Evening Star Newspaper, November 10, 1929, Page 100

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, NOVEMBER 10, 1929, UAn American College Professor, Who Became an Adventurer in Revolution, Here Tells the Dramatic Story of What Foreign Patriot Leaders Accomplished After Winning American Sympathy During the War. IBY HERBERT ADOLPHUS MILLER, Professor oj Sociology, Ohio State Universily. NPORTUNATELY one cannot tell a story in which he himself is involved without talking much about himself. How a professor in sociology in the Middle West became involved in revolutions both in Europe and Asia is a simple enough story when told step by stcp, but it would have been called an impossibl: tale be- fore it happened and is romantic and thrilling after it really did happen. Through it all I have remained a teacher whose main interest is observing how human beings behave under various ecndition in which they live. When I was at Dartmouth College more than 80 years ago I took a course which dealt with the races of the world according to the science that then prevailed. After 1 had been graduated I happened, for three years, to be thrown into close association with the race problem in America and got the ndtion that many of the old ideas were wrong, so0 I went tc Harvard to try to study it out. Dr. Yerkes, who more than 10 years later was largely responsible for the well known Army intelligence tests, which have since become known as “nut tests” by school children every- where. suggested that we work out tests com- paring whites, Indians and Negroes. After we had made a beginning of applying them, William James, the eminent philosopher, became interested and procured money with which I made an extended trip to schools through the Southland East to give the tests to the three races in large numbers. This was the first large-scale application of this method. . ‘After getting my Ph. D. degree at Harvard I taught various subjects in a Michigan college until 1911, when I went to the University of Chicago to find some way to enlarge my per- spective. It was suggested by one of the pro- fessors that I take up the study of a Bohemian immigrant as an example of a people with a long history who had been transplanted into a new environment. KNOWING not a thing about Bohemians, I , @ot every book in the library with the name in the title. All except two were in poetry and described how delightful is the Bohemian life with none of the conventions which hold ordi- nary life in rest: How the name which belonged to a very con- ventional people in the middle of Europe under the old Austro-Hungarian Empire came to be applied to unconventional living in western European cities is not exactly known, but prob- ably related to the fact that gypsies came from that general direction. It was this popular and misleading use of the name which later was largely responsible for the name, unpronouncsable by most Amer- icans, Czchoslovakia. In 1912 I went to Bohemia with a large dele- gation of American Bohemians. After spending three weeks in Prague, the capital, I was invited to visit for a week with a much-talked-about person called Professor Masaryk, who was then Summering in Moravia. Masaryk, who has now been president of the Czechoslovak Republic for 10 years, is one of the great statesmen of Europe and was then professor of sociology in the University of Prague. He was the sole representative of his party in the Austrian Parliament. Masaryk not only introduced me to the intri- cate social and political problems of Central Europe, but also to a profound philosophy of life. One time during the war he came to my office in Washington and after we had been discussing an apparently insoluble problem he said, “I have always considered idealism prac- ticable.” That is the present philosophy of a great and tried statesman now approaching his eightieth year. ‘ROM the Masaryk visit I went on to Poland, Russia and Finland. As a result of this Summer trip, just seven months before the out- break of the World War, I came to the con- clusion that it was inevitable that the map of Europe should be changed to conform to the national demands of peoples who were domi- nated by Germany and Austria-Hungary. I was too civilized, however, to dream that it would come through war, or so soon. ‘When the war began I was teaching at Ober- lin College, which had the advantage of being located very near Cleveland, a most interesting city to me because of the large number of immi- grants living there. By this time I had become convinced that there is no way adequately to deal with the immigrant except through a sympathetic under- standing of the peculiar historical experience of each group. The religious differences, espe- cially, must be explained by this experience. I found that though they came from Roman Catholic Austria, most of the Bohemians were either Freethinkers or lukewarm churchmen and that the Poles, who were their first cousins, but ruled by Protestant Prussia and Orthodox Russia, were the most devout Catholics in the world. On the basis of my familiarity with the vari- Foster Father of Czechoslovakia Herbert Adolphus Miller. “His efforts helped remake the map of Europe.” ous immigrant groups of Cleveland, I was asked, in 1915, to make a study of “The School and the Immigrant” in connection with the intensive school survey then being made in the city. Coming as it did just before the war, when immigrant education became important, my book was made the basis of a radical change in the method of dealing with immigrant educa- tion. Hitherto no attention had been paid ex- cept most crudely to their historical back- grounds, nor to the peculiar difficulties of fitting them imto American life, due to their Old World history. URING the Christmas vacation of 1917 I was invited to Camp Sherman, in Ohio, to talk to the soldiers on “How Germany treats subject peoples.” What I said seemed to be so new that the last of January I was invited to return and talk some more. g The day I arrived I found that an order had just been received from the War Department to discharge all “enemy aliens” who demanded it. I had lunch with Col. Hamm, the commander A listle-remymbered highlight of the World War. Scholarly C zechoslovakian President Masaryk signing, in front of Inde- e pendence Hall, the Independence Declaration revised and edited by American Sociologist Miller. of the depot brigade, in which there were more than 10,000 such aliens. I told him there was no one in America so anxious for the defeat of . the Central Powers as the Poles, Bohemians, - Slovaks, Rumanians and Jugoslavs, groups whose very names were unknown to most Americans and to many of the officers who commanded them. I suggested that if they could hear of the war aims as defined by President Wilson through some one who spoke their own language they . would not want to withdraw. At that time it was thought dangerous to let any one speak - anything but English. I agreed to be responsible for the speakers, The result was that after four meetings ad- dressed by a Pole, a Bohemian, a Rumanian and | a Croatian speaker, who explained the cause and . object of the war to his fellow nationals, more . than a thousand men who had asked for dis- . charge withdrew the request. . I returned to my teaching, thinking that my little knowledge of a part of Europe of which almost every one else at that time was ignorant had played all the part it could. HILE 1 was at Camp Sherman, Maj.. Gen. Glenn, the commander, was in France. On his return he spoke to a meeting of all the com= missioned officers telling them that unless a new eastern front could be established a vast num- ber of American lives would be sacfificed. He had Russia in mind as the eastern front. : Some one told him of my visit. He wrote me his analysis of the whole situation. I immedi- ately went down to Camp Sherman to see him, taking with me maps that I had made for use ° in my class on the immigrant. ; I showed him and his staff that from the ° Baltic to the Adriatic there was a continuous ° series of people who had been ruled against their wills and that their interest in the defeat of Germany and Austria was bs.sed on a strug- gle of centuries. I explained that immigrants - from theoe E countries had been subject -to a good deal of : browbcating as - “hyphenated =~ Americans,” whereas their very loyalty to the land of their ° birth was one of the best assets the allies had., : The War Department had been peculiarly brutal at times in its attitude toward them. g ‘What was needed was to get the co-operation - of these immigrants and let it be known that : President Wilson's recent declaration for the “self-determination of nations” actually meant their nations. - I immediately arranged a con- ° ference at division headquarters, to- which~ Paderewski and representatives _of the other national groups came. 3 Several of us went that night to Washing- ton to present the matter to the members of the committee on public information, They saw its value at once. Immediately the press be- - gan to write about a new Poland, Czechoslo= - vakia and Jugoslavia. News of this new and active interest -of America was dropped behind German-Austrian lines and had an immedi- ate effect in breaking-the morale of the troops of ¥¥e nationalities. IN June, 1918, Prof. Masaryk, who had been elected president of the Czechoslovak Nae= tional Council, which was recognized as the de facto government, came to Washington by way of Siberia. He had made in Russia the preliminary arrangements for the most re= Continued on Thirteenth Page