represents (though he never participated actively in politics) the enlightened principles of Count Istvan Szechenyi, the nineteenth century statesman. Count Szechenyi was considered by Lajos Kossuth “the greatest Hungarian,” despite their political differences. Babits, Szechenyi-like, believed that politically, socially, economically, and culturally Hungary should be an equal of western Europe, without ignoring the obligations of her central and southeastern European geographical position.

Some ten years after Alexei Peshkov had won fame as a writer under the name of Maxim Gorki (Maxim the Bitter), he came to New York in the spring of 1906 to raise funds for the Bolshevik movement in Russia. During the disaster that followed, I was in close contact with him and I shall set down my memories here. But before I do, it may be worth while to sketch briefly my own Russian adventures up to that time, for they throw light on the widespread interest here in the early movements to set Russia free.

In Princeton I had hungrily read in translation Turgenev, Tolstoi, Dostoyevski, Gogol, Gorki and other great Slav realists, and also American George Kennan's books on the early Russian revolutionists, books widely read all over our land. Then, living for two years or more on the lower East Side in New York, I became a friend and admirer of Abraham Cahan and his Yiddish socialist daily, Die Forwaerts, and through him I met many Russian Social Democrats and Social Revolutionists. When old Katharine Breshkovskaya, known and loved as “Babushka” (little grandmother), after twenty-eight years in Siberia, came to New York on a speaking campaign, Cahan gave me the first long interview.

Russian ecclesiastical architecture presents a very interesting study in artistic geography, and its monuments typify, with unusual fidelity, the various episodes in the development of Russia itself. The lusty northern strength, the mystical Byzantine piety, and a haunting orientalism are all expressed in the church buildings, and the long development which brought them into organic architectural unity is a fascinating one to follow. Its theme is a curious counterchange of northern and southern elements, both affected (in varying degrees) by the East.

Christianity filtered into the old heart-land of Russia from the south, but the first churches of all, modest indeed, were doubtless built in the local northern “vernacular” architecture of shed-like units. Early evidence of various kinds indicates an underlying architecture of this sort in Ireland (seventh century), the Carolingian Empire (eighth century, figure 1), Britain (tenth century), and Scandinavia (eleventh century) — if not before, in each case.

The Loud Noise of applause sounded through the room. The improvisor's success exceeded the expectations of his hearers, and even his own. A theme had hardly been assigned him when exalted ideas and touching sentiments, expressed in sonorous verse, burst from his mouth like fantastic apparitions from a magic altar. The artist did not pause to think even for a moment: in one instant the idea came to birth in his head, went through all its periods of growth, and was transmuted into expression. The ingenious form of the piece, the poetic images, the elegant epithet, and the obedient rhyme, all appeared simultaneously. And this was not all: he was given two or three completely different subjects at once: he dictated one poem, wrote a second, and improvised a third. Each was beautiful in its own genre: one evoked rapture, a second moved to tears, a third made one die of laughter. But he seemed hardly interested in his work — he constantly made jokes and talked with the audience. All the elements of poetic composition were at his fingertips like men on a chess-board, which he moved carelessly, with only a perfunctory glance.

The multiplication of orientation and specialized courses (or parts of courses) on aspects of Soviet history, diplomacy, social policy, economics, government, and culture which seems likely to result from the present war and from the emergence of the U.S.S.R. as a world power of the first magnitude confronts American educators with related problems of some scope.

For the first time, the Western democracies find themselves in momentary friendly partnership with a nation actuated by an alien ideology which, until recently, led it to be critical of, if not aggressively hostile toward, the spirit of their political institutions. With respect to this nation, a marked cleavage of opinion has existed between those who are more or less disposed to accept its ideology as a fairly logical phase of human sociology and politics, and their opponents who, from experience, prejudice, or honest conviction, regard it with varying degrees of aversion as a political and social menace.

In order to understand the poetic and prophetic significance of Endre Ady, the Hungarian poet, it is not enough to point out the pure poetic aspects of his work. No doubt, his supreme contribution is that of a poet; but he pursued political dreams, he was influenced by social events, he knew the kind of despair and possessed the kind of discriminating intelligence which should make him interesting to the non-Hungarian world as the symbol of twentieth-century Hungarian psychology. However, to take cognizance of a poet whose references are often definitely local and whose subtle implications, though moving towards the ideal of universality, are primarily explorations of the problems of his own nation affecting his own person, makes it necessary to show him in relationship to the politics, literary trends and social structure of the time that preceded his writings and activities and in relationship to his own time.

Ady's progressive spirit was misunderstood by many of his contemporaries. In the “gilded age” of Hungary, from 1867 till the first decade of the twentieth century, there was a bewildering confusion or dilettante complacency about poetic and patriotic values. The moral will of the nation, strongly attached to the interests of the “historical classes,” the aristocracy and the gentry, stepped between those poets who abhorred the jargon of transitory slogans, and those who were affected by expediency or by nationalistic sentimentalism.

The original text of the Declaration of Lithuanian Independence, signed and proclaimed by the Lithuanian Council in Vilnius (Vilna) on February 16, 1918, was written in Lithuanian, a language which never before in the entire history of the Lithuanian nation had enjoyed the status of an official state language. The official documents of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania had been drawn up in Latin, White Russian, or Polish; and during the Russian domination of the nineteenth century the use of Russian was compulsory in all walks of life, while in Prussian Lithuania German held a similar though less brutally enforced position. Thus, the declaration of February 16, 1918, was not only an act of political but also linguistic liberation. Today the Lithuanians boast of a standard language in which everything interesting the human mind can be successfully discussed. A systematic catalogue of Lithuanian books published during the first two decades of Lithuanian independence was brought out in 1938 and contains about 7100 individual entries: Izidorius Kisinas, Lietuviškų knygų sistematinis katalogas (Kaunas, 1938). All the books listed in this catalogue are written in the standard language and bear testimony to the genius of the nation.

Among the riddles of which the early history of Kievan Russia is full, the origin of the name of its capital city occupies a prominent place. Ever since Tatishchev's day, scholars for nearly two centuries have continued to propound all sorts of hypotheses regarding the names Kiev and Sambat, but up to the present not one has been so convincing or authoritative as to command the support of even a small group of specialists.

Most recently, in a Festschrift honoring the distinguished Ukrainian historian Hrushevski, two articles were devoted to this vexing problem, the first by G. Ilinski on the topic “The Sambatas of Constantine Porphyrogenitus” and the second by M. Tershakovetz entitled “The Legend of Kii, Shchek, Khoriv, and their Sister Lybed.” Ilinski reviews all previous suggestions in explanation of the name Sambatas as used by Constantine Porphyrogenitus in the famous passage from The Administration of the Empire where the author, referring to the caravan of small cargo-boats assembled annually before the capital city on the Dnieper, writes, “They come down the river Dnieper and assemble at the strong-point Kioava, also called Sambatas.” Like the whole passage about the Russes, the latter place-name used by the Emperor derives from reliable official sources, and has given historians and philologists ample food for thought.

Their battalion had been put on a train in Paris and sent off to the east. They had taken along the things they had looted in France, French wine and French autos.

From Minsk they had marched to the front, leaving their autos behind for lack of gasoline. Drunk with German victories and French wine, they moved along the dusty roads of White Russia with the sleeves of their uniforms rolled up and their collars unbuttoned. Their helmets hung on their belts; their bare, sweaty heads were dried by the gentle sun and warm breeze of foreign Russia. There was still some wine swashing in their flasks, and the soldiers walked boldly down the streets of burned Soviet villages and loudly sang a boastful army song about a pretty French girl, Jeanne, and how she had never seen real soldiers or known real men until the Germans came to Paris.