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Show oo WHERE THE RUSSIANS ARE WELCOMED. As the Jlussian soldiers pass over the Carpathian range into Hungary, they meet with friendly greetings :rom the people, as the inhabitants of the uplands are Slavs with an intense hatred for the Magyar or Hungarian This region is known as Slovakland. where 2.500,000 Slovaks have resisted L during a thousand year6, the efforts of the Hungarians to assimilate them. In a description of that part of the war zone, the Geographic Society, in us latest bulletin, says: "Through all thp centuries that have elapsed since the establishment of the Magyar power in Europe, the Slovaks Slo-vaks have held the position of a conquered con-quered and subject people. Their conquerors, the Magyars, have looked upon them as an Inferior race, and have seldom spared their sensibilities. sensibili-ties. The Slovaks are a heavy, peaceful, peace-ful, poverty-dulled people though, true to tbeir race Instincts, they have resisted re-sisted successfully all attempts of the ruling nation toward assimilation, and they have remained a foreign, despised, de-spised, and neglected element on the fringe and within the administration of the Magyar kingdom. "The bulk of this folk, pushed against the northern mountain, lies behind a line drawn from Pressburg eastward through Zemplin to the Ga-lician Ga-lician border. Practically all of this region is composed of wooded mountains moun-tains and broken hills, and is of such a nature that unremitting labor within with-in Its confines brings in a competence, but never the reward of wealth. Thus. , the Slovaks have had little material , aid with which to carry on their strug gle with the Maygars. Their resistance resist-ance has been made In poverty; has been largely passive, but, nevertheless, neverthe-less, has had a stolid. Immobilp quality qual-ity which has defied misfortune. "The Slovaks occupied the territory where they are found today between the sixth and seventh centuries They were one of the most helpless of all tho forward waves or Slav migration. In language, they were most nearly related to the Czechs of all the Slav? Czechish was. for a long time, used as the literary language of the Slovaks. Slo-vaks. Tempermentally, however, the I nctl and the Slovak contrast sharply; sharp-ly; for tho Czech is fiery, excitable, and quick where the Slovak is docile, stolid and slow. "The Slovaks are a peasant people Their aristocracy long ago submitted to thp power, the wealth and the high er culture of the Maygnr. and became thoroughly Maygarized. The peafi-lants. peafi-lants. indifferent In their want, continued con-tinued in a close corporation of Sla-ism Sla-ism In their mountain villages. Despite De-spite the development in recent uen eratlons of a determination on the part of the ruling Maygars to fore1 the Slovaks to merge into the May-gar May-gar race at any cost these peasants have retained their Slavonic tongue, Slavonic names, and. even, have pained pain-ed a keener sense of racial integrity "The Maygars have forbidden the use of Slovak in the schools. They have denied these people the right ef organization. 8 native press and a native pulpit but In vain. For, at the beginning of the 10th century, enthused en-thused b? B like movement among Austria's' subject Czechs, the Slovak leaders wrought a literary language out of the Jumble of their native dialects, dia-lects, and began the work ot mom than 100 years of awakening and In tensifying in their people a racial patriotism pa-triotism This work has accom plished wonders in the fate oi" an unrelenting un-relenting opposition. Slovak numbers num-bers are too few to encourage dreams of independence, and, so. of all tHe Slavonic peoples without the fold of Russia, the Slovaks are perhaps the most whole-heartedly in favor or the nan Slavism program." |