A Great European
President Masaryk Tells His Story. By Karel Capek. (Allen and Unwin. 7s. Bd.) PRESIDENT M ASARYK is one of the great figures of modern Europe ; and anything, even so slight an account as this book contains, which describes how he came to his present high office is welcome. He never sought publicity ; and in his eighty-fourth year, after a life spent so largely in arduous public work, he can still say with sincerity " the thing which I do feel as a really great hardship is that I am continuously under the eyes of my officials, and on public view." But he cannot escape the attentions of an affectionate and inquisitive public, not only of his own Czechoslovak people, but of all nations ; and I have seen him respond to their loyalty and love in a manner most moving. In July, 1932, I stood behind
him on the balcony of the Town Hall in Prague while he received and returned the salute of the Sokols, on the occasion of the Tyrs Centenary, when the famous gymnastic societies of the entire realm, and oversea contingents as well, marched past him for nearly four hours, greeting him with an ardent devotion which left few eyes undimmed. It is the sober truth that no Head of the State, in any country in the world, lives in the hearts of his people more securely than Thomas Garrigue Masaryk.
How is it that this professor of philosophy has become the mainstay of security in Central Europe ? The answer is not in his mind, but in his character, which is faithfully, if rather inadequately, reflected in the simple pages of Karel Capek's transcription of the autobiographical Table Talk of President Masaryk. The simplicity of the 'President's artless account of his own career, here narrated, is the keynote of his character and career. Though he held a Chair in Prague University for thirty-two years (after a period of teaching in Vienna) he was never academic. He began life as a child of the people, and a child of the people he remains at 84. 'The People "are not to him a vast entity seen only in the mass as they were to President Wilson ; they are a family of human units, each alive with individuality and partaking of the experiences through which Dr. Masaryk himself passed, in his childhood in Slovakia, his youth in Brno and Vienna, and his maturity in Prague. This essential humanity was raised above the ordinary level by an unusually honest and earnest nature, fortified by an intellectual integrity which sought the truth in all things. He was a Slav with his eyes turned westwards ; and he says of himself, "I overcame the Slav anarchy in myself, in philosophy and other things, by the help of the teachers of the English-speaking world."
It is curious to read today of his reluctance to go to Prague in 1882 when he was appointed to the new Chair of Philosophy. He confessed then that the Czech city was " strange " to him, the Slovak ; and he, least of all men, could foresee the day, 37 years later, when he would re-enter the city "whose glory shall reach the stars" as President of his own emancipated people. The road which led him there can be traced through his part in the forged manuscripts controversy, the Hilsner case, the Zagreb and Friedjung trials and his self-reliance as a Member of the Austrian Reichsrat in Habsburg days. None of these activities was chosen by him for ambition's sake. Each and all he undertook out of a sense of public duty and a love of justice ; but he bore himself through them all, as he did in the perils of the War, in a manner which made him the predestined ruler of Czechoslovakia long afterwards. This book is but a conversational record, racy, shrewd and simple, of the career which was crowned in Prague in 1919. The authoritative account of it all will be written hereafter ; but, meanwhile, these pages have an intimate and personal value of their own, for they bear the authentic stamp of Masaryk's personality.
A. F. Wrivin.
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