The end of the old year is approaching,and the New Year will soon be with us. The transition from one year to another is being used as an opportunity to give our best wishes to our relatives, friends, and all those with whom we are, in one way or another, associated.

This will be the second New Year's Day that millions of our blood sisters and brothers suffer through the privations of war, and still more from the oppression of the Austrian military.

It will be a sad New Year, in which the thousands of crippled, hundreds of thousands of widowed and orphaned, and thousands of imprisoned will be marching before the mental eyes of our horrified sisters.

There is only one thing being asked for by our nation--to be able to hope that, after all this privation and suffering, the nation may start living a happier, better, new life!

The war has proved to us here in America and to our people in the old country this one fact: that our nation is atoning for another's sins, paying for another's mistakes, and that it will continue atoning as it has heretofore as long as it does not have complete liberty, the right to self-determination and state autonomy, that is, in one word, independence.

In these days when the persecution is getting more and more determined and is reaching even the wives of our journalists and political leaders, it is necessary for Bohemian America to recognize her duty and to do it.

There is no better time for this than the present transition from one year to another!

Let every individual, every one of our national organization, make a contribution to the New Year's gift to the Bohemian nation which, in its entirety, will be presented to Professor T. G. Masaryk and Deputy Durich [member of Parliament], in order that they may be enabled to work in accordance with the recent proclamation of independence, and fight for the liberation of the Bohemian nation with sufficient means for the realization of the beautiful dream that now unites all good Bohemian men and women: the independence of the Bohemian nation!

Let us make our sacrifices gladly and in a happy spirit, and, instead of many empty talks, let us prove by deeds that we both wish and work for a better and happier future for our nation.

Brave Bohemians are fighting on Russia's vast steppes, on the fields of Northern France, and in the Balkans for Bohemian independence. They are shedding their blood far from their native land, far from their relatives 4and friends.

Even though they may be separated from us by a wide ocean, we are joined with them in one beautiful and sacred desire! They are dying; we are working--must be working--in order that their deaths may not be in vain!

Let us all get together and make our sacrifice for the benefit of the struggle for Bohemian independence!

All individual donations will be acknowledged by name and by Bohemian-American settlements, and the articles acknowledging the donations will express the thought that the donors are wishing better times and a happier future to the Bohemian nation. The management of this paper is one of the depositories of such donations.

Collection blanks will be sent, upon request, by the headquarters of the Ceske Narodni Sdruzeni (Bohemian National Alliance) at 3639 West 26th Street, Chicago, Illinois.