There is something perverse, sly and decadent in this. A gift for the country's independence day, perhaps? From the very start, the cathedral has served as a symbol of Czech statehood. Charles IV donated it to "all good Czechs." In the 19th century people collected money to finish its construction regardless of their faith. The cathedral safeguards the crown jewels and serves as a final resting place of many Czech kings. Can it be that the key point of rich Czech history would be settled with one judge and her decision? Of course not; the state will appeal. Prime Minister Jirí Paroubek said he would have a legal analysis made on the subject. The first "property" register regarding the cathedral, from Dec. 5, 1874, states only that the land on which it stands belongs to the cathedral. We can assume from this that the cathedral belongs to Prague Castle, which belongs to the state. Three communist-era legislative norms from the 1950s were based on this — the cathedral has been declared property of the state and its people. In April 1999 the Constitutional Court based its decision on the same facts when it decisively rejected the chance to abolish this legislation. In December 1996 the Catholic Church gave up its rights to the cathedral "to the benefit of the nation," sacrificing something that never really belonged to it. A dirty trick there — the Catholic Church never meant to end its legal struggle for the cathedral. Cardinal Miroslav Vlk says, "The time of our willingness is over." How can we see an end to something that never existed? The Catholic Church never had any such goodwill. And never had the cathedral either, Hekrdla writes.

Oct. 28, independence day, is the time when many look back to Czechoslovakia's First Republic (1918–38), praising how developed its democracy and economy were; but the fact is that the First Republic was no picnic, Tomás Krystlík writes in Mladá fronta Dnes Oct. 27.

One of the myths is that of a shining example of democracy. The system offered high standards of individual freedom but much less of it to the country's minorities. The agricultural land reform was passed by a parliament that hadn't been elected and one in which minorities had no representatives. The state language law made it possible to sack minorities from civil service. MPs had to obey political party leadership decisions, and those who refused were forced to leave Parliament, as they had to sign a resignation document prior to assuming their seats. Czechs were left-oriented and had the highest number of communist party members per one million citizens in the world. The presidential budget was used to cover private debts of those close to the Castle, and the president himself kept numerous informers who supplied him with news of those who planned to oppose his policies. Among them was popular writer Karel Capek, who wrote in the Soviet daily Pravda in June 1936, "The Soviet Union is creating a new form of democracy and [Stalin's] new constitution amounts to progress for the entire world," Krystlík writes.