PRESIDENT MASARYK

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 148, 18 March 1919, Page 5

PRESIDENT MASARYK

FIRST RULER OF CZECH REPUBLIC

The first President of the new Czecho.. Slovak Republic is above all a simple and sincere man (states an appreciation in the Loudon "Times"). He has been all his life an apostle, but by no means a visionary. Vision, in the sense of insight and foreknowledge, he possesses to a marked degree, but it is tempered by an equally strong sense of the immediately practicable. A, Slovak, born in 1850 of poor parents in the Moravian town of Hodonin, ho was, after receiving an elementary education, first apprenticed to a blacksmith; but he speedily left hammer and anvil for activities better suited to his intellectual capacity and studied philosophy at Vienna and .Leipzig. Appointed Lecturer in Philos. ophy at Vienna in 1879, he made his mark by a study on "Suicide" as a pathological symptom of the condition of contemporary Europe, and found its chief cause in the decay of religious sentiment. In 1882' he was appointed Professor ot Philosophy at the new Czech University in Prague, where he speedily became the interpreter of modem political and social tendencies to a growing body of students drawn from all branches of the Slav family. His doctrine was based 1 upon critical analyses of Hume, Mill, Kant, Spencer, and Comte. In view of the leading part which he afterwards took in the movement for Southern Slav unity, an independent testimony to his influence by the Austrian-German .writer Hermann Bahr, may be cited. Writing in 1909, Bahr said (Dalmatinische Reise, p. 70):— "The fact will have to be accepted that Serbs and Croats belong to one and the same nation. It is strange only that they themselves, living side by side and with and among one another, should so long have been blind to the fact. And it is remarkable also that in studying the agreement between them and in looking for those who ,made it, one almost invariably comes aoross a pupil of Masaryk—almost always someone who went as a youth to Prague, sat in Masaryk's class-room and, awakened by him, went home to preach everywhere the gospel of reconciliation. Masaryk's pupils have united Serbs and Croats, and have inspired their shattered country with belief in the. future. So strong has been the influence of the. lonely Slovak at Prague who, a mixture of Tolstoy and Walt Whitman, seems to some a heretic, to others an ascetic, and to all an enthusiast."

In 1891 the "enthusiast" entered the Austrian Parliament, and made his mark by bold criticism of the bureaucratic policy of Austria-Hungary in Bosnia-Her-zegovina ; but two years later he resigned his seat as a protest against the uiifruitfulness of Czech national policy. Ho held that a small nation in the position of Bohemia could only maintain its position by persistent effort in all directions, and that the negative policy of mere opposition to German' influence must be barren. He never hesitated to tell his own people unpalatable truths or to oppose rabid nationalism. He showed great courage in exposing as modern forgeriqs (wo manuscripts which had been treasured as Czech" national heirlooms and in insisting that, national culture cannot be based upon- falsehood. Towards the end ef\the century he demonstrated, in a famous trial, 1 the absurdity of the ritual murder charge brought against a Jew.

As a political lender he invariably dealt with the' Czech and Slovak problem in its international setting, and laid down the lines of a possible reconciliation with Austria provided that the internal structure of Austria were radically changed. Otherwise, ho held, Austria must presently disaopear. Among his historical and philosophical writings a trenchant ••.riticism of Marxian Socialism and a great work on "Russia and Europe" stand foremost. He helpod greatly to spread translations from English literature in Bohemia, .where bis influence permeated the entire younger generation, f.s it did anions the Southern Slavs and among the ,Rnthenes. '

, Re-elected to Parliament, in 1907, under universal suffrage, he-boldly exposed the Crimes of Austro-Hunsarian rule in Bosnia-Herzegovina, defended tho Serbi of Croatia in the Agram trial of 1900, and helped during the Friedinng trial of December, 1909, to expose the'forgeries upon which Count Aehrentlml based his annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. ■When tho great wax broke out he remained for some time at Prague, but escaped to Italy in December, 1914, nnd came to London. Recognised nt onco r.s the leader of the national struggle for independence, lie, with Dr. Bones and Colonel Stefanik, formed Ihe triumvirate which was ultimately recognised by the British and Allied ■Governments as the trustee for the future Government of Bohemia. In the ppring of last year ho was called to Russia by Professor Miliukoff. but quickly saw the hopelessness of the Russian position, and bent all his efforts to the organisation of the Czechoslovak Army, whose exploits in Russia nnd Siberia have been one of (lie most dramatic features of the great war. He. preceded his forces to Vladivostok, nnd wont thonce to Tolcio and Washington. In the United States he has been frequently consulted by President Wilson, and has exercised great influence over American public opinion.