Empire minus Republic

A great and still flourishing statesman who dreamed a republic which came true has just set down his dream and much of his autobiography. Simultaneously has appeared a brilliant biography of the late Emperor Franz Josef out of whose realm the republic was dreamed. Both books have much merit:

Masaryk's Dream. Post-War history has already chosen as its darling "The Lonely Slovak in Prague."* With Wilson dead, Clemenceau withered and Lloyd George second-fiddling, it has become evident how great is Professor Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, first and still the only president of the Czechoslovak Republic.

In this volume President Masaryk traces arrestingly the steps whereby he dreamed and wrought his country out of Austria-Hungary. Prior to the War he was, among Czechs & Slovaks at Prague in Austria-Hungary, only a professor, only a deputy. Yet a lionheartedness was in him, and perhaps a serpentine wisdom. By sheer, imperious leadership he welded friends, then students, then political adherents into an orderly group. It stood ready to follow and acknowledge his supremacy when the War brought an opportunity to strike for Czechoslovak freedom. As to just how this vital group was formed Professor Masaryk is regrettably a trifle reticent. He barely mentions by their last names a few of the men who aided him, then hurries on to the statement that "toward the Summer of 1915 . . . my authority was . . . recognized on every hand" among Czechoslovaks.

Meanwhile Professor Masaryk had escaped from Austria-Hungary. His unique distinction was to be that he would achieve the freedom of his people not as a revolutionary from within but as a propagandist from without. Settling first at Geneva and later in London, he wrote and labored unceasingly, with the aid of Dr. Eduard Benes, now Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia. Of him Masaryk writes: "He had great initiative and was an untiring worker. . . . I naturally took the lead. . . . Politically and historically he was so well trained that . . . he was soon able to act for himself." (Thus even today President Masaryk faintly patronizes an assistant who is reckoned as the most able active diplomat in Europe and who was made chairman of an important international committee [See THE LEAGUE]).

Of his propaganda Professor Masaryk writes laconically: "We never bribed." He states that contributions received by him from U. S. Czechoslovaks totaled less than $1,000,000 between 1914 and 1918. Yet with these sums and by his own pamphleteering and lecturing he was unquestionably able to create an Allied and later a U. S. mass-sympathy for Czechoslovakia. One successful move was to exploit the arrest of his own daughter Alice by Austro-Hungarian officials, for "people argued that when even women were imprisoned our movement must be serious. Throughout America women petitioned the President to intervene. . . ."

During the period of propaganda, Professor Masaryk early derived an advantage from the fact that Czechoslovak troops were constantly deserting from the Austro-Hungarian armies in which they unwillingly served. Most of the deserters escaped to Russia. There they were permitted to form a military unit which acknowledged the supremacy of Masaryk. He proceeded through trusty agents to organize in Russia a Czechoslovak army long before there could exist a Czechoslovak state. Meanwhile, at Paris, on Feb. 3, 1916, M. Aristide Briand, then Prime Minister, consented to receive officially the "Lonely Slovak." A strange meeting. The professor who should have cringed humbly for favors describes his actions thus: "I spoke tersely, almost epigrammatically, but Briand has a good French brain and grasped the heart of the matter at once. Above all, he accepted our policy."

This "policy" was the dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian state, not its mere overthrow, which had previously been the goal of the Allies. Professor Masaryk may fairly boast (as indeed he does) that his propaganda had now enlarged the military War aims of the Allies into a "political program" of liberating the Austro-Hungarian subject peoples. He next sought definitely to mobilize the Czechoslovak army in Russia to fight with the Allies. Strange events intervened. Conditions incidental to the rise of the Soviet State made it necessary that the 92,000 Czechoslovak troops in Russia should return home by marching romantically East, not West. This so fired the imagination of U. S. Secretary of Interior Franklin K. Lane that he wrote:". . . Isn't this a great world? And its biggest romance is not even the fact that Woodrow Wilson rules it, but the march of the Czechoslovaks across 5,000 miles of Russian Asia. . . ." Prime Minister David Lloyd George, then at the height of his power, agreed that this was, "indeed, one of the greatest epics of history." When the Army reached Vladivostok, Allied transports were waiting, but it had already been delayed so long that the General Staff did not reach Prague until June 17, 1920 and the troops not until Nov. 30. Meanwhile, of course, the War had ended and Czechoslovakia had long since obtained final recognition by the Allies and the U. S. in 1918.

Most moving of all passages in the present work is President Masaryk's description of his sensations after this final recognition had been attained:

"I doubt whether I slept well for five consecutive nights during the whole four years. My brain was ever working like a watch, considering, comparing, reckoning, estimating, judging. . . . [But now] in my mind, stillness reigned. . . . I said to myself, again and again, now unconsciously, now consciously, and aloud. '. . . So we are free, shall be free. We have an independent Republic! A fairy-tale . . . that we are really f-r-e-e and have our own Re-pub-lic!' "

Franz Josef. Totally and most significantly different from the president who dreamed and wrought was Franz Josef, Emperor of Austria & King of Hungary.* To realize how incredible freedom and a republic seemed to his subjects one must remember that he himself knew no freedom. As Crown Prince he was, in childhood, compelled to drill daily, even in the pouring rain or in knee-deep snow. When he exhibited a nervous disposition servants were instructed to "cure" him by the heroic expedient of firing blank shots in his bedroom at night. He was and remained so ignorant of general and scientific matters that even late in life he was imposed upon by charlatans who claimed that they could change silver into gold. Such a background made him a sovereign who repressed his court as he had been repressed and caused him to turn his deafer ear towards proposals of political reform.

On the external and specifically regal side Franz Josef was more adequate. He learned the dialects of many of his subject peoples and went among them upon occasion wearing their regional costumes. He never yielded on a point of honor--notably, if a field commander was outnumbered he would order him not to retreat until an "honorable" number of his troops had been slain. Finally he conducted himself with the utmost punctilious decorum after the violent deaths of his brother, son and wife. The brother was the ill-starred and finally executed (1867) Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. The son was Crown Prince Rudolf who mysteriously committed suicide or was assassinated at the royal hunting lodge of Mayerling (1889). The wife was Empress Elizabeth of Austria whom an assassin attacked so deftly at Geneva that she was dead ere she realized that she had been stabbed through the heart (1898).

These tragedies weighed down Franz Josef but did not soften his personal spleen toward his nephew & residual heir, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The world found itself at war after Franz Ferdinand had been assassinated at Serajevo; but Franz Josef, spiteful in thought, word and deed, approved an order that the murdered Archduke should have only a "third class court funeral."

*THE MAKING OF A STATE--Thomas Garrigue Masaryk--Stokes ($6). *FRANCIS JOSEPH--Eugene Bagger--Putnam's ($5).