[Half-tone one column-one sixty-fourth of a page, view of John Huss]

As previously announced, the Bohemian pamphlet has already appeared. Today we take pleasure in announcing that the English pamphlet also is now available. Both are by Professor Josef Jiri Kral of Washington, D. C.

The publication of these pamphlets is perhaps the chief individual accomplishment in the effort to perpetuate [the world's] appreciation of that great man and great Bohemian, John Huss, whose five hundredth anniversary is being celebrated this year.

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We are leaving to persons better qualified than we are the task of passing judgment on the merit of these pamphlets; but one thing is certain: The pamphlets are the only John Huss literature of this type printed in the United States. The price is very low,--five cents a copy for either edition, Bohemian or English.

Our Free Thought associations have been circularized during the last week or so with invitations to send in their orders for these pamphlets. Perhaps we should not have mentioned this matter at all were it not for the big disappointment which we have experienced in these first few days after mailing our letters. The orders have been few and small.

Now our request to our associations to buy these pamphlets for their membership is simply one among the many appeals which have swamped these organizations for months. It frequently happens that our associations, in order to save money and to avoid argument as to which appeals for support shall be answered, 3and which shall not, simply table the whole lot, a procedure which would at this time also table our attempt to provide members with educational and patriotic reading. How easy it would be to arrange it so that every member would have his copy of the pamphlet! Every association could order as many pamphlets as it has members; the cashier would have them in readiness when the members came to pay their dues and could either add the price of the pamphlet to the member's bill or ask him to buy a copy. We are certain that nobody would refuse; everybody would buy. With just a little co-operation everything can easily be arranged. An action of that kind would prove that we are not liberal on paper only.

The combined committees in rural towns making preparations for the John Huss anniversary celebration should be using our pamphlets also and should order them in larger quantities. Lots of one thousand copies and more are sold at a large discount.

Will the membership of our Free Thought organizations do their duty?

(Signed) The Secretary 4Manifestation Parade July 5

Within a few days the following letter will be mailed to all associations recognized as belonging to the Free Thought group:

"Dear Brothers and Sisters,

"As you no doubt know, the Free Thought organizations of Chicago are getting ready for the solemn celebration of the anniversary of John Huss's martyrdom.

"In addition to the publication of picture post cards, pictures, and pamphlets and the organization of the ceremonies to be held in the Auditorium on July 5, the Ustredni Sdruzeni has decided to prepare a demonstration in the form of a huge parade.

"In order to make this demonstration a success, we request your association to 5participate in the parade with all its membership. Arrange, please, to have every one of your members present.

"The parade will take place on Monday, July 5, at 6 P.M. and will march from the Anglicka Svobodomyslna Skola (English Free Thought School) on 18th Street, near May Street, to the park of the Pilsen Brewery.

"May we request you to tell us your decision concerning your participation in the parade, particularly if you have any suggestions to offer or expect to make any special arrangements to increase the impressiveness and the success of the demonstration?

"We ask you to do all that you can to promote our attempt to assemble all free-thinking Bohemian people in the parade of July 5, 1915, and in that way to help make the commemoration of the five hundredth anniversary of the martyr's death of John Huss a truly imposing and successful event. Na Zdar! (To success!)

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"For the Ustredni Sdruzeni Svobodomyslnych Spolku Pro Oslavy Husovy Roku 1915 in Chicago, Illinois,

"Frantisek Strunc, secretary, 1504 West 19th Street, Chicago, Illinois."

This letter should be brought up for discussion in the meetings of each association which receives it, and each association should make preparations to attend with its entire membership.

Who Has The Right To Participate In The John Huss Festivities?

To answer the question asked by the Ustredni Sdruzeni as to who has the right to participate in this year's festivities is not so easy as it may seem. To the average freethinking person the answer may seem obvious. Who else may claim the right to celebrate John Huss's Anniversary but freethinking men and women? But a deeper analysis leads to the conclusion that no single nation 7nor any single party, sect, class, or spiritual or moral conviction has that right exclusively. If we consider the burning of John Huss five hundred years ago as a five-hundred-year-old wrong as yet unrighted, which just men seem to hear calling aloud for rectification on this rare and great occasion, we shall not be satisfied with so superficial an answer.

Let us first consider who all those are who claim the right to celebrate the anniversary of John Huss. Among them are all the patriotic Bohemians who consider John Huss the greatest Bohemian of the Middle Ages. Born in southern Bohemia of very plain parents, he did not have a drop of foreign blood in his veins. His Bohemian heart and soul were not tainted by any foreign influence. His Bohemian nationality was as pure and as natural as the Bohemian mountain air which he breathed as a child in the foothills of the Bohemian Forest. He did not need any artificial impregnation with his country's spirit or any formal training to become a good Bohemian. He was Bohemian, purely Bohemian, by his 8very nature, just as a rose is a rose by its own nature and cannot be anything else. He was Bohemian to the root and to the core of his being.

When he learned how to use his Bohemian brain, when his heart began to burn with Bohemian fire, his thoughts and his feelings were as naturally and as spontaneously Bohemian as the murmur and the rustle of the wind over Bohemian meadows and through Bohemian forests, or the light spread by the full moon over the thatched roofs of a Bohemian village. Natural and spontaneous was his love of the Bohemian countryside, of Bohemian life, of the Bohemian language that his mother taught him to speak, a mother who neither knew nor cared to knew any other tongue.

Such was his youth, the youth of which were derived his Bohemian manner of thinking and his Bohemian impulses.

When he came to Prague to get his education, he found that in the Kingdom of 9Bohemia, in its capital of ancient glory, in its schools of high learning, founded after the Parisian model which allows precedence to the native students and gives first consideration to the spiritual and intellectual progress of the home folks, foreign elements and foreign currents had been usurping the control. Huss's Bohemian nature revolted against this injustice. He began to defend the rights of Bohemians and did not stop until their victory was assured, and the administration of the University was returned to the Bohemians. His later activities, especially his preaching in the Bethlehem Chapel and his efforts at reform, resulted in the removal of the reactionary German aldermen from the Prague city hall. These two deeds had an important repercussion throughout the Kingdom. All through the country the aggressiveness of the imported German element was checked.

John Huss preached in the Bohemian language and no doubt used it as well as Latin in his classes and his lectures at the university. He wrote many books and pamphlets in Bohemian in order to give to the Bohemian people good wholesome 10reading for their better education. He corresponded in the Bohemian language with many masters and doctors at the University, with many prominent citizens, and with many members of the foremost noble families of the land, thus reinstating the Bohemian language in the highest walks of life and among scholars and sages; and all this he did without any noisy pretense of nationalistic endeavor, quite as naturally as he lived his spontaneously Bohemian life.

Thus the Germanization of many a town was halted, and the administration was put back into the hands of the natural owners of the land. The immigrant Germans had either to retire or to become Bohemian, and the result was that the Bohemian nation flourished and grew strong.

These are the reasons why all Bohemian patriots claim the right to commemorate John Huss.

However, were not Huss's noble ambition to elevate his nation and his activities aimed at this result derived both of his untainted Bohemian nature and of 11his keen sense of justice, opposed to all violence and oppression? There are few men in history in whom that sense was so powerfully developed as in the character of John Huss.

Next after the patriots, those men who are interested in the cultivation and the purification of the Bohemian language and those who follow literary pursuits or [at least] are lovers of literature claim their specific right to a place in the official commemoration of John Huss. Huss not only greatly improved the Bohemian language by introducing a simplified spelling, using c, d, n, r, s, z to represent soft consonants, much easier than the Polish method of employing diphthongs as cz, rz, and sz; he also translated some parts of the Holy Bible into Bohemian and edited and rearranged the text of parts that had been translated before him, thus giving to the Bohemians most of the Scriptures in their native tongue before some other nations, greater and more powerful, had the Scriptures translated into theirs. He wrote and published a large number of tracts, thus providing good reading on the subject of ethics and books 12of religious character for his countrymen to meditate upon. Most of his works were written when he had been exiled from Prague and was living at Kozi Hradek (Kozi Castle) near Bechyne [town in southern Bohemia] and at the Castle of Krakovec near Rakovnik [also a town in southern Bohemia]. These writings were in great demand. Of course, Tomas Ze Stitneho (Thomas of Stitny) had written greater works than Huss; he was also a greater master of the Bohemian language and used a better and more subtle style. But Huss's writings could be read and understood by a simple man of no special education. Huss enriched the Bohemian religious and philosophical literature very considerably, and he awakened the love of good reading in the Bohemian people, so that later on, in the time of the Hussite Wars, Pope Eneas Sylvius found occasion publicly to praise the Bohemian country folk for their education. The linguistic and literary merits of John Huss are most fully appreciated by literary men, grammarians, and lexicographers; hence their esteem of Huss, and this esteem is not lessened when it happens that his admirers are of another religious persuasion than that of Huss. Among those active in literature in Bohemia 13there were especially at the time of our national renaissance, many Catholic clergymen of higher or lower rank, and they were always glad to give to John Huss full credit for his linguistic and literary achievements.

(To be continued,)