ABSTRACT
Bounded by the slow Danube River on the south and by the rugged Carpathian Mountains on the north, the ancestral land of the Slovak people lies at the axis of Western civilization. For centuries, the vast armies of Attila, Genghis Khan, the Turks, the Germans, and the Russians have risen like a tide toward Europe and in due course have been broken in or near the mountains of Slovakia. In the ninth century, Saints Cyril and Methodius established there the Byzantine influence of the Cyrillic alphabet and the Old Slavonic liturgy; but ambitious German rulers later imposed the Latin language, in order to draw Slovakia back toward the West. The rivers of Slovakia run southward and the cultivation of grapes makes Slovakia a wine-drinking nation; the sensibility of the Slovaks is partly Mediterranean and partly Nordic. For two thousand years, the Slovak people, often to their woe, have abhorred large governmental units and preferred local rule. For a thousand years they have endured almost unbroken political oppression.
