THE SPIRIT OF THOMAS G. MASARYK (1850-1937)

Also by George J. Kovtun

1HE CZECHOSLOVAK DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE: A History of the Document MASARYK AND AMERICA: Testimony of a Relationship MASARYKtJV TRIUMF

Also by Rene Wellek

A HISTORY OF MODERN CRITICISM (six volumes) THEORY OF LITERATURE (with Austin Warren) IMMANUEL KANT IN ENGLAND CONCEPTS OF CRITICISM ESSAYS ON CZECH LITERATURE THE MEANING OF CZECH HISTORY (editor)

The Spirit of Thomas G. Masaryk (1850-1937)

An Anthology

Edited by George J. Kovtun

Foreword by Rene Wellek Stirling Professor Emeritus Yale University

Palgrave Macmillan in association with the UK MASARYK PUBLICATIONS TRUST

ISBN 978-1-349-10935-7 ISBN 978-1-349-10933-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-10933-3 © Masaryk Publications Trust, 1990 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990 All rights reserved. For information, write: Scholarly and Reference Division, St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010

First published in the United States of America in 1990 ISBN 978-0-312-04017-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Masaryk, T. G. (Tomas Garrigue), 1850-1937. (Selections. 1990] The spirit of Thomas G. Masaryk (1850-1937): an anthology/ edited by George J. Kovtun: foreword by Rene Wellek. p. em. 'In association with the Masaryk Publications Trust.' Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-312-04017-8 1. Czechoslovakia-Politics and government. 2. Philosophy. 3. Philology. I. Kovtun, George J. II. Title. DB219l.M38A25 1990 943.7'032'092-dc20 89-24053

CIP

Contents Foreword by Rene Wellek vii

A Note on the Masaryk Publications Trust xvii

Chronology of Masaryk's Life and Work xviii

1 Introduction by George J. Kovtun 1 2 Plato and His Advice 11 3 Suicide and Faith in God 14 4 Pascal and His Dilemma 33 5 Language and Human Spirit 39 6 Philosophy and the Sciences 45 7 'We Want Equal Political Rights!' 53 8 Czechs and Their Awakening 61 9 Hus and Czech Destiny 85

10 Havlicek and Czech Politics 96 11 Palacky and Czech History 102 12 Religion and Modern Philosophy 114 13 Marx and His Mistakes 126 14 Schopenhauer and His Anger 145 15 Man and His Ideals 150 16 Democracy and Revolution 157 17 Titanism and Russian Literature 180 18 'Our People Is Free and Independent!' 191 19 New Europe 205 20 Czechoslovakia and the World 218 21 Thought and Life 237

v

vi Contents

Selected Biographical Glossary

Bibliography

Further Reading

Name Index

249 261 263 264

Foreword Rene Wellek

T. G. Masaryk is widely known as the first President of the newly founded Czechoslovak Republic. But far fewer people know that Masaryk was a distinguished philosopher. In his book on Suicide As a Social Mass Phenomenon, published in German in 1881, he very early diagnosed the crisis of Western Civilisation. In 1898, he pub­lished in German and Czech a close analysis of Marxism and its philosophical foundations. Masaryk had a profound knowledge of Russia and had studied the history and conflicts of ideas in two large volumes, published in German in 1913, at a time when the Czarist regime was still in power. As a political philosopher he formulated, early and openly during the First World War, the struggle between autocracy and democracy and sketched an ideal of the post-war arrangement of Europe which not only demanded the freeing of his own nation but the freeing of the whole zone of nations between Russia and Germany from Finland to Greece. Like many at that time, Masaryk hoped for a league of nations, an eventual European federation and, in the distant future, a federation of all mankind.

It is however a paradox of history that Masaryk's writings were almost totally unknown to the French, Italian, British, and American public. The only people in the West who had some idea of Masaryk's intellectual eminence were the British journalist Henry Wickham Steed, who had written a highly critical book on Austria in 1913 and Robert Seton-Watson, the Scottish historian, who in Racial Problems of Hungary (1908) had sharply attacked the policy of Magyarisation and defended the rights of the suppressed minorities, Slovaks, Rumanians, and Serbs. Masaryk knew them from his meetings in Vienna, where Masaryk visited frequently as a member of the Austrian Parliament (Reichsrat).

In the early months of the war, Masaryk managed to establish contacts in France, Italy, Great Britain, and Russia and to bring together the Czech deputies, whatever their differences and disagree­ments, in support of propaganda abroad for independence, although prospects of future actions were necessarily vague. They depended on the events on the battlefield and the general course of the war which many thought could not go on for more than a few months.

vii

viii Foreword

The Russians were for a time in possession of Lwow and Przemysl and threatened to invade the Bohemian kingdom. The French only with difficulty averted the German march on Paris, the Italians were still neutral. Masaryk's or rather his followers' memoranda were shelved. Only after the defection of the Prague regiment at Dukla in April 1915 (which the Russians promptly disbanded) did the then Czarist government begin to see the value of the Czech defectors who had formed a League, called Druf.ina, immediately at the begin­ning of the war. The Russian authorities allowed the recruiting of Czech soldiers into regiments and finally into a brigade, always, of course, only as part of the Russian army.

Masaryk left Prague for a trip to Italy on 18 December 1914, and, when he was warned about the threat of impending arrest, decided not to return as he had planned. Actually the then most prominent Czech deputy, Karel Kramar, and his colleague, Alois RaSin, were arrested in May 1915, condemned to death in June 1916, but amne­stied in a conciliatory gesture of the Austrian government. By that time, Masaryk had succeeded in uniting the emigration, the Czech colonies, and the Czech defectors, and slowly had won official recog­nition, even if only reluctant and hesitant, from several allied govern­ments. Masaryk's success is almost inexplicable. After all he was the only deputy of a very small party in the Austrian Parliament, who had established his authority over the most diverse Czech groups abroad, but could be suspected of not having any clear mandate of the nation on the spot. In his many pronouncements, the future of what became Czechoslovakia is often extremely vague. It is difficult to take seriously speculations about a Russian grand duke or even a Western prince on the throne of Bohemia. Masaryk himself quite consistently appealed to the historical rights to the Kingdom of Bohemia, which had elected the first Habsburg, Ferdinand, in 1526, only under the menace of the Turkish invasion which necessitated a common defence with Austria after the disastrous battle of Mohacs when the last Jagellon King of Bohemia and Poland, Louis II, was killed. But Masaryk always combined this appeal to the historical rights with an appeal to the nationality principle as a natural right of the Slovaks in Hungary. Very early he negotiated with the Serbs, whose anti-Magyar aspirations he could support, and even speculated about a corridor from Bratislava on the Danube to the northern regions inhabited by the Slovenes. Nothing came of it. Masaryk wisely recognised that the population was overwhelmingly German and that the corridor would be only a source of later conflicts.

Foreword IX

Masaryk's daughter, Alice, who had remained in Prague with her ill mother, was arrested on 28 October 1915. She spent several months in prison until she was released on 2 July 1916, probably because of well-organised protests in the United States.

Masaryk in his war memoirs, The Making of a State, could not and did not boast of his successes. He was a modest man who, however, radiated an air of authority and absolute sincerity and truthfulness which was obviously felt by everybody who came into contact with him. A strict adherence to the view that an unpleasant truth is preferable to a beneficial lie, Masaryk had proved in the controversy about the two old Czech manuscripts called in German Koniginhof and Grunberg, which were supposedly found in 1814 and 1817. Though their genuineness had been doubted before, only Masaryk and his university colleague Jan Gebauer, a specialist in Old Czech, succeeded in the 1890s in convincing all rational scholars and most of the public that they were pious forgeries of the Romantic era that falsified the image of early Czech history even of genuine historians such as Palacky. Palacky, the great historian and politician, had written the standard history of Bohemia. But this was a local issue. Masaryk's name was first generally known through his defence of Leopold Hilsner, a Czech Jew, who was accused of the ritual murder of a girl- a superstition which Masaryk combatted effectively in discussions, in two pamphlets, and in many articles. The Hilsner affair (1899-1900) was widely noticed abroad, particularly by Ameri­can Jews. Masaryk himself noted that it redounded to the credit of the Czechoslovak cause during the world war, when he found that the Jews abroad were familiar with his name and very positive towards him. Later, in 1909, Masaryk's defence of Serbian deputies against the accusations of Professor Friedjung, who used forged documents, was also widely noticed in the West.

Masaryk went from Italy, still neutral, to Switzerland. On 6 July 1915, in Geneva, he gave an address in the Hall for Reformation on the 400th anniversary of the burning of Jan Hus at the stake, which contained not only a plea for the independence of the Czech nation but an appeal to its Hussite and Protestant past. Masaryk was a peculiar nationalist. He inherited from the Romantic movement the linguistic concept of a nation which was combined with the concept of a nation's special character and mission. In it was implied a recognition of the right of all nations to cultivate their own national­ity. Masaryk had written at length on the meaning of Czech history. It was always a programme, an exhortation to a moral life, to dedi-

X Foreword

cation to a high purpose. It was buttressed by an appeal to the continuity of Czech intellectual and moral life which he saw in a Christianity purged from dogmas, superstitions, and blind obedience. Christianity he saw ideally embodied in the Bohemian Brethren founded in the fifteenth century and personified by their last bishop Jan Amos Komensky (Comenius). Masaryk liked to quote the pass­age from Comenius' testament in which he predicts that the rule of its affairs will return to the Czech nation after the storm of God's wrath at the sins of his nation had passed.

Switzerland was only a short stop-over for Masaryk. He moved to London in September 1915. He was offered and accepted a Pro­fessorship of Slavonic Studies at King's College, a part of London University. His inaugural lecture, presided over by Sir Robert Cecil in lieu of the ill Prime Minister Asquith on 19 October 1915, 'The Problems of Small Nations in the European Crisis', argued for the creation of a belt of small nations from Finland to Greece which would separate Russia from Germany and stop the German expan­sion to the East. The break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire was an obvious precondition. Masaryk and his friends were extremely successful in raising interest and sympathy for the Czech question but made no headway with the British cabinet. Masaryk's and his friends' memoranda submitted to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were ignored, and he was never invited to visit Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary. The British government cherished for a long time hopes of dividing Austria-Hungary from Germany. They con­cocted even such a scheme as offering Bavaria and Silesia as awards to Austria if it broke the alliance with Germany. It would have made Austria an overwhelmingly German speaking state. As late as March 1917, Lloyd George wrote to the American government that his government did not want to detach the Bohemian lands and Hungary from Austria, and in April 1917, Arthur Balfour, then the British Foreign Secretary, told Colonel House in Washington that the British government was in favour of equal rights for the Czechs but it did not insist on an independent state.

The events in Russia induced Masaryk to change his plans. The Czar had abdicated and a provisional parliamentary democracy was in power. It was at first uncertain whether Russia would stay in the war against Germany and Austria. One of Masaryk's acquaintances in Russia from earlier trips was Pavel Miliukov, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. To Masaryk's dismay, Miliukqv resigned two days before his arrival in Petrograd. Negotiations with the new govern-

Foreword xi

ment were frustrating and inconclusive at first. Only after the battle at Zborov on 2 July 1917, in which the Czechoslovak brigade of volunteers, all recruited from prisoners of war camps, scored a vic­tory, was it possible to recruit more soldiers from the camps. On 9 October 1917, the Russian government finally agreed to the forma­tion of an independent Czechoslovak army corps. After the Commu­nist seizure of power, Masaryk declared the complete neutrality of the Czechoslovak forces in Russia and proclaimed them part of the French Army. This was made possible by the proclamation of President Poincare of 16 December 1917, which declared the Czech volunteers in France and Russia part of the French Army, thus endorsing the plan to move the Czech legion through Siberia to Vladivostok and then by ship to France. The Czech Army, retreating from the Eastern front after the armistice, for a time occupied Kiev and then retreated beyond the Volga to Samara while the bulk of it had seized the whole length of the Siberian railroad. The soldiers lived in the trains but on reaching Vladivostok they vainly waited for Allied ships. The Legion soon came into conflict with the Bol­sheviks, for obscure reasons. Bolshevik units had recruited German and Austrian prisoners. Some armed clashes resulted. But the Czechs equally condemned the Czarist general Kolchak and his attempt to restore the Old Regime.

Masaryk was reasonably satisfied that the Czechoslovak legion would be able to get back to Europe, and decided to return to what he recognised were the last stages of the war. The real decisive diplomatic struggle for the definition of Allied war aims and hence of the fate of the Czechs was, he foresaw, to take place in Washington, London, and Paris. Masaryk went on the Manchurian railway to the tip of South Korea and then by ship to Tokyo where he arrived on 8 April1918. From there he soon sailed to Vancouver. When Masaryk arrived in Chicago on 5 May 1918, he was met not only by representa­tives of the different Czech and Slovak organisations in America, but by an enormous crowd of enthusiastic well-wishers, Czech emi­grants, and old settlers, who hailed him as the future President of Czechoslovakia. Masaryk hurried to reach Washington and saw soon that recognition of his nation's war aims was by no means certain at that time. The German offensive in France was still a menace and the underhand negotiations with Austria for a time looked promis­ing. The Emperor Charles established contacts through his brother­in-law, Prince Sixtus of Parma, a Belgian national. Unofficial offers would have preserved the Austro-Hungarian monarchy with the

xii Foreword

slogan 'peace without annexation' and a return to the prewar status. But Clemenceau denounced this attempt to make a separate peace in public in April 1918 and the Emperor Wilhelm had Emperor Charles come to his headquarters in Spa, Belgium, and there Charles reaffirmed the German-Austrian alliance. The Austrian Emperor foresaw the dissolution of the monarchy and tried to make con­cessions to the Czechs and other minorities but only in the framework of the dual monarchy. Only in the last days of the war he appointed Heinrich Lammasch, a wellknown pacifist professor, who was willing to offer complete independence to the Czechs, Prime Minister. By that time, Czechoslovakia had declared its independence on 28 October 1918.

Masaryk arrived in Washington with a considerable first hand knowledge of America from former trips and visits. But the experi­ence was necessarily brief; the first trip in 1878 lasted only two weeks; Masaryk came to fetch his bride, Charlotte Garrigue. He married her on the spot and returned to Prague with the blessing and some financial help of his father-in-law who was president of an insurance company.

The second trip in 1902 was at the invitation of the University of Chicago. Masaryk had met in Prague Charles Crane, a Chicago industrialist who later supported the campaign of Woodrow Wilson but was at that time interested in Russia. Crane arranged with the President of Chicago University an invitation for a series of lectures: thirteen lectures in all which were reconstructed on the basis of reports in a Czech Chicago paper only in 1978 by Draga B. Shilling­law. Under the title The Philosophy of History of a Small Nation, Masaryk told the American audience about Czech history and the role of the Reformation. The Czechs want their own parliament just as the Hungarians then had. They suffered from the inequalities caused by the dominance of the nobility and a few landowners: in Bohemia, 145 men own 24 per cent of the soil. In the time left, Masaryk made trips to different centers of the Czech emigration and lectured in Baltimore, Cleveland, Boston, and elsewhere.

The third trip to America in 1907 was at the invitation of a Con­gress of Religious Liberals in Boston. Masaryk was able to take along his wife and his daughter Olga as delegates. In his speech, he argued for a religious life which transcends all ecclesiastic forms of religion.

All these three trips were strictly limited, but Masaryk buttressed them with an intensive study of American political life and literature.

Foreword Xlll

He came to Washington well aware of American traditions. Con­scious that the conditions of the peace would be decided there and not in Europe, he developed an enormous activity of lecturing both to Czech organisations and to American audiences. He had many interviews with Robert Lansing, the Secretary of State and with Colonel House, the intimate advisor of Wilson, but his attempt to meet the President failed, as Wilson had given instructions to delay such a meeting. Wilson was a cautious diplomat careful about com­mitting himself. He was not unsympathetic to the Czech cause. As early as 1889, in the book The State, Wilson criticised the Austrian policies oppressing the Czechs. In the speech in Congress belatedly declaring war against Austria-Hungary on 4 December 1917, Wilson stated that he did not want to 'impair or rearrange' it. In the fourteen points, on 8 January 1918, under point ten it is merely said the 'the nations of Austria should have the freest opportunity for autonomous development'. The first audience at the White House took place only on 19 June 1918, and lasted forty-five minutes. It was mainly concerned with the situation in Russia and it pleased Wilson when Masaryk expressed his opposition to armed intervention in Russia. In the meantime, Benes had scored a diplomatic victory. On 10 September 1918, the French government recognised the Czechoslo­vak National Council as the 'de facto government' and promised to support an independent Czechoslovak state within the frontiers of its former historical lands. In a second meeting with Wilson which lasted only twenty minutes, on 11 September 1918, Masaryk thanked Wilson for recognising the National Council on 3 September, and again talked about the legions in Russia. On 16 September, a new organisation of Central European representatives in America was formed and Masaryk was chosen as its spokesman. The group called on Wilson on 20 September 1918, and received in return expressions of Wilson's sympathies. Masaryk called for the last time on Wilson on 15 November 1918, when he was already elected President of the new state. Wilson's extreme reluctance to commit himself to a policy requiring the dismemberment of Austria is explained by his hopes, at first, in the peace feelers of Prince Sixtus and later by hopes that Emperor Charles would arrive at a peaceful solution of the Austrian nationality question, still within the framework of the Monarchy.

We must admire the enormous energy, the persistence, and the diplomatic skill which Masaryk deployed in these years of what amounted to a strenuous trip around the world. But we cannot, of course, forget that all these activities were supported by thousands

XIV Foreword

and even hundred thousand soldiers, collaborators and sympathisers. The main and most persuasive argument for the Czech cause was the mass of volunteers who joined the allied armies in France and Italy and mainly in Russia. At the very beginning of the war, Masaryk was moved by the reluctance of Czech and Slovak draftees to fight against the Russians, their desertions and voluntary enlist­ment in the Russian Army which exposed them, when captured, to the Austrian death penalty. The performance of the Czech legions first in the army of Brusilov and later in their spectacular retreat from Kiev along the whole Transsiberian railway, was a heroic exploit which attracted enormous attention in the West and made an independent Czechoslovak state almost a necessity. Masaryk was not alone in his diplomatic efforts. Edvard Benes, a pupil of his in sociology who had studied in France, ably supported him in negotia­ting with the French ministers and fairly early had pronouncements of sympathy from Aristide Briand and later from President Poincare who praised the courage of the Czech contingents at Chateau Thierry and elsewhere on the Western front. Benes also negotiated with the Italian cabinet and again the share of the Czechoslovak volunteers in the battles against the Austrian attacks as late as the battle on the Piave was a persuasive argument for the recognition of a de facto government in exile. Besides Benes Masaryk's best collaborator was Milan Stefanik, by profession an astronomer, who had risen to the rank of a general of the French army. He negotiated and signed the agreement of the Czechoslovak army with the Italian government in Rome. Benes engaged in diplomacy behind the scenes but there were also efforts to publicise the Czech and Slovak cause in France. The historian Ernest Denis who had written extensively on Czech history from the point of view of a Huguenot who sympathised with the cause of the Hussites and the Bohemian Brethren, was a respected academic spokesman in France. There were journalists and other friends in France and England, but nothing compared to the efforts and supporting publicity for the Czech cause in the United States. In England as in France, it was mainly an academic affair though Wickham Steed was a powerful journalist committed to the cause, and R. W. Seton-Watson, a respected historian, could be described also as a publicist, as he edited the journal The New Europe during the war. But in the United States the large numbers of Czech and Slovak emigrants invited attempts to organise in favour of the cause, to solicit their moral and financial support. Masaryk himself was the decisive figure: he tirelessly travelled from one city

Foreword XV

to the other and addressed Czech and Slovak audiences. He also elicited the support of the Slovaks in the so-called Pittsburgh agree­ment (31 May 1918) which was later held against him as containing a promise of an independent Slovak diet, a promise which he could not keep since after his return as President a new parliament was constituted which was a unified Czechoslovak assembly in which the Slovaks had their ample but necessarily centrally appointed represen­tatives. In America, Masaryk could make only a provisional agree­ment as the decisive power had to be left to the government which was quickly and bloodlessly established on 28 October 1918 when the Austro-Hungarian regiments went home without firing a shot at the totally unarmed Czech masses. Finally, we must not underrate the effect of the Czechs at home showing solidarity in their often still carefully hedged pronouncements. A National Council and a manifesto of writers in 1917 clearly demonstrated the unity of the nation and the claim for independence from Austrian rule. It is an odd error perpetuated in the West that Czechoslovakia was created by the treaty of StGermain. The Austrio-Hungarian monarchy dis­solved in October 1918. The Czechs freed themselves.

Masaryk was unanimously elected President by the Czechoslovak Revolutionary Assembly at its first meeting on 14 November, and could return in triumph on 21 December 1918. It would be a new chapter to describe and evaluate his role as President, the skill with which he helped to keep the coalitions of the various parties together and kept the political ship on an even keel in the years of his Presidency until 1935, when he resigned because he had suffered a stroke and could not carry on his functions effectively. He died on 14 September 1937. Nobody before 1930 could foresee the rapid rise of German military might, the hesitancies and frightful weakness of France and the inadequacy of the Little Entente which proved its value only against Hungarian revisionism. Nor could one foresee that the Hitler movement would quickly convert the German minority to its expansionist creed, though the Germans through proportional representation were represented by the traditional parties from Socialists to Clericals and were willing to cooperate with the Czecho­slovak government. They sent their representatives as cabinet minis­ters to head the Ministry of Social Welfare and the Ministry of Justice. But these were reasonable academics such as the Slavist Spina or party officials such as the Social Democrat Czech. The new breed was quite different: Konrad Henlein, though occasionally disguising his ultimate aims for the benefit of a foreign audience,

xvi Foreword

e.g. in a lecture in London on 9 December, 1930 and in conversations with R. W. Seton-Watson, was a fanatical nationalist committed to the destruction of Czechoslovakia and the joining of the so-called Sudetenland to Germany. When Masaryk retired in 1935, he was fully aware of the growing menace but could do no more than entrust to his successor, Edvard Benes, the defence of the republic, which we all know, was destroyed by the shameful Munich agreement, about a year after Masaryk's death. But the image of the man who founded the republic deeply imbued with the traditions of liberty and democracy, remains bright in our memory and also of the nation on the spot even though it has disappeared behind the Iron Curtain and its authorities have tried to ignore or to besmirch the memory of its great Liberator.

He stands with Washington, Bolivar, and Garibaldi, but none of these was a writer not to say a philosopher.

A Note on the Masaryk Publications Trust The publication of this book has been sponsored by the Masaryk Publications Trust, a charitable organisation set up in Pennsylvania in May 1959 by Thomas G. Masaryk's daughters Alice G. Masaryk and Olga Masaryk Revilliod. Their intention was to ensure that the integrity of his works would be maintained, secure from any censorship, and that Masaryk's ideas would be made widely available.

This book is the last project undertaken by the Trust, which is dissolving in 1989, in accordance with its founding charter. Professor Rene Wellek is Chairman of the Trust; Mrs Betka Papanek Trea­surer; Professor George Gibian Executive Secretary. The Trustees are Mrs George Vlasak, Professor Richard H. Hunt, Professor H. Gordon Skilling and Mr John Tabor.

xvii

Chronology of Masaryk's Life and Work 1850

1864-65 1865-72 1872-76

1876-77

1878

1879

1881

1882

1883

1885

1886-88

1887

1891

Tomas Masaryk born at Hodonin in south-east Moravia on 7 March, the son of a coachman and a cook. Apprenticed to a blacksmith. Studies at gymnasia in Brno and Vienna. Studies at Vienna University, graduates with the thesis 'The Nature of the Soul According to Plato'. A private tutor in Leipzig where he meets the American Charlotte Garrigue. First journey to America, marries Charlotte Garrigue in New York on 15 March. His second thesis (habilitation thesis), 'Suicide as a Social Mass Phenomenon', is accepted; it allows him to teach as an unsalaried Privatdozent at Vienna University. Publishes in book form the revised German version of his thesis on suicide. Appointed Professor Extraordinarius of philosophy at the new Czech University in Prague; is not nominated full professor until January 1897. Establishes the monthly Athenaeum, a magazine devoted to critical examination of Czech culture and science. Publishes the Czech version of his philosophical work The Foundations of Concrete Logic; an enlarged German version is published in 1887. Famous manuscripts considered by many patriots as valuable testimonies of medieval Czech culture are exposed as forgeries by scholars grouped around the Athenaeum; Masaryk plays an important part in this campaign. Journey to Russia, discussions with Tolstoy; further meetings with Tolstoy in 1889 and 1910; rejects Tol­stoy's doctrine of non-resistance to evil. Elected to the Vienna parliament as a deputy of the Young Czech Party which he had joined as a member

xviii

Chronology of Masaryk's Life and Work xix

of the 'Realist' group. 1893 Resigns his seat in the parliament, dissatisfied with the

empty radicalism of the Young Czechs and frustrated by inner-party squabbles.

1895-98 Years of intensive writing devoted mainly to Czech problems; Masaryk defines his views on the meaning of Czech history and elaborates a Czech political pro­gramme; presents himself as a political thinker whose opinions have a firm moral and religious foundation; publishes The Czech Question (1895), Our Present Crisis (1895), Jan Hus (1896), Karel Havlick (1896), The Social Question (1898).

1899-1900 The trial of Leopold Hilsner, a Jew accused of the murder of two Christian girls, triggers widespread mani­festations of anti-Semitism; Masaryk campaigns against racial prejudice, especially against the superstition of Jewish ritual murders.

1900 Together with some of his 'Realist' supporters, Masaryk establishes a new political party, The Czech People's (Realist) Party, later renamed the Progressive Party; it remains a marginal group in Czech political life.

1902 Second journey to America; lectures at Chicago Univer­sity about Czech literature and history and general Slavic questions.

1907 Re-enters the Vienna parliament as a deputy of the Realist Party, elected with the support of the Social Democrats; remains in the parliament for two consecu­tive election periods until the outbreak of the First World War. Third journey to America; speaks about religion in Austria at the Congress of Religious Liberals in Boston; visits Czech immigrants in many American cities.

1907-08 Demands freedom of science in a parliamentary action; defends the Austrian professor Ludwig Wahrmund, persecuted for a lecture about contradictions between the church doctrine and science.

1909-11 In connection with the annexation of Bosnia-Herzego­vina Masaryk sharply criticises Austria's foreign policy, especially the alliance with Germany; defends the South Slavs accused of high treason in a trial at Agram; tes­tifies against the historian Heinrich Friedjung who used

XX

1913

1914-18 1914-17

1917-18

1918

1920

1925

1928

1935 1937

Chronology of Masaryk's Life and Work

forged documents in his accusations against the Austrian Slavs. Publishes in German the first two volumes of his major work Russ/and und Europa (translated as The Spirit of Russia); third volume is published in English translation in 1967. First World War. Masaryk decides to join Allied Powers in their fight against Austria-Hungary and Germany; visits Italy, Switzerland, France and England; establishes the Czechoslovak National Council in Paris with Edvard Benes and Milan R. Stefanik; Czechoslovak military units are formed in Russia and France. Masaryk travels to Russia; consolidates the Czechoslo­vak Army after the Bolshevik Revolution, declares it a part of the Czechoslovak Army in France and reaches agreement about its departure from Russian territory. Masaryk arrives in the United States; the Czechoslovak National Council is recognised by France and England as the de facto government of Czechoslovakia; Masaryk gains the same recognition for his movement by the American government; Czechoslovak soldiers fight in France and Italy against the Central Powers; in Russia the Czechoslovak Legion, involved in conflict with the Bolsheviks, is instructed by the Allies to stay in Siberia and temporarily controls the entire Siberian Railway (the last Czechoslovak soldiers return home in 1920); in Prague the revolutionary National Assembly elects Masaryk the first President of Czechoslovakia. Publishes The New Europe, an outline of the post-war European reconstruction. Elected President according to the new Czechoslovak constitution; re-elected in 1927 and 1934. Publishes his memoirs and political-historical obser­vations Svetova revoluce (The World Revolution), trans­lated into English as The Making of a State. Publication of the first volume of Hovory s T. G. Masarykem (President Masaryk Tells His Story), an autobiography and philosophical profile in form of Masaryk's discussions with the writer Karel Capek. Resigns the post of President for reasons of health. Dies at Lany in central Bohemia on 14 September.