# The Making of a State/Chapter 10

CHAPTER X
DEMOCRACY AND HUMANITY
HOW we made our State anew, by what means and with what aims, I have now shown. Henceforth we must think how to preserve it. Once before we lost our independence—all the more reason for us to take our bearings carefully and conscientiously in the new European situation created by the Peace.
It is no part of my task to deal in detail with home and foreign policy. Rather have I to expound the main principles on which I believe our restored State should be conducted. Its very re-establishment shows that the worth of these principles has been proved in practice. The policy pursued for four years abroad-the policy that gained us independence—must be continued. Foreign policy though it was, its principles are applicable also to our home policy. These principles are tersely expressed in the title of this chapter. It remains to illustrate them more systematically; and if, in so doing, many a problem of political science will be touched upon, I shall avoid far-reaching theory since I am speaking as a practical man. It is not merely as a theory of my work abroad and of my share in the world war and the revolution it wrought, but as an organic sequel that I regard this concluding portion of my report.
The war was, indeed, a world war, not solely a Franco-German struggle for Alsace-Lorraine, or a conflict between Germans and Russians or Teutons and Slavs. Such issues were but parts of a great fight for freedom and democracy, a fight between theocratical absolutism and democratic humanity. For this reason the whole world, literally, joined in the war which, by its duration, became a world revolution. Between it and the Thirty Years’ War the analogy is obvious, both in point of length—the rapidity of modern communications and the technical perfection of the military machine compressed more than thirty years into the compass of four—and in point of character, substance and meaning. The Thirty Years’ War was fought for the re-ordering of Europe after a religious revolution. In the Four Years’ War it was a question of ordering Europe and the world anew after a political revolu​tion—in high degree it continued what the Thirty Years’ War had begun.
In the World Revolution three mighty theocratical monarchies fell—Orthodox Russia; Catholic Austria-Hungary; Lutheran Prussia-Germany. When the conflict began over the Austro-Hungarian attack on Serbia and the German attack on Belgium, who could have foreseen the overthrow of these three Empires, pillars of masterful theocracy and of monarchical aristocracy? Before the war, 88 per cent of mankind lived under monarchical and only 17 per cent under republican systems. To-day, the preponderant majority is republican; the minority, monarchist. In 1914 France was the only great Republic in Europe. The others were Switzerland, Portugal, San Marino and Andorra. To-day there are eighteen Republics, among them the two largest States, Germany and Russia.
Equally significant is the spread of self-government in various States. The Irish Free State is now a self-governing Dominion within the British Empire; and twenty-one Republics and autonomous territories are united in Soviet Russia. For administrative reasons several small States were suppressed in Germany after the war; but, in the new Austria, a strong autonomous and federalist tendency is noticeable. It was a similar tendency towards self-government that led to the division of the three Great Empires into smaller independent entities. Centralization ended by rendering monarchical absolutism impossible. The large, thinly-populated States, created by occupation and expansion in an earlier age, were susceptible of extensive administration. Under modern conditions, extensive administration no longer sufficed and had to give way to the intensive administrations of independent States. There are now thirty-five States in Europe. Before the war there were twenty-five.
“Balkanization”.
Thus the war set up a new order in Europe, in Central Europe particularly. Seven new or reborn States may be reckoned—Finland, Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Danzig and Czechoslovakia. Changes occurred in six older or existing States. Germany lost her non-German regions (with the exception of Lusatia); France regained Alsace and Lorraine; Belgium got a bit of the Rhineland; to Italy were added parts of what had been Austria; Bulgaria lost territory on the Aegean; Denmark recovered some Danish districts ​from Germany; Albania was delimited anew. Six States were radically transformed—Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Roumania, Greece and Turkey.
The profoundest changes took place in Russia and in Central Europe; and it is here that the main difficulties of reorganization have arisen. Upon the precise area of “Central Europe,” opinions differ. The whole of Germany, Switzerland and Italy are sometimes reckoned as belonging to it. But if Western culture, not geography alone, be taken as a guide, Western Germany, Switzerland and Italy belong to Western Europe, as do Bohemia and German Austria. The dividing line of culture runs to the west of the former territory of Russia, and leaves also Galicia, Hungary, Roumania and the Balkans to the east. The older, consolidated States lie in the West. Their special problems are how to improve administration and to decide whether the form of the State shall be monarchical or republican. In their cases, territorial and racial troubles are unimportant, at least in comparison with those of Central and Eastern Europe.
It was in the zone running from North to South, between the former territory of Germany and the former territory of Russia, that the small new States arose, corresponding in extent, on the whole, to the territories inhabited by their several races. Austria-Hungary, in particular, was split up into its ethnical component parts. Proportionately there are more small States in Europe than in any other continent. Asia is divided politically rather than racially; and though there are as many races in the seven hundred States of India as there are in Europe, they are all more or less under English influence. Africa, too, is divided politically. In America the number of races is comparatively small, and Australia is, in reality, British. The variety of national States in Europe expresses the intensive differentiation of culture which has gradually succeeded to her former undifferentiated and extensive condition. Thus Europe now comes first in the number of her independent States. The two Americas come next. There are fewer in Asia, though it is the largest continent; and fewer still in Africa.
Big peoples, like the British and the American, who are wont to apply continental standards of judgment and are not greatly troubled by questions of language, are wont to look upon the liberation of small peoples and the creation of small States as a bothersome process of political and linguistic “Balkanization.” Yet circumstances are what they are, determined by ​Nature and History. Turkey, Austria-Hungary, Germany and Russia simplified half Europe by methods of violence, mechanically, and therefore, temporarily. As remedies for “Balkanization,” freedom and democracy are preferable.
The problem is whether the big peoples which have hitherto threatened the small peoples and each other will accept the principle that all nations, big and small, are equally entitled to their own individualities in political organization and in culture. Recent political evolution has been favourable to the little peoples. Against a German mastery over Europe the whole world rose in self-defence. The Allies proclaimed the principle of equal rights for small nations, and President Wilson defended those rights with his watchword “self-determination.” The Peace Treaties codified the fundamental features of this idea. True, the old jealousies between the Great Powers are not yet removed; and new causes of bitterness have been added to the old, bitterness engendered by defeat and by the non-fulfilment of some of the victors’ wishes and purposes. Nevertheless the Peace Treaties have created juster conditions throughout Europe, and we are entitled to expect that the tension between States and races will decrease.
Despite all antagonisms, there is, moreover, ground for hope that the lessons of the war will strengthen the prospects of peace. What may be faulty in the new order will be susceptible of pacific adjustment as occasion arises. All difficulties notwithstanding, it is possible to detect the beginnings of a free federalization of Europe in place of the absolutist mastery of one Great Power or of alliances of Great Powers, over the Continent. In a new Europe of this kind the independence of even the smallest national individuality can be safeguarded; and the League of Nations suggests an instructive analogy to what a united Europe may become.
Before the war, doubt was long and often felt whether our nation or any small nation could be independent—the doubt which inspired Palacký’s well-known saying that Austria was necessary as a federation of races. Great as is my deference to Palacký, and carefully though I have ever borne in mind the difficulties and the special problems of little peoples, I believed nevertheless our own independence to be possible. This belief engendered my whole policy and tactics. It moved me during the war to begin the struggle against Austria-Hungary. I held our independence feasible on condition that we should always be ready and be morally fit—as Havlíček demanded—to defend our freedom, that we should possess ​enough political understanding to follow an honest and reasonable policy at home and abroad, and that we should win sympathies in a democratically strengthened Europe. If the democratic principle prevails all round, one nation cannot suppress another. The history of Europe since the eighteenth century proves that, given democratic freedom, little peoples can gain independence. The World War was the climax of the movement begun by the French Revolution, a movement that liberated one oppressed people after another, and now there is a chance for a democratic Europe and for the freedom and independence of all her nations.
The Grouping of Small Peoples.
Natural as it would be for small peoples to draw near each other or to form alliances, such groupings cannot always be equal, in point of unity and central control, to larger neighbouring peoples. Alliances may arise for various geographical and economic reasons or out of political friendship or under stress of common danger. And though it is not to be expected that all the little nations, as such, will join hands, since their interests are too various, some of them seem likely to form lasting groups, such as the Little Entente. The Northern States—the Finns, the Ests, the Latvians and the Lithuanians and even the Poles—may discuss their common interests. In any case it is expedient to remember that, if the Poles were included, there would be more than 100,000,000 inhabitants in the zone of small nations. But, geographically, this zone stretches from the North to the South of Europe, and its very length tells against the association of all the peoples that dwell in it. The Finns and the Greeks, for instance, might hardly perceive, at first sight, the community of their interests.
Austria-Hungary was often thought to be a natural federation of little peoples. The Turkish danger was alleged to have drawn Czechs, Austrians and Magyars closer together. Even now, a Danubian Federation is spoken of as though the Danube were a natural link between the peoples living on its banks or on those of its tributaries. Austrian historians and geographers have claimed that the Austrian Lands were bound to each other by geographical ties, and the Magyars have said the same of Hungary. Our historians have shown, on the other hand, that our Kings of the Přemyslide dynasty supplied the impulse to the creation of Austria before any Turkish danger existed, that the danger itself was temporary, and that, ​geographically and orographically, our Republic forms a more organic whole than the former Austria and Hungary ever formed. Assuredly, it is no less organic than they were. Nor are geographical conditions decisive in the world to-day. Modern technique has robbed natural frontiers of much of their former importance, unless they are mighty mountains, the broadest streams, or seas or deserts. Economic necessities, the need for security, and differences of culture have become stronger factors. Indeed, the disintegration of Austria-Hungary must be explained in the same way as its formation; and if historians explain how naturally the Hapsburg Monarchy was formed, they should also explain how naturally it went to pieces.
The Turkish danger gave the Hapsburgs no right to oppress their peoples by absolute rule. Now, these liberated peoples desire to repair, by intensive effort in their own States, the harm they suffered under extensive Hapsburg absolutist control. The social and historical forces which made and unmade Austria-Hungary will go on working. Such of them as were fruitful and healthy can be fostered and brought into play. It is possible and desirable that lively intellectual and economic intercourse should persist between the States among which the Hapsburg inheritance has been divided, and it is reasonable and timely that persons and goods should circulate more freely. Progress has already been made. The excitement and enmity of the war years are subsiding. We have concluded a commercial treaty with Austria based upon the common economic interests arising from our earlier connection, and upon the fact that a large number of our citizens live in Austria. Indeed, four of the Succession States have drawn closer to each other—Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Roumania and Austria. Our friendship with the Southern Slavs, which began long before the war and has been strengthened by the Little Entente, expresses a reciprocal need. Both of us depend upon the East and the South and upon the sea. For us and for the Southern Slavs, Austria is important as a country of transit.
This circumstance suggests further possibilities. Many interesting tasks devolve upon the Southern Slavs, one of the weightiest being the part they may play in the Balkans. Geographically and historically their influence on the new Balkan order must be considerable. They are the biggest Balkan nation and, if only for this reason, what remains of Turkish rule in Europe cannot be liquidated without them. Before the war various attempts were made to form a Balkan Federa​tion. There was a beginning of fraternization between the Serbian and the Bulgarian intelligentsia. To-day an alliance between the Bulgars and the Southern Slavs is again spoken of. There is, indeed, no reason to perpetuate the bitter antagonisms between the two peoples, all the less because the Croats and Slovenes, who are now included in Yugoslavia, had no part in them and should be able to exert a moderating influence upon Serbs and Bulgars alike. A federation between the Southern Slavs and the Bulgars would comprise some 17,000,000 souls whose numbers might be doubled in a few decades. The Southern Slavs—may the name be an omen!—will certainly reflect upon the problem of Constantinople and its solution; and the possibility of pursuing a big policy might help to check the foolish dissensions between Serbs and Croats. In saying this I do not forget the Greeks’ relationship to Constantinople, on the one hand, and to the Serbs and Bulgars, on the other; nor do I overlook Italian aspirations in the Balkans and in Asia Minor, or the fact that Constantinople still interests the Great Powers, albeit now in minor degree.
So complicated are the circumstances of our position in the heart of Europe that we are bound to keep our eyes about us and really to take account of the whole world. Therefore I repeat what I said long before the war-that our policy must be a world policy. When Bismarck declared that whoever was master of Bohemia would be master of Europe, he understood, from his imperialist and pan-German standpoint, the position of our nation and our State in the very centre of the Continent. We do not need to be the masters of Europe. It is enough that we should be our own masters. Yet we may learn from Bismarck’s discernment how important the East is for us, precisely by reason of the Prussian-German “Urge towards the East,” and that we should therefore desire the new order in the Balkans to be based on the national facts of ethnography and on the history of civilization there. In both respects the Balkan Slavs may hold a decisive position.
For the same reason we have yet another weighty interest in common with the new Austria. In its reduced dimensions, the Austrian Republic or—to give it its German name—Osterreich has regained its original meaning as “Ost-Reich" or “Eastern Realm.” It will, I presume, maintain its independence alongside of Germany but without joining Germany, as is desirable both politically and from the standpoint of Austrian culture. I agree with the Austrian politicians and men of learning who insist upon the special character of Austrian ​Germanism, defending it against the Germanism of Germany and particularly against Prussianism. The independent existence of Austria for a thousand years argues in favour of her maintaining it under the new conditions. Hence, in regard to Austria, a Republican Austria especially, our policy can and should be entirely friendly. In other words, we ought seriously to ponder the Austrian “Idea,” even in the new situation, and to develop Palacký’s conception. In any case the evolution of the new Austria demands alertness and political maturity on our part.
In the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy we lived alongside of Poles, Little Russians or Ruthenes, Roumanes and Magyars. With the Poles, Little Russians and Roumanes our relations were, even then, friendly in politics and in culture; and in Hungary, the Roumanes and the Slovaks went hand in hand. Now all of them, including the Magyars, are our neighbours and it is natural that we should wish to stand on a neighbourly footing with them. Not only do the union of Sub-Carpathian Russia (the former Hungarian Ruthenia) with us, and the Little Russian minority in Slovakia, give us a particular interest in the Little Russians, but Poland, Roumania and Hungary are quite especially important because they border on Germany, Russia and Austria-yet another reason for a policy of friendship.
Germany and Czechoslovakia.
Palacký and other of our leading political men descried the chief obstacle to our independence in our numerical weakness as compared with our German neighbours. While there are but nine or ten millions of us, there are more than 70 million Germans of whom 60 million live in Germany alone. After the Russians, the Germans are, numerically, the strongest people in Europe. They surround us on three sides. Three millions of them dwell in our own State and a goodly number in other States. Treitschke thought it the mission of the Germans to colonize the East. Indeed, in olden times, their tendency was towards the East and South-East; and as it is not to be expected that a dictated peace will destroy a tradition and alter tactics that are centuries old, we have constantly to reckon with German pressure. Our historians, including Palacký himself, claim that the main feature of our history has been “a constant contact and struggle of Slavdom with Romanism and Germanism” and “an overcoming and assimilation of alien elements.” Should the Magyars remain pro-​German, Palacký thought, this position would be aggravated. In this I agree with him, though I should be inclined rather to insist that we have a more positive task than to carry on a merely negative struggle with the Germans, and that the progress of civilization and the strengthening of democracy render it more and more important.
German pressure upon us has, it is true, been somewhat eased by the maintenance of Austria as a separate, independent State. But it is not certain that the Austrian question has been finally solved—and prudent and far-sighted politicians must take account of all possibilities, not closing their eyes to contingencies that may be disagreeable. Our gravest problem is our relationship to the Germans in Germany. We must endeavour to make it “correct” and, in time, even cordial. The Germans have no reason for enmity. They can and must transform their “Urge towards the East” into peaceful rivalry. We, too, like all European nations, look East and South. By the war, Germany has actually gained. She has become a Republic, she is racially more homogeneous and is consequently able to pursue pacific, democratic aims. Culture as well as strength weighs in the balance of our relationship to Germany, for, from the beginning of our evolution, Germany has influenced our civilization ecclesiastically, economically, and in art and literature. Hence the question of our independence of Germany is also a question of culture in the widest sense of the word. And it is obvious that good relations with Germany presuppose a reasonable political system of economic and intellectual cooperation with our own Germans.
Nor should optimism hide from us the difficulties inherent in our position in Europe and in our very history. To me it seems as though many of us only realized these difficulties after the establishment of our own State, though, in reality, they are nothing new and we ought to have been prepared for them. I have ever been conscious of them, even when I decided to work and to fight for our freedom and independence. Like the destiny of all nations, ours will be determined by natural and historical realities, not by the fantastical schemes and desires of the undiscerning. Therefore it is the task of our educated public men and our statesmen clearly to perceive our position, constantly to watch with observant eye our development and that of our neighbours, and to act accordingly. While we are not the smallest nation in Europe—we come ninth in point of population, and twenty-three smaller peoples come after us our central situation and our numerical weakness ​compel us to be prudent and vigilant—vigilant, not crafty, for the era of political cunning is closed, nor has cunning ever brought a people real advantage.
From the knowledge that we withstood the pressure of our expansive neighbours we may draw strength—it is a potent argument and consolation from the fact that, in a fateful hour, we found allies and protectors and, despite our hard fight, contrived to restore our lost independence. Yet the memory that, in a world-situation essentially similar, we, like our Slav neighbours, the Poles, once lost our independence, obliges us to redouble our circumspection and foresight. Neither should we forget that, towards the beginning of the Middle Ages, the Slavs extended to the Saale and to the Northern Elbe, although we have to-day a clearer and more accurate view than Kollár and his contemporaries held of what befell the Slavs of the Elbe. We need to know our strength and to estimate it soberly, seeking examples among the other nations great and small, copying no model heedlessly but rather pursuing with consistent resolve our own well-thought-out policy, working ever to increase our inner virtue as Havlíček defined it. Then we shall be able calmly to say: "We would not be subdued, and never and by none will we be subdued." I always think of little Denmark who in 1864 manfully and honourably refused to be intimidated by two giants, Prussia and Austria, notwithstanding the expectation of defeat. At the end of the world war Denmark got back what she had wrongfully lost, and got it without fighting.
The Influence of the West.
For our political independence we have chiefly to thank the West-France, England, America and Italy. Though, in former times, our relations with Germany were so intimate that, for a while, our Kings stood at the head of the Holy Roman Empire, we were linked with the West—that is to say, with France, England and Italy, not with Germany alone—from the beginning of our development in Europe, whereas our relations with the Byzantine and Russian East were intermittent and episodical. The influence of the other Western nations upon us was less pronounced than that of the Germans, but French and Italian influences, especially in art, were noticeable among us in the early days. It was on a Western model that our King, the Emperor Charles IV, established Prague University. In the Reformation, the entire people threw in ​its lot with Western civilization, just as the whole of the West had followed in the steps of Hus who had himself been powerfully influenced by England. Our Reformation set up ideals which the West presently realized; for, as Palacký rightly observes, in our Reformation are to be found the germs of all the ideas and movements that developed afterwards in the West. Comenius was bound by spiritual ties to the West; and upon him, as upon Hus, English influence was beneficent.
Notwithstanding the one-sided German pressure to which we were subjected by the rule of Austria, we drew more fruitful inspiration from England and France precisely because we sought it of our own free will; and, at the time of our so-called renascence, we were greatly encouraged by the ideas of the French Revolution, both in the domain of politics and in that of general culture. Thus it was natural and logical that, in the world war, we should side against our oppressors and with France and the Allies generally. We could do no other. Except the Bulgars, all the Slav peoples were likewise on the Allied side—though some of the Poles wavered for a time—and the Southern Slavs, the Poles and the Ruthenes, not we alone, were exposed to Austro-Hungarian and Russian oppression. Like us, too, the other Slav nations tended westwards, towards France in particular, as the history of Polish and Russian culture sufficiently proves.
In our special case, it was chiefly the Monarchy of the Hapsburgs that estranged us from the Central Powers. It had carried through the violent Counter-Reformation, it had broken political faith with our people, restricting their independence, Germanizing them, and becoming, after the French Revolution, the chief inspirer of reaction. Once the proud rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, the Hapsburgs had sunk to the level of being a mere vanguard of the eastward march of pan-Germanism. But German pressure upon the Slavs, and the fact that behind the Hapsburgs stood the Hohenzollerns, contributed also to determine our attitude towards Germany.
Yet, if we owe the restoration of our independence to France, England, America and Italy, our policy is nevertheless untrammelled, particularly in regard to Germany. The relationship between France and Germany is painful, but it will improve. We shall gladly do what we can to end an estrangement which we have no reason to desire. Alsace-Lorraine was and is not the chief and essential cause of Franco-German antagonism, as the pan-Germans themselves recognized when, ​before the war, they were wavering between East and West, looking now towards Asia, now towards Africa, in their uncertainty whether Russia or England was Germany’s real adversary. Mr. Temperley notes with some satisfaction in his “History of the Peace” that Germany showed less hostility to us than to some other peoples; and, in their report upon our revolution, Dr. Rašín and Dr. Soukup relate that the German Consul-General at Prague informed them forthwith (November 2) that the German Empire recognized the Czechoslovak State and had no thought of taking our German territory. I know that, in Russia, our men felt quite differently about the Germans than about the Austrians and Magyars. The Germans and we were at war, yet we respected each other, as the agreement at Bachmatch and other minor incidents prove. Our resentment of Austro-Hungarian oppression was more direct, more personal; and, for this reason, our political relationship to the new republican and democratic Germany may well be other than it was to the old Austria-Hungary and to Prussia.
For my own part I may say that, though I was working for our political independence even before the war, I never showed hostility to the Germans of Germany or even to the Germans in Austria. Then and afterwards I took a definite stand against Austrian Hapsburgism and Prussian Germanism, siding openly with the Allies during the war, but saying no word of insult to the Germans or to the Austrians as a nation. My bearing, as I have good ground to know, was recognized and respected even in German official circles. Nor was my policy affected by the knowledge that the Austrian military authorities and some circles in Germany wished to suppress my adherents by force and, above all, to have me arrested, even before the war, because they thought me dangerous.
My own mental training was by no means solely German. I sought Western culture because I found German literature and philosophy insufficient. Intellectually, I was rooted in the Classics, and in French, English, American and Russian literature; and if I was more deeply versed in them than most of my fellow-countrymen, I believe that, on the whole, my personal development corresponds to theirs. Mine was determined not by political prejudice but by critical comparison of German culture with that of other peoples, and by a desire for independence and synthesis.
Our Relations with the East.
With the East we had far less intercourse than with the West. Though we know too little of our relationship to the Byzantine Empire and to early civilization, we do know that, after the short Byzantine era, our whole future development was decisively influenced by the West. In politics as in culture we were in touch with the Poles and, politically, with the Magyars, but it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that we had any intellectual relations worth speaking of with the Russians and the Southern Slavs. In consequence of the one-sided German and, subsequently, Magyar policy of Austria, her Slav peoples had to establish relations of their own. Thus, as Havlíček put it, alongside of the great pan-Slav movement that embraced Russia, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria, a minor pan-Slav movement arose. Pan-Slavism could find no political expression in the absolutist epoch before 1848, but it made a demonstration for liberty in grand style at the Slav Congress of Prague in 1848; and when the subsequent reaction had died away, the Slav peoples of Austria came into closer touch with each other in the Vienna Parliament.
Kinship of blood and speech naturally led to reciprocity in culture, for the Slav languages are more deeply and closely akin than the Romance or the Germanic languages. In point of blood and speech, pan-Slavism is more natural than pan-Latinism or pan-Germanism. Kollár, who was a pupil of Herder, declared Slav reciprocity to mean sheer humaneness and enlightenment. He looked upon the terms “Slav” and “human being” as identical, and upon Slav political ideals as the ideals of pure democracy which were supposed to have been cherished, in more or less mythical prehistoric times, by “dove-like” Slav peoples. He imagined that the peculiar and more exalted culture of the Slavs would redeem even the declining Western nations, in whose place the Slavs would become the leaders of mankind. In much the same way the Russian Slavophils, including the Poles, proclaimed simultaneously the Messianic mission of the Slavs, the redemption of mankind by Slav, Russian and Polish culture, though Russian culture was Orthodox, and Polish culture Catholic. Not until later, and then to some extent as a reaction against pan-Germanism, did the original pan-Slavist theories take on a political complexion.
Scientifically, the Slav Messianic theory is as untenable as are the Messianic yearnings of pan-Germans and others; ​and, alike in their philosophical and political forms, I always looked upon them sceptically, just as I regarded Western culture with a critical eye. We have no right to talk, as the Slav and the German Messianists did, of the “decline of the West.” Nor, for my part, do I accept Spengler’s philosophy or the theory of the decline of the Germans. Deeper knowledge points to a synthesis of culture, to the influence of all nations, Slav and non-Slav, upon each other. Our whole history and our geographical position demand such synthesis; and my answer to the old saying “Ex oriente lux” is that light comes likewise from the West. In truth, this synthesis is already going on, in philosophy and science, in mechanics and in the externals of civilization generally. In literature and art we know how long and how eagerly the Slavs have been absorbing Western culture, while, in the West, Russian literature has been gladly read, never with more avidity than in recent years. As the French novelist, Paul Adam, said years ago, “The Empires of the East and of the West must espouse each other.”
Before the war, as I have shown, the reciprocal influences of Western literature were strong in France, England, America and Italy. Even after the war the outlook is promising. Such Europeanism supplements and develops the healthy germ in Kollár’s doctrine of reciprocity. It excludes only romantic Messianism and Chauvinism. In so far as it draws attention to the good qualities and special aptitudes of peoples, Messianism, that is to say belief in a national mission, has some merits. Sober critics will not exclude it wholly from their purview but will rather assign proper value to all living forms of culture. Thus they may prepare an organic synthesis, each nation fostering its own special genius and qualities under the influence of every vivifying factor in civilization.
This general rule has to be adapted and applied to individual cases. It is hard to say precisely what foreign influences have affected us most deeply and permanently, and still harder to decide which of them was most congenial and in what measure. For this we should need to know what our own national character consists in, how far our national being and striving are on right lines, what makes up the value of our culture and what foreign influences are suitable to it. When we were under official compulsion to adopt the German language and German culture, we naturally resisted them and welcomed other influences and examples, especially French, Slav and Russian. Our chief task is now to work out a critical, scientific philosophy of ​nationality and culture. It is not enough to love our Fatherland and people; we need to love them consciously, or, as Neruda once put it, to think out a sound programme of culture all round. My pleading for such a programme before the war led to conflict and controversy about the real value of our nationality. Now that we are free, I do not doubt that it will be more systematically taken in hand. Our historians, our critics of art and of literature, our sociologists and politicians are obliged to find their bearings and to answer the question what we are giving to the treasury of mankind, and what we need to take from other nations so as to be able to give greatly.
The Slav Problem.
It is from this standpoint that I judge the demand for “a Slav policy.” My own policy has always been Slav, even during the war, though I conceived its essence and its aims otherwise than they were, and still are, currently defined among us. Freedom has brought us new Slav tasks—problems that are at once political and administrative as well as questions of culture—such as the union of Slovakia with the historic Bohemian Lands and the right treatment of Sub-Carpathian Russia and of the Polish and Little Russian minorities in Slovakia.
Like all the Slav peoples (with the exception of the smallest of them, the Serbs of Lusatia) we possess to-day a State of our own. Hence our political relationship to them is clearer and more practical than it was under Austria-Hungary. Of the official, economic and political relations, the Government will, of course, be in charge; but reciprocity of culture depends upon educated circles and educational institutions, not upon the Government alone. Such relations are now unhindered, and freedom may render them more efficacious than they were before. The independence of the Slav peoples makes it possible more fully to realize Kollár’s ideal. We shall continue the cooperation with the Southern Slavs and the Poles which, as I have related, arose during the war; and though our relations with Bulgaria were somewhat troubled by the war, the cloud has passed away. Of Russia I have spoken at great length, explaining that, while our sympathies flowed strongly towards Russia from the beginning of our national rebirth, we had few real ties with her. By the end of the eighteenth century she was playing an important part in Europe, and her greatness naturally often led our people to conceive pan-Slavism as pan​Russianism. But the liking of the Russians for us was less lively than our liking for them. Under Tsardom, their Government and bureaucracy were Conservative and legitimist. Tsar Nicholas I rejected pan-Slavism for legitimist reasons. The sympathies of Russia had long lain with the Orthodox peoples. As they were living under the hostile and non-Christian rule of the Turks, their liberation—including the conquest of Constantinople and of the Straits—became a Russian official policy. The Liberal section of the Russian public, on the other hand, would have nothing to do with the official policy and entertained none of the pro-Slav feelings which, in Russia as elsewhere, were propagated by a limited circle of Slavonic students and historians through whom knowledge of the Slav peoples and fellow-feeling with them spread to wider circles. Yet, even among the Russian masses, this fellow-feeling concerned only the Orthodox Slavs, the Serbs and the Bulgars. It drew strength from the ancient relationship of the Russian Church to Byzance.
Towards the Catholic and Liberal Slav races, official and Conservative Russia showed, on the contrary, reserve and even antipathy. From the time of Peter the Great, if not earlier, Russia had made friends with Prussia and Germany. The Russian Germans held, moreover, a strong position at Court. In the eighteenth century, when the Russian nobility was inclined to adopt French culture, Russian intellectual life became an odd Franco-German mixture. Subsequently, during the nineteenth century, German influence became more powerful and Socialism presently reinforced it among the younger generation. Until quite recently Russian knowledge of the culture and literatures of other Slav peoples was insignificant.
As her position in Europe and Asia demanded, Russia, a Great Power, proudly pursued a world policy in which the Balkans and Turkey played a notable part. Financial and political exigencies led her into the alliance with France, and ultimately into the Entente with England after long rivalry in the Balkans and Asia.
It was in these circumstances that the world war broke like a storm upon us. By it our former uncritical pro-Russianism was refuted and, I hope, dispelled. Our Slavism must not be blind. I, for my part, repudiate the pan-Russianism which, in the name of Slavdom and Slav policy, centres all hopes upon an imaginary Russia and is too often a mere pretext for Nihilist pessimism. All of us must hope that Russia will recover from her disintegration, but recovery and consolidation can ​only be the work of the Russians themselves. The work cannot be done by other peoples from outside. Loans, trade and other outward agencies of European civilization may help her. They will not redeem her, for only she can save herself. France and other nations have gone through revolutions and crises. They had to help, and helped, themselves. We can do little for the Russians. What we could do we did during the war, and are still doing it. It was because I understood how profound was the crisis in Russian political life and culture that I adopted my policy of non-intervention. I believe that Russia will come to her senses, consolidate herself and play once more a great political part, greater than under Tsardom. We and the other Slavs need her, nay, the whole world needs her. Russophil we remain, but in future we shall be more thoughtfully, more practically, Russophil, following in the steps of Havlíček who was the first political man among us to grasp the real distinction between Tsarism and the Russian nation.
Now and again a voice from Poland is heard to proclaim that the Polish nation will be the leader of the Slav peoples since, next to Russia, it is the greatest among them, and possesses the needful groundwork of Western civilization. We must wait and see whether Poland can play this part. I myself doubt if she is sufficiently qualified for it. Others again, in sundry Russian and Southern Slav quarters as well as among ourselves, have, since the war, often extolled Prague as the capital of the Slav world. If they mean Prague as a centre of Slav culture, I may agree with them. Geographically, Prague is easily accessible to those of the Slavs who look westwards. In culture, we possess the right foundations and might take the lead, especially as we have gone ahead of the other Slavs, thanks, chiefly, to our Reformation. The fact that we alone among the Slav peoples feel sympathy with all of them, without regard to the ecclesiastical and other differences which divide them so sharply from each other, entitles us, in a sense, to act as leaders. But a postulate of such leadership is that we should consolidate ourselves spiritually and mentally and should rightly adjust our bearing towards the non-Slav nations.
Our policy must above all be Czech, truly Czech, that is to say, truly a world-policy and therefore also Slav. In the conduct of foreign affairs we have a tradition, young though it be. Its bases and principles were worked out during the war in the light of experience gained in dealing with most of the States of the world. The political success that attended it​—a success due to a sober and practical conception of the whole situation—speaks in favour of its continuance.
The Problem of Minorities.
In some degree our foreign policy is determined by regard for our racial minorities. Save in the smallest States such minorities exist, inasmuch as a strictly ethnographical delimitation of frontiers is impracticable. Nationality, as expressed in terms of race, played little or no part in the formation of the majority of existing States. Indeed, the principle of nationality acquired State-creative power only in the modern era and, even then, it was not alone decisive.
No two minority questions are alike. Each presents peculiarities of its own. Our German minority in Czechoslovakia is a case in point. It is comparatively large, for it numbers three millions out of a total population of thirteen. Eleven European States count fewer than three million inhabitants. Our Germans are, moreover, mature in culture and are economically, industrially and financially strong. Politically, they suffer from the drawback that, under Austria, the Vienna Government looked after them to such an extent that their own political sense was not whetted. But at their back stands the great German people, and they are neighbours of Austria who is a neighbour of Germany.
Our claim that the German minority should remain with us is based on our historic right and on the fact that the Germans of Bohemia never attached value to union with Germany while they were under Austrian rule, or even in the time of the Bohemian Kingdom. It was modern pan-German propaganda that first gained adherents among them. During the war they sided with Austria and Germany against us. After the war, and particularly after the revolution in Prague, they sought to organize their own territory politically, but the very attempt proved the impossibility of coordinating their scattered and disconnected regions under one administration. The fact that they set up a variety of German units speaks for itself.
A Czech proposal, which was taken into consideration at the Peace Conference, was once made to cede a part of German Bohemia to Germany. The idea of delimiting the new States as far as possible according to nationality had no lack of supporters in England and America. Yet, on mature reflection, many political men with whom I discussed it, recognized that the discontinuity of important sections of our German territory, ​no less than its economic interests, told in favour of our historic right; and, at the Peace Conference, these considerations prevailed.
Soberly judged, it is to the interest of our Germans themselves that there should be more rather than fewer of them among us. Were we to cede one and a half or even two millions of them to Germany, the remaining million would have far greater reason to fear Czechization than the three millions fear it now. And, if we consider the position between us and our Germans as it was under Austria and as the pan-Germans would like to have it to-day, the question arises whether it is fairer that a fragment of the German people should remain in a non-German State or that the whole Czechoslovak people should live in a German State.
The authority of President Wilson and the principle of self-determination have been invoked by our own Germans as well as by those of Austria. True, “self-determination was not recognized in Germany, nor did Austrian Germans like Dr. Lammasch, Dr. Redlich, and others admit it, not to mention Czernin and other Austro-Hungarian Ministers. Before the war our people, too, proclaimed it; but, in point of fact, it has never been clearly defined. Does it apply only to a whole people or is it valid also for sections of a people? A minority, even a big minority, is not a nation. Nor does “self-determination” carry with it an unconditional right to political independence. Our Germans may “determine” to remain with us, as the Swiss Germans have “determined” to stay outside Germany. Individual rights are not the sole governing factors in the question whether a whole, or parts of a whole, shall be independent; the rights of others enter into it, economic rights no less than the claims of race and tongue; and in our case, Czech rights as well as German, and considerations of reciprocal advantage, especially in the economic sphere.
Hence it was urged at the Peace Conference that to exclude the German minority from Bohemia would damage the Czech majority a decision the more warranted because the German people in general derives great political benefit, greater than it would if it were wholly united, from the circumstance that a notable part of it lives outside Germany proper, forming an independent State in Austria, holding a preponderant position in Switzerland, and possessing minorities in Czechoslovakia and elsewhere. Even since the war a number of German political men and historians have, indeed, proved that, from the standpoint of culture, the German people gains by its membership of ​different States. The same reasoning applies to the French—in France, Belgium and Switzerland—and to the English. Naturally, the Germans outside Germany are entitled to political freedom and to a due share in the administration of the States to which they belong. Those States, for their part, are entitled to demand that their German citizens shall not be an aggressive vanguard, as the pan-Germans would have them be, and that they should make up their minds to work together in peace with the peoples among whom they have lived for centuries and to whom they are bound by ties material and spiritual.
Our Germans, as I pointed out in my first Presidential Message, originally came to us as colonists; and the significance of this German colonization would not be lessened even if it were true that a few Germans were already living in the country. Yet this does not mean that, as colonists, our Germans are second-class citizens. They were invited to come by our Kings who guaranteed to them the right to live their own lives in full measure—a weighty circumstance, politically and tactically, for the Germans as well as for us. I, for my part, acknowledge and deliberately adopt the policy of our Přemyslide Kings who protected the Germans as a race, though I do not approve of the Germanophil leanings of some of the Přemyslides. I have nothing against the association of the name “Přemyslide”—which, from our verb přemysliti, means “thoughtful”—with the Greek Prometheus, but rather perceive in the name of our first dynasty a reminder that our whole policy, not alone in regard to the Germans, must be well-pondered, thoroughly thought out or, as Havlíček demanded, reasonable and upright. The settlement of the conflict between us and our Germans will be a great political deed, for it implies the solution of a question centuries old, the ordering of our relationship to a large section of the German people and, through it, to the German people as a whole. To this end our Germans must de-Austrianize themselves and get rid of the old habit of mastery and privilege.
Politically, the Germans are the most important of our minorities, and their acceptance of our Republic will simplify all the other minority questions. Alongside of the Germans we have a few Poles, more Little Russians (in Slovakia) and still more Magyars. To them also the rule applies that the rights of race must be safeguarded. Local self-government and proportional representation may, in a democratic State, serve this purpose well. Each minority, too, must have elementary ​and secondary schools of its own. In civilized Europe the number of high schools and universities is now determined by a definite ratio to population and educational needs. In Germany there are approximately one university for every three million and a technical high school for every six million inhabitants. In Czechoslovakia three million Germans have a university and two technical high schools.
For us, who live in a country racially mixed and so curiously situated in the centre of Europe, the language question is of great moment, politically and educationally. The official language in a multi-lingual State must be determined by the requirements of the people and by the smooth working of the administration. The State exists for the people, not the people for the State. As a political entity and a unitary organization, our State and its army will use the Czech or Slovak language in accordance with the democratic principle that the majority decides. But, while the State will be Czechoslovak, its racial character cannot be settled by the official language alone. National character does not depend solely on language; and the national character of our State must be based upon the quality of a comprehensive educational policy consistently pursued.
Before the war I took part in the controversy upon the question whether the authorities should be unilingual or bi-lingual. In present circumstances I think it more practical that they should be bi-lingual though, during the transition period, it may be better, in some bi-lingual offices, that officials should work in one language only. Experience will presently show whether a unilingual system is feasible. In practice the question is one of knowing the languages spoken in the country. It is in the interest of racial minorities to learn the State language, but it is also in the interest of the majority to be able to speak the languages of the minorities, especially that of the biggest minority. The teaching of languages in the schools will be arranged on this basis. The German language is politically important for us. Our officials must know it, and know it well so as to understand even popular dialects. German is a world-language; and, if only on this account, is valuable as a means of education and culture. German must be taught in the Czech and Slovak secondary schools and in the higher classes of the elementary schools. In the corresponding German schools, Czech must be taught. In Slovakia an analogous rule applies, though perhaps to a more limited extent, to Slovak and Magyar. Time and experience will show whether ​the learning of these languages should be made compulsory or not. It must be remembered, if the complexity of our language question is to be understood, that in addition to our home languages we need Latin and Greek in our Classical high schools besides a knowledge of French and English, Russian and Italian. If they are true sons of Comenius, our pedagogues will have to simplify and to perfect our methods of teaching, so that the learning of languages may be made as easy as possible.
Chauvinism is nowhere justified, least of all in our country. A noteworthy fact, which I often mention to Germans and foreigners as characteristic of our people and of our revolution, is that despite all the Austrian acts of oppression during the war and the intolerant demeanour of a large number of our Germans, no violence was done to the Germans in Prague or elsewhere on October 28, 1918. So filled were our folk with the positive idea of creating a State that they thought no evil and took no reprisals. One or two excesses on the part of individuals prove nothing to the contrary. From the first, the leaders of the revolution wished the Germans to cooperate with them; and, at the Geneva Conference between the delegates of the Prague National Committee and Dr. Beneš a proposal was adopted without discussion, as something self-evident, that a German Minister should be included in the Government. In a democracy it is obviously the right of every party to share in the administration of the State as soon as it recognizes the policy of the State and the State itself. Nay, it is its duty to share in it. I know further that the National Committee in Prague simultaneously negotiated with the Germans and sought to gain their goodwill. The Germans affirm that the Lord Lieutenant of Bohemia, Count Coudenhove, was asked on October 29 to join the National Committee as a German representative. In the same spirit our National Committee at Brno, or Brünn, promised the military command in Moravia to invite two Germans to join it. After the revolution, the Czech leaders offered to set up a special Department of State for German affairs—a conciliatory and far-sighted step.
Chauvinism, that is to say, political, religious, racial or class intolerance, has, as history proves, wrought the downfall of all States. A modern Portuguese historian whose name I forget but whom I read in London, shows convincingly that chauvinistic imperialism wrecked the Portuguese World-Empire. The same lesson is taught by the fall of Austria and ​Hungary, Prussia-Germany and Russia—they who take the sword shall perish by the sword. We shall solve our own problem aright if we comprehend that the more humane we are the more national we shall be. The relationship between the nation and mankind, between nationality and internationality, between nationalism and humaneness of feeling is not that mankind as a whole and internationalism and humaneness are something apart from, against or above the nation and nationality, but that nations are the natural organs of mankind. The new order in Europe, the creation of new States, has shorn nationalism of its negative character by setting oppressed peoples on their own feet. To a positive nationalism, one that seeks to raise a nation by intensive work, none can demur. Chauvinism, racial or national intolerance, not love of one’s own people, is the foe of nations and of humanity. Love of one’s own nation does not entail non-love of other nations.
It is natural that, as a general rule, nationality should be determined by language, for language is an expression, albeit not the only expression of the national spirit. Since the eighteenth century, students of nationality have recognized that it is expressed rather in the whole of a nation’s intellectual effort and culture. Conscious fostering of nationality implies therefore a comprehensive policy of culture and education. Literature and art, philosophy and science, legislation and the State, politics and administration, moral, religious and intellectual style, have to be national. Now that we have won political independence and are masters of our fate, a policy conceived in the days of our bondage can no longer suffice. Emphasis was then laid upon our linguistic claims. Now our national programme must embrace the whole domain of culture. To the synthesis of culture towards which educated Europe is now striving, I have already referred. It is in countries of mixed race that this synthesis can best begin; and to all racial minorities among educated peoples a weighty and honourable task is thus assigned.
Democracy at Home.
We restored our State in the name of democratic freedom, and we shall only be able to preserve it through freedom increasingly perfected. In home affairs as in foreign, democracy must be our aim.
Democratic States have hitherto kept up, in greater or lesser degree, the spirit and the institutions of the old régime ​out of which they arose. They have been mere essays in democracy; nowhere has it been consistently applied. Only the really new States, the States of the future, will be founded, inwardly and outwardly, on liberty, equality and fraternity. Our position is not solely that our State must be democratic; it cannot be undemocratic. In comparing it with America I have said that we have no dynasty, no national aristocracy, no old militarist tradition in the army, and no Church politically recognized in the way the older States recognized it, particularly the absolutist, Caesarist, theocratic States. Apart from the positive worth of a republic and of democracy in themselves, these considerations influenced my decision upon the form of our State, though I knew that the education we had received for centuries and the example of absolutist, purely dynastic Austria had left their marks upon us. In the past our democratic aims were negative, a negation of Austrian absolutism. Now they must be positive. What we took as our ideal must become reality—and it will not be easy.
Democracy, the sovereignty of the people, differs not only in degree but in its whole quality from aristocracy, especially from monarchical aristocracy. The republican democratic State is founded not upon Divine Right, nor upon the Church, but upon the people, upon humanity. It is a government of all for all, not of rulers and ruled but of administration, self-government and the coordination of all State-creative forces. The democratic ideal would be direct government and administration by the people; but, given the growing dimensions of nations and States, democracy can only be indirect, exerting its functions through Parliament, by means of representatives elected under universal suffrage. Yet this Parliament, and the Government responsible to it, ought not to be rulers after the old fashion. They must ever bear in mind that their authority is derived by delegation from the electors.
Democratic constitutions provide for referenda which allow the democracy at large to come quantitatively into play from time to time, at least as regards legislation. And democracy necessarily protects individuals, for freedom is its aim and essence, and it was begotten of modern individualism. Hence the election and selection of its representatives is a means of assessing their value; for democracy takes account of competence and capacity, albeit with the difference that the authority it confers does not connote political or class privilege but signifies political and administrative fitness and expert quality. Its task is therefore to organize the authority of its ​elected leaders—not rulers—through the freedom and co-operation of all, and to educate such leaders for itself. It does not imply mere levelling without distinction of quality, but individualization and consequent recognition of capacity. Organizing ability and administrative knowledge are needed in the conduct of a democratic State, the ability and capacity to bring unity, “e pluribus et multis—unum,” out of diversity; and, allied with them, political sense, comprehension of the goal towards which a nation and a State and, indeed, the world are tending. The difference between “politicians” and “statesmen” is everywhere acknowledged. Democracy, too, relies upon science and upon all-round education, for it is itself a constant striving for political education and for the education of the people; and education is, in high degree, self-education.
As democracy grows stronger the urgent problem arises, even in republics, how parliamentary institutions are to be arranged and amended, not alone technically, for institutions by themselves are not enough. Democracy needs personalities to direct the administration of the State, individuals who are capable of creative political work. To-day there is talk of a crisis in parliamentarism. In varying degrees people are discontented with it. But elected representatives are essential to democracy, and even the Russian Bolshevists have had to set up their—undemocratically elected—parliament and parliaments despite their dislike of parliamentarism and democracy. The true reform of Parliament will be effected by reforming the electors, by their own political education and higher morality. Yet present systems of franchise and the parliaments they produce may be susceptible of many improvements if the objects are kept in view of ensuring that the candidates elected shall be politically competent, and that the parliamentary organization itself shall be simplified. Parties may secure the right, in given circumstances, to call for the resignation of one or more of their representatives and to replace them by others. The size of legislative assemblies may be reduced; and, under proportional representation, means might be found to reduce the number of legislators while maintaining the relative strengths of parties. Yet the advantage of having a large number of members of parliament is that the broad masses of electors are rendered more familiar with the parliamentary system and that both parliament and Government are brought into closer touch with the electorate. Whatever the form of a parliament may be, education and morality on the part of its members are essential postulates.
​Alongside of the reform of the parliamentary system stands the reform of officialdom, of the bureaucracy or civil service. The monarchical, Caesarist bureaucracies of the past were aristocratic, & means of ruling. Democratic bureaucracy will work administratively for the people. In the Austrian Empire the lowest of the State Railway officials lorded it over the public, as though to serve them were an act of grace; but, under a truly democratic system, the highest official is himself a free citizen, one of the people working for the people. Bureaucratic delays are to be avoided, affairs to be settled promptly and officials taught not to shun responsibility. Superfluous scribbling has to give place to oral procedure and the whole apparatus of administration to be unified and simplified. A democratic bureaucracy must be upright and clean-handed. Even in the Austrian Empire, civil service reform was long talked of. In our Republic it is all the more urgent. Even after the substitution of the double-tailed Bohemian lion for the two-headed Austrian eagle, something remains to be done. Democracy and the Republic are more than negations of monarchy and absolutism; they are a higher, more positive stage of political development.
Outwardly, in foreign policy, the work of democracy is to organize and strengthen, by methods of friendship, relations between States and nations. Democratic foreign policy all round means peace and freedom all round. The old diplomacy was dynastic and there is an insistent demand for a new diplomacy. Our citizens' new diplomatic representatives will be educated, honourable and free from class spirit; frank, yet tactful and discreet, serving their own nation without trickery in their dealings with other States and nations. The notion that diplomacy is necessarily compounded of cunning is obsolete. Men are beginning to understand that, between nations as between individuals, falsehood is stupid, and that it complicates and retards matters needlessly. Even in politics the method of truth is the most practical. The old régime was a world of illusions and its diplomacy was therefore illusionist.
If the new diplomacy is to be a diplomacy of the whole people its representatives must be accredited to peoples, not merely to heads of States. Logically this would imply that a diplomatic envoy should uphold the interests and the policy of his country in foreign Parliaments. Relations between States and nations might thus, in course of time, be usefully supplemented by inter-parliamentary intercourse.
​Dostoyevsky claimed that the yearning for union with mankind—pan-Humanism—is a Russian and a Slav characteristic. But this yearning is to be found in all men and races. They cannot bear isolation. What I have often called “world-humanity” is but another name for the inborn desire and striving of men for general friendship and union. Like individuals, nations need sympathy. The course of history runs in the direction of a more unitary organization of mankind as a whole, a trend accentuated by the evolution of democratic States. The League of Nations is now the weightiest and widest international institution and is becoming a real organ of internationality. Alongside of it stand a goodly number of organizations like the Red Cross and the Postal Union. The “Statesman’s Year Book” enumerates twenty-five such, but the “Handbook of International Organizations” gave a list of 437 others, even in 1922. The very conception, substance and dimensions of State sovereignty are undergoing transformation. In the era of what was still, at bottom, theocratic absolutism after the Reformation, the conception of sovereignty was strictly circumscribed, for at that time States were self-contained and, to use a current expression, self-sufficing, by reason of the sparseness of their population and of the lack of means of communication. Nowadays, international relations have developed in such a degree that no State can live regardless of others. Nationally and internationally, the independence of a State is to-day only relative. States are inder-dependent, the reciprocity of their relations is increasing and is being organized, even juridically, in ever clearer and more definite fashion.
Economic Democracy.
Genuine democracy will be economic and social as well as political.
Economic questions are so important to-day because war and revolution have, by destroying the wealth and the accumulated resources of nations, brought about a condition of want that is economically primitive. The crisis throughout Europe, nay, throughout the world, necessitates economic reconstruction, but it is a mistake to take this situation, which arose out of the war, as confirming the Marxist doctrine of historical materialism and as a sign that our task is solely economic. The war and the social and economic position which it entailed prove, on the contrary, that, as Marx rightly said, hunger is ​no policy. Indeed, the crisis of the war and post-war periods has involved Socialism itself in a crisis.
The very creation of new republics and democracies proves that the war stimulated rather than weakened the striving for social and economic justice. Democratic equality admits of no social nobility; but, as I said in speaking of Russian Bolshevism, I do not think Communism an ideal solution of the problem of economic equality. In the present stage of its evolution, democracy is seeking to get rid of misery and of the most glaring disparities of wealth. Yet, even in the economic domain, it must not merely level down. It must differentiate. The productive aspects of Capitalism are less open to criticism than its effects in enabling unproductive, non-earning, idle men to appropriate the fruit of others’ hard and honest work.
The theorists of political economy, from Adam Smith onwards, deduce economic activity from selfishness, which is assuredly a potent motive. But they forget the human desire to exercise special aptitudes and faculties in various kinds of work and production. Inventors and men of enterprise are not merely selfish. The best of them are interested in their undertakings and inventions. They organize, direct and perfect the making of things. The social and economic anarchy, of which Marx rightly complains, arises in part because the right men are not put in the right places or given work, economic and other, according to their talents. Whether Socialism would mend matters remains to be seen. I am not opposed to the socialization of a number of undertakings—socialization, not merely nationalization or State control—such as railways, canals, coal mines and means of communication. I can imagine a gradual, evolutionary socialization for which the ground would be prepared by the education of workmen and of leaders in trade and industry. To this end well-ordered State finances will be needed and closer and apter control of the whole financial system, including the banks; and, above all, better social legislation, and unemployment insurance in particular.
One of our special problems is land reform. All parties demanded it before the war. During the Counter-Reformation the covetous Hapsburgs and their alien nobles built up huge estates by means of confiscation. Our country is rich and the social and economic task of our democracy is correspondingly great. It has also to care for the physical and mental health of the nation. Not in Czechoslovakia alone but in all belligerent ​countries the war weakened the vitality of the people. Most intensely were the effects of impoverishment and of psycho-physical exhaustion felt among the small nations. Some of them come within the range of ordinary observation, others are revealed by medical statistics. For instance, we are losing from tuberculosis nearly six times as many lives as are lost in England. In France and Serbia, two countries whose physical sufferings during the war were severest, the proportions are the same as among us. Moreover, our condition of public health and our high death-rate from tuberculosis have to be considered in conjunction with our big total of suicides, in respect of which we come fourth, if not third, among the nations.
Those who assume that health and longevity are assured by well being and by a sufficiency or a superfluity of nourishment need to be reminded that men do not live by bread alone. Wealth and food are not the only decisive factors. We are beginning to understand that it is as bad to eat too much as to eat too little. Experts in dietetics declare that too much meat is eaten, that we are suffering from albuminism as well as from alcoholism. Indeed, it is no paradox to say that civilized mankind does not yet know how to eat. Bodily and mental health are preserved by moderation and morality; and to live healthily a man must have a purpose in life, something to care for, someone to love, and must conquer the fear of death that assails him alike in moments of acute danger and at hours of petty anxiety about health. Civilized man is ever seeking health and happiness, yet is unhappy and unhealthy. With all his civilization he is pitifully lacking in culture.
Wide and weighty tasks await our Departments of Health and Social Welfare with whose work the problem of emigration is bound up. Since a high proportion of our people emigrate to America, particularly from Slovakia, we shall need a model Emigration Office, after the Italian pattern, to watch over our emigrants, inform them of the position in the countries to which they go and, generally, to manage and direct their movements. Study of the causes of emigration may show that it is possible to counteract them by colonization at home, by organizing labour and by checking excessive propaganda on the part of steamship companies. A truly educative policy will pay conscientious heed to every aspect of social welfare and public health.
The Thraldom of Habit.
Democracy, in a new democratic republic, needs a new man, a new Adam. Man is a creature of habit. If we desire a really modern, consistent democracy we must break with our old political habits, and must abjure every form and kind of violence. Above all, we must de-Austrianize ourselves.
A democratic republic is a matter of principle. It does not simply mean replacing a Monarch by a President. Democracy is the political form of modern social organization, of the modern outlook, of the modern man. To proclaim and to practise the equality of all citizens, to recognize that all are free, to uphold inwardly and outwardly the humane principle of fraternity is as much a moral as a political innovation.
As I have shown when writing of Russia men are wont to make their earthly and heavenly gods in their own image. They are anthropomorphist. Politically and religiously they fashion their ideal of the future, in this world and the next, after their own capacities, their own good and bad qualities, their own usages and habits. All of us and all political parties have something of this folly in us for, in the last resort, anthropomorphism is what men are accustomed to think and to do. They find it hard to do anything new; and, at best, they change what is old as little as they can. Most of them are guided, in theory and practice, by analogy—to use the term in its logical and epistemological sense—not by creative understanding. But true philosophy and science demand that men should think, that they should gather wide experience, observing and comparing the present and the past, and verifying their deductions from experience by further experience so that haste may not lead them to fantastic conclusions. In art, as in politics and life, there is a difference between fantastic imaginings and the power of imagination, pure imagination as Goethe called it, for precise imagination is a very necessary means to right and exact thinking. A thinking man, ponderate in action, is he whose power of imagination can take him beyond himself, free him from the circumstances to which custom has bound him—a man who, by feeling and thought, can enter into the lives of other men and other times, immerse himself in the spirit of his race, of Europe, of humanity. Only thus can he create something and become a new man. Even then he will be modest and remember that men are no Titans, let alone gods.
From what I have called “anthropomorphism,” from slavery to habit, politics and parliamentarism suffer in especial degree. ​Few political men are able to rise above themselves, to escape from being self-centred, to view themselves with a critical eye. And, as most people belong to some party or other, the party spirit prevails in Parliament, identifying the interests of party—that is to say of a few individuals and sometimes of a single individual—with the interests of the whole community. Thus Parliaments represent parties, coteries, and strong and influential—I will not say “leading”—personalities, rather than the nation, the people, the masses.
Political Education.
As a cure for the evil of political anthropomorphism, democracy demands the political education of citizens and electors. I say education, not erudition, and certainly not a one-sided and exclusive school education. Needful as are schooling and schools, they alone cannot bestow understanding, talent or political sense. A strong and healthy brain is better than a school certificate. Often have I protested against what I call “schoolmaster politics.” I mean the schoolmaster spirit in priests and officials as well as in professors and teachers; for all who have to deal with the young, or with obedient, dependent, unresisting folk, tend too frequently to be absolutist, self-willed, cranky and childish when they become members of parliament and Ministers or attain public office and dignity. One of the weightiest democratic problems is the relationship of the academically-educated class to parties which, like the Socialists and Agrarians, represent the economic and class interests of great masses. It is in high degree the problem of the middle classes and of liberalism.
The so-called intelligentsia, the product of secondary schools and universities, which represents science, philosophy and general culture, is not organized as a class. Nevertheless it plays an important political part, particularly through the publicists in its ranks; and though the intelligentsia as a whole has not always been in the public eye, because its activity is educational rather than political, its leading members have everywhere made a stand against absolutism and theocracy. In the universities, at least, most of its members are apt to be conservative and to grow accustomed to a quiet, regular life.
In all democratic countries, and not least in the republics that have succeeded to monarchical or aristocratic systems, leading positions are now being taken in politics and in the public services by men devoid of higher education. How to ​preserve the special knowledge that is required in government, administration and in parliament is a problem that arises in every democracy as soon as the centre of parliamentary gravity shifts towards the great popular parties. Practically, the question is one of retaining under the parliamentary system the necessary number of educated specialists for the work of government and administration. Yet it is true that the academically-educated and capable official is often inferior to the experienced organizer and party leader in knowledge of men and in practical capacity for dealing with parties, Parliament and the Government; for political sense and statecraft are not to be acquired solely by schooling or even by administrative experience. Moreover, the problem of the educated comprises that of the semi-educated. Semi-education, as a transitional phase of our period of transition from theocracy to democracy, is the peculiar curse of our society and our era. Democracy has therefore to find means of turning semi-education into education.
Men are too apt to let words do duty for ideas and things—the “good round words” against which Havlíček rightly protested in politics, a “roundness” that should not be confounded with the natural inclination towards general ideas that accompanies the development of thought. In politics, even more than elsewhere, concrete thought is rare. To most people, collective concepts like “nation,” “mankind,” “State,” “Church,” “masses,” “Party,” ‘intelligentsia,” “bourgeoisie,” “proletariate” convey no clear, vertebrate ideas. There is nothing for it but to try to be concrete and to express general ideas as concretely as possible, while guarding, on the one hand, against misleading catchwords, and remembering, on the other, that in politics and in practical life watchwords are indispensable.
Laws also are general and abstract—frameworks to which substance is given by practice and experience. Hence the problem how far the Executive and the Courts shall go in applying legal principles and in discharging what are, in effect, law-making functions alongside of those of legislative bodies. Here again we touch upon the need for education in juridical, political and social matters and for sociological thought—a need which increases the urgency of popular education, the organization of the schools, the training of publicists, of officials and, not least, of political leaders. In the secondary schools the conflict between aristocracy and democracy has long been noticeable in the form of a dispute between Classical and Scientific ​education, the partisans of the former being confronted with a demand for a more practical and economically useful kind of school. In this demand there is some exaggeration. The object of schools is to teach the young to think, to accustom them to sound methods and to a scientific spirit, not merely to give them practical training and as much knowledge as possible. Whether the pupil presently forgets much of what he has learned is not the main point. He may forget mathematics and other necessary and useful branches of study as well as Latin and Greek. What matters is that he shall be able to find his bearings easily when he specializes and adopts a career. The secondary schools should certainly provide general and philosophical education; and, from the democratic standpoint, it is very important that secondary schooling should be of a unitary type as a step towards social unity.
The defects of our school system reflect the transitional character of our period. All that I have said of the disjointed, uncoordinated, incomplete, anarchical features of our modern era is reflected in the schools from the highest to the lowest. For some time past their influence upon the health and upon the nerves of children and students has rightly been a subject of investigation. But we have to think of mental and moral influences quite as much as of physical; and, in the pathology of education, suicide among children forms a special chapter. In the schools, that is to say, in our children, are reflected the conflict between Church and State, between philosophy and theology, between old and young. It is a fight for an outlook upon the world and upon life. And it is from this point of view that we should judge the claim of our school teachers that they themselves should receive higher academic training; for those very teachers who, amid their fatiguing work, strive to educate themselves more highly, are the most painfully conscious of the inadequacy of their own education.
Democracy and Publicity.
From the democratic principles of liberty and equality it follows that democracy is based upon publicity. In this it differs from aristocracy. Hence, too, the great importance of public opinion in modern life. Freedom of opinion is a form of political freedom, and a condition of it. In practice, journalism and the daily press are extensions of parliamentary control over Governments if not substitutes for it—a circumstance that is sometimes used as an argument against parliamen​tarism. Moreover, the freedom of the press ensures the right to criticize public men and the whole apparatus of the State. Criticism is at once a postulate and a method of democratic policy just as it is a postulate and method of science and of the scientific spirit. The right to criticize is a right of political initiative. Thus the daily press enjoys a real albeit not a codified right of initiative and of referendum. In this right lies its great responsibility.
Politics and journalism are so intimately related that they penetrate each other; but the difference between them should be clearly understood. While newspapers, daily papers especially, are points of crystallization for tendencies, groups and parties, they have their own particular business interests. It is often a question how far the interest of a party or of a group coincides with the interest of the State; and the wish to increase the circulation of a party newspaper may easily lead to demagogy and partisanship. In the haste of working for the day, nay, even for the minute, the precision of journalistic judgment and of reporting is apt to suffer—a drawback that explains the general desire for the reform of journalism and for the education of journalists.
The right and the duty of democratic public opinion leave, or should leave, no room for concealment or secretiveness. Moral progress in public and private life can only be achieved by eschewing falsehood and prevarication. The watchwords of realism in literature and art—“Truth and Truthfulness "—apply also to politics and respond to the same mental and moral needs. Standards of truthfulness or, in other words, of intellectual cleanliness in politics and life differ from age to age and from country to country. Though the old aristocratic régime had its special code of honour, it ignored truthfulness. Absolutism in Church and State, which kept the people in subjection, was founded upon authority, secrecy and secretiveness; and the right means of combating it are democratic freedom, openness and truthfulness.
Among us, as elsewhere, politics are usually thought to be the art of getting the better of somebody else by cunning and deceit. But democracy should mean moral renovation in politics, in education and throughout the whole range of public and private life. Every nation speaks two languages, that of truthfulness and that of mendacity. Dostoyevsky thought that Russia could attain to truthfulness by dint of lying. Neither in the case of Russia nor in our own do I believe it. I desire for democracy an education inspired by ethical ideals. ​My main historical and political contention is that democracy grew out of theocracy, and that it is the antithesis of the aristocratic system which theocracy most effectively organized.
Primitive men, savage and barbarian, naturally violent and selfishly ruthless, were socially organized by aristocrats, as a rule by absolute rulers and priests, whose cooperation was represented in higher stages of development by State and Church. (In Slavonic languages the words for “priest” and “prince” are closely related—“Kněz” and “Kniže.”) Religion held the upper hand. It governed the whole existence, the thoughts and deeds of men, directing politics and the life of the State. Originally, it was mainly made up of belief in supernatural beings who were supposed to intervene in human affairs with friendly or hostile intent. Man was not self-sufficing. In fear he created not only his gods but all kinds of demigods, Kings, Emperors, hierarchs and princes of the Church. Later on, priestly organizations became more unified, and the development of the Church kept pace with the transformation of polytheism into hierarchical theological unity. In much the same way the greater States were evolved. Various forms of theocracy took shape among the Egyptians and the Jews, the Greeks and the Romans. In Rome, religion was preponderantly a State institution; and out of the Roman and Greek theocracies grew the medieval Roman and Byzantine theocracies which attained their climax, their unity of doctrine and organization, in Catholicism.
The Reformation split up this great theocracy and strengthened the State. Whereas, in Protestant countries, the Reformation was fostered by the State while, in Catholic countries, the State carried through the Counter-Reformation, the effect was in both cases to strengthen the State and to substitute its absolutism for the absolutism of the Church. Against the absolutism of the State, revolutions broke out, some of which have lasted down to our own time; and the State became constitutional by the transition to democracy and republicanism. Thus, in history and in substance, democracy stands in antagonism to theocracy; and hence the age-long process of de-cclesiasticization that has steadily taken place in all domains of social life and, finally, even in the religious domain itself.
To avoid misunderstanding, some definition of terms is necessary. The word “theocracy” means “Divine Rule”; ​though, politically and in practice, theocracy was a hierarchy, a rule of the priesthood. So long as men held fast to a belief in divine revelation, to priestly doctrine, to theology, they were convinced that the Deity governed men and society. Vico, the first great sociologist, called the olden times the “era of gods and heroes,” to which the human era presently succeeded; and Comte likewise called the earliest period of human development “theological” which gave place, after an intermediate metaphysical stage, to the scientific, “positivist” modern era. To-day Vico’s distinction between the era of gods and heroes and the era of man is expressed in the terms “aristocracy” and “democracy.” The foundations of all aristocracy were religious or, at any rate, priestly. Politically and in administration it was an oligarchy, with monarchism as one of its forms.
Medieval theocracy was the exemplar and culmination of social aristocracy and monarchism, the priesthood being an aristocratic institution, inasmuch as priests were fundamentally differentiated from laymen. The Pope was the Vicegerent of God, the absolute infallible leader of the priestly hierarchy and, through it, of lay society. But the Reformation broke priestly rule and undermined, at the same time, religious and political absolutism, even though at first it strengthened the State in the struggle against the Church.
Modern men see more clearly the true nature of religion. They understand the difference between religion and morality. They do not reject religion but they distinguish between its ethical and religious elements, and organize their social life on an ethical basis, since morality, love, and human sympathy are less exposed to sceptical incredulity than the transcendental theological ideas upon which theocracy was established. The evolution of the Church and Churches, of theology and philosophy, shows how their weightiest ideas have been transformed, how they have lost power; whereas the bases of morality, the positive feelings of human beings for human beings, have been proof against sceptical intellectual processes. Hence the notable fact that, in the modern era, ethics have been studied and fostered by philosophers and laymen alike, by Hume and Kant, until they have become, even in politics, the groundwork of men’s outlook on life.
This does not mean that religion is unwarranted, undesirable or unnecessary. It means that modern men desire a free and individual religion in harmony with their reason. Religion is a powerful bond of union between men, yet a bond to be freely ​accepted, not enforced. Men have their roots in eternity; but, on earth, the surest tie between them is their inborn love of their fellow-men. Herein lies the significance of the historical process of emancipation from the Church, of the separation of Church from State, and of the innumerable efforts to solve the problems of religion and of religious organization.
In setting up democracy against theocracy I do not forget that democracy has evolved and is still evolving, or that there are various degrees of democracy and of democratic outlook. A democracy may be more or less republican, more or less de-ecclesiasticized. It may take the form of constitutional monarchy, and even then there may be differences such as existed between the English system and that of the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. What was sound in the old relationship between Church and State will remain in a new and higher form under a democratic system; and a genuine democratic policy will also prove its worth sub specie aeternitatis. Spiritual absolutism, the various forms of Caesaro-Papism and of temporal absolutism by which religion has been misused, will give place to a more exalted morality, a higher degree of humanity and a loftier religion which will freely guide the whole of public life. The ideal is Jesus, not Caesar. I say it is our task to make realities of the religion and the ethics of Jesus, of His pure and immaculate religion of humanity. He saw in the love of God and of one’s neighbour the fulfilment of the whole Law and the Prophets, the foundations of religion and of morality. All else is accessory. The spiritual absolutism that shared temporal rule with the State, was evil. It was the spirit of the Roman Empire. Julius Caesar, like Augustus and his successors, attached high importance to moral and religious reform; but modern man is no longer satisfied with a religion that the State dictates for political reasons. Therefore we need Jesus, not Caesar.
The Reformation was an attempt to realize the religion of Jesus according to the Gospels. By suspending the priesthood it undermined ecclesiastical and political aristocracy. The codification of the rights of man and of citizens was a direct consequence of the Reformation which, in its Calvinist rather than its Lutheran form, positively strengthened democracy and parliamentarism and, in Protestant countries, prepared believers for political responsibility by laicizing the ecclesiastical administration and by educating them to religion and moral independence. In Catholic and Orthodox countries, on the other hand, the strengthening of democracy was negative ​rather than positive. Their peoples were merely encouraged to resist the Church and absolutism. Perhaps for this reason such countries are apt to be more radical and revolutionary in politics and religion than Protestant countries—a result of the deep antagonism between ecclesiastical doctrine and modern science and lay morality. Moreover, the antithesis between Catholicism and Protestantism has led to striking differences in the evolution of political parties. The prevailing tendency in England and America has hitherto been for political opinions to be represented by two great parties, and religious opinions by a large number of Churches and sects, that is to say, for individualism and subjective independence to be expressed religiously, ecclesiastically; whereas, in Catholic and semi-Catholic countries, including Germany, ecclesiastical unity is maintained by the help of the State, while individualism and subjective independence find expression in a variety of political parties.
Another effect of the religious and political revolution through which the world has passed in the modern era, with its recognition of the rights of men and citizens, has been the growth of international relations and of international law. Even in ancient times, intercourse between States was regulated by treaties which were the origin of international law. Of this organized internationalism only the germs were to be found in the Roman Empire; but, under the medieval theocracy it gained strength in marked degree by reason of the Catholicity and centralized organization of the Christian world. In its legal aspects, however, internationalism has made the greatest strides in the modern era, of which international law is really a product. During the past century, as I have said, a whole series of important international institutions and conventions have been established and, since the Great War, this tendency has been accentuated. President Wilson, indeed, looked upon the League of Nations as the main feature of the Peace.
Readers will find historical evidence for what I have said in Jellinek’s book on “The State.” Though, as a jurisconsult and authority on political science, he often fails adequately to express the unifying concept that informs his work, it emerges nevertheless, in substance and method, from his comprehension of the rise and fall of theocracy, of the gradual emancipation of the State from the Church, of law, and of modern civilization. The democratic State is a new State. The whole of its purpose and organization are based upon a new, non-theocratical outlook. Hence its newness. The old ​State, for instance, troubled little about schools and education; the Church directed and administered the education of the entire community, whereas the modern State has taken over the functions of the theocracy and has gradually come to control the whole field of education. A new lay morality having arisen as a result of the Reformation, of Humanism and of the Renaissance, the State assumed even the philanthropic functions of the Church and transformed them into social legislation. In comparison with the new State, the old was a little thing. Its thinking was done by the Church. If, under theocracy, scholastic philosophy was the handmaid of theology, the old medieval State was the servant of the Church. When the State was emancipated from the Church it had to begin to think, to take over, extend and increase the former ecclesiastical functions. This is why the democratic State is new.
The Value of Morality.
I know with what superiority “practical” and “realist” politicians look down upon the claim that the groundwork of the State, no less than that of the Church, should be moral.
It is easy to forget that society has always been based upon ideas and ideals, upon morality and a philosophy of life, and to over-estimate the value of its material and economic foundations. From the beginning of its historical evolution the State leant, for this reason, upon the moral authority of the Church. This was precisely the origin of theocracy, which developed into democracy. De Tocqueville, whose book “Democracy in America” I have mentioned, lays stress upon the religious foundations of the American Republic and upon their significance even in the present time; and rightly so, for a written Constitution, a Parliament, a bureaucracy, the police, the army, trade and industry cannot guarantee democracy nor can the State ensure it if its citizens lack uprightness and are not agreed upon the weightiest ethical principles of life. We, for our part, need clearly to understand what the making of a new State implies. Long, long ago we lost our dynasty, our State and our army. The people were estranged from the aristocracy and the Church. We had no Parliament—only a feeble substitute for it in the provincial Diets. Now that our State is restored to us, by what institutions, in virtue of what political ideas are we to organize it, how are we to make good this lack of tradition and of authority? Are a bureaucracy and the police, the power of compulsion, enough ​to establish and to preserve a republican, democratic State? Does a Parliament, with its racial and party divisions, suffice for the purpose ? In Austria-Hungary, the Monarch embodied the old theocratic tradition, and was hallowed by belief in Divine Right. The Church cited St. Paul’s injunction in support of Monarchical and of State authority; and the bureaucracy, the nobility and the army were trained in the spirit of loyalty. What is the fount of authority in our young Republic, and on what grounds can it claim recognition from its own citizens and from foreign States and nations? Our citizens, at home and abroad, acknowledged the authority of the revolution in the first moment of general enthusiasm over the conquest of independence. How will it be in a workaday world?
Unlike Chelčický, I do not belittle the outward authority of the State, but I cannot deify it and its power. When I took upon myself the obligations of the Presidential office, well knowing what my daily administrative tasks would be, it was clear to me that no State or policy can prosper unless the groundwork be moral. As St. Paul wrote at the beginning of the 4th chapter of the second Epistle to the Corinthians: “Therefore, seeing we have this Ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not; but have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness nor handling the word of God deceitfully ; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.” That is the programme of the Republic and of Democracy sub specie aeternitatis.
The ethical basis of all politics is humanity, and humanity is an international programme. It is a new word for the old love of our fellow-men. The word “love” has to-day come so largely to mean the relations of the sexes that modern men are chary of using it in a religious sense. Hence, under the influence of Humanism and its ideal of humanity, words like humanity, sympathy and, eventually, altruism, gained currency in philosophical writings. But there is a difference between Humanism and humanity ; for humanity is, in reality, nothing but love of our fellows, though new social and political conditions have caused it to be formulated afresh.
Humanity is not mere sentiment. Even Jesus said “Love thy neighbour as thyself.” Man is naturally selfish. The question is whether he is solely selfish or whether he feels love or sympathy for his neighbour immediately, directly, not for selfish reasons. Psychological analysis has persuaded me that ​human beings do feel immediate, selfless, unselfish love for their fellows; and, it was in order to strengthen this conviction that I translated Hume’s Ethics. Selfishness may be the stronger motive. If so, it is the more necessary to ennoble and deliberately to foster our inborn love of mankind; and, if selfish justification be needed, experience shows that, in the last resort, love of our fellow-men is worth while; for it, and the social order which it inspires among normal human beings, satisfy us most fully. What does not pay, in the last resort, is guile.
Nor does the injunction to love imply the total suppression of selfishness though, like love itself, self-love needs to be educated and trained. There is a wise and prudent, just as there is a foolish egoism, and selfish folly is more harmful than foolish humanity. Some people’s ideas of egoism, or selfishness, are vague. It is not always selfish for a man to care chiefly for those about him, his family, his own people. It is there that he can work best, and use his energy to good purpose most easily and constantly. A reasonable man will therefore work for those whom his influence can reach—love must be work for the beloved. Humanity does not consist of sentimental yearning for the weal of the whole world; nor is the energy that is born of talent, precise knowledge, devotion to an idea—Plato’s Eros—a form of selfishness.
It is wrong to assert that humane, human feeling ends by being swamped in morbid susceptibility. Rather the contrary—it calls for reason and practical sense. Precisely because I realize the significance and, in some degree, the priority of feeling, I insist upon reasonableness, education, enlightenment, science and learning. With Dante, I demand Luce intellettual piena d’amore. Some think that the real meaning of love of our neighbour lies in the command that we should love our enemies. Assuredly, we can love our enemies; but, until men have attained this moral height, they might do worse than observe the humane and practical injunction to be just to their enemies.
Who are our neighbours? The Jews had been bidden to love their neighbours, but they conceived them as their own people. Jesus and his followers included other peoples. We interpret the humanitary principle extensively, that is to say politically and juridically, not merely intensively or ethically. Much as we may love our own people, we condemn Chauvinism and cherish the ideal of finding some unitary organization for Europe and for mankind at large. We desire a world-policy. ​We do not conceive internationalism as anti-national or super-national, and we do not pour out our souls in bootless love for some distant folk in Asia. Mankind is for us a concrete, practical idea, an organization of nations, for there can be no internationalism without nationality. I repeat, the more national we are the more human we shall be, the more human the more national. Humanity requires positive love of one’s own people and Fatherland, and repudiates hatred of other peoples.
Nor is humanity identical with passive pacifism, peace at any price. Defensive war is ethically permissible and necessary. Humanity opposes violence and bars aggression. It is active, not passive; it implies efficacious energy; it must not be a mere word upon paper but a deed and a constant doing.
Between morality on a big scale and on a small there is no distinction. It is a false notion that political men need take no thought of ethical principles when the interest of the State is involved. A man who lies and deceives in public life will be a liar and a deceiver in private life. Only a decent man will be decent in all things. Havlíček judged rightly in making no distinction between private and public morals. No State, no society can be managed without general recognition of the ethical bases of the State and of politics; and no State can long stand if it infringes the broad rules of human morality. The authority of the State and of its laws is derived from general recognition of ethical principles and from general agreement among citizens upon the main postulates of philosophy and life. Once again—Democracy is not alone a form of State and of administration. It is a philosophy of life and an outlook upon the world.
The Greeks and Romans declared justice to be the foundation of States; and justice is the arithmetic of love. The law, written and unwritten, enables the State gradually to extend the injunction of love to all the practical relations of social life and, in case of need, to enforce compliance with it. Hence the old dispute about the relative value of morality and law. Though an ethical minimum, the law, as the embodiment of public right, carries great weight by reason of its definiteness and practical adequacy. In practice, the State approaches the ethical maximum—the ideal—through the ethical minimum—the law; and human evolution brings the minimum ever nearer to the ideal.
Among the Greeks and the Romans natural law was looked upon as the moral basis of all law, a view which the medieval ​Church developed in accordance with the theocratical principle. After the fall of theocracy this view or doctrine was changed, not abrogated. To-day we formulate natural law in human terms, ethically, not religiously. In my view—which I state briefly for the benefit of those who are familiar with the problems and controversies of the philosophy and science of law—the ethical principle is not susceptible of formal but only of practical definition. Kant’s “Categorical Imperative” is, for instance, inaccurate. The standpoint which I take up has a fundamentally important bearing upon politics, State and political science, and law. While I reject all attempts to cut the State, law, jurisprudence and politics adrift from an ethical anchorage, and to attribute to them an origin, a justification and a non-ethical purpose supposedly derived from some necessity of merely social association, I admit that a distinction must certainly be made between morality and law, as concepts, and that the distinction is warranted by historical evolution. Moreover, in so far as morality was and is sanctioned by religion and represents an essential factor in religion, law has acquired independence by reason of the separation of the State from the Church and the establishment of the State’s own independence. But jurisconsults are wont to seek the grounds for this independence of the State and of its law in some sort of non-ethical principle, since they are not aware that they are still working with the old theocratic concepts which have simply been formulated anew. My standpoint is deliberately and consciously antagonistic to modern attempts to derive the sanction of the State and of law from some fundamental, non-ethical principle. I maintain that the postulate of the scientific method “entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem” applies also to the domain of political and legal science, and claim that the State is natural cooperation in an organized form. In the contrary argument I see a relic of theocratic doctrine reduced to a fictitious conceptual entity by juridical abstraction and by a kind of scholastic reasoning which has hitherto run on theological lines.
The God and the Beautiful.
In considering the foundations of the State and of politics, the connection of the State and the Church with art and esthetics should not be overlooked. Philosophers have long discussed abstractly the relationship between the True, the Good and the Beautiful; but our interest lies in the more ​concrete relationship between the Beautiful and the politically Good. If morality is the groundwork of politics, the relationship between the Beautiful and the morally Good has a bearing upon politics also.
The ordering of society is sometimes judged artistically and æsthetically. Figurative reference is made to the “structure” and the “architecture” of the State, and there is an artistic element in the demand for political and social harmony. Upon one aspect of the connexion between politics, art and beauty—to wit, eloquence—the Greeks reasoned concretely; and hitherto a good speaker has generally been looked upon as a good politician. If eloquence and rhetorical art are more nearly akin to demagogy than to politics, we must not forget that even demagogy appertains to politics. Where does the one end and the other begin? And again, if the Greeks made no clear distinction between demagogy and democracy, and if democracy is reproached with demagogical tendencies, are we not entitled to ask whether Kings and Emperors by the Grace of God never made use of this very demagogy for their own purposes?
Of animadversions upon demagogy there is no lack, but their authors cling, as a rule, too closely to traditional aristocratic forms and condemn the healthy popular style of political agitation and discussion. I myself had to overcome the prejudice of the intellectual man accustomed to the academic and theocratic rostrum. By delving into the history of political eloquence, I discovered that it was especially the French Revolution which, despite exaggerations on both sides, humanized political style in speech and writing. One of the problems of democracy is how to put true and noble human quality into politics and the administration of the State. A strong word at the right time and in the right place frightens none but nervous esthetes. A good word is a deed. What else is literature? A good word cannot be lost. It is as though it were governed by the law of the conservation of energy. Plato, Jesus and all the great spiritual leaders of men speak to us still.
The thoughts of statesmen and legislators need to be expressed in appropriate language, for in politics, legislation and military affairs style is a weighty matter, and art may be helpful. Nor is the value of a good official style to be over-looked either from the standpoint of grammar or from that of æsthetics. In our case particularly it would be a notable adjunct to democratic policy and administration. In a demo​cratic State symbolism and ceremony need also to be carefully considered. How to turn a purely monarchical edifice, like the Castle of Prague, into a democratic building and to manage the gardens and parks in democratic fashion is, for example, a problem that ought to interest the best artistic minds. As the optical, sensuous expression of an idea, ceremony has great educational significance. Poets, too, have ever been the creators and wardens of national and political ideals. I, to whom the connexion between politics, statecraft and poetry has always appealed, have sought deliberately to refine my power of imagination by reading the best poetry, and have striven, as a realist in art, to attain Goethe’s “precise imagination.” The statesman is akin to the poet. In the true Greek sense of the word he is a “creator”; and, without imagination, no creative, world-wide policy on big lines is possible.
Democracy and Anarchy.
Genuine democracy demands of every citizen a living interest in public affairs and in the State, just as the Church demands living faith from believers. In old Austria, all of us were more or less in opposition to the State and ended by thinking it enough to “call upon the Imperial and Royal Government” to do this or that. In other words we left the administration of the State to our masters and quarrelled merrily among ourselves. Very few thought of educating the people politically to take an active share in the life of the State, despite their opposition to it. We looked upon the State as our enemy, and upon participation in the Government as treason. Now that we have our own State, are there among us enough men and parties with an adequate political sense of what it means? Have they a sufficient living practical interest in it to be able to discard the old negation and positively to create a new order of things?
Whereas the old Austrian State required the people to recognize and obey the absolutism of the reigning aristocracy and bureaucracy, democracy demands that all should take interest in and understand administration and public life. In a democracy, not one man but each and all are the State; and “State sense” implies renunciation of the political indifference which was so widespread in the absolute State as to be an essential part of it. Unsupported by general interest, the Republic becomes de facto an aristocratic, bureaucratic State, ​the expression of a minority, for the nature of a State is not determined by its form alone.
In essence, democracy is opposed to every kind of anarchism or political indifference, no matter whether anarchism springs from “advanced” views or from mere antipathy towards political organization. The anarchism of many honest folk, like that of Tolstoy, is really a child of the absolutism that estranged men from the State and from political life. In its opposition to democracy, anarchism invokes liberty, the fundamental idea of democracy itself. Some anarchists seek to prove that the State is a transient institution which has arisen within the known period of human history and will again disappear. Marx and Engels worked out this view in detail, and the Communists now make use of it against the Social Democrats. Other anarchists repudiate any sort of State, claiming that it is in itself unnatural, violent and incompatible with freedom. To this category of anarchists belong the exaggerated individualists, the Titans, who think the State a hindrance to them, an unworthy stumbling-block. There is, besides, an ethical and religious anarchism—that of Chelčický and of Tolstoy. In our own case the fact that, having no State of our own, we organized ourselves racially and set ourselves, as a people, above the Austrian State, engendered a certain inclination to be anarchical. Even Kollár reflects Herder’s view that the State is an artificial and the race a natural institution. This may be true in so far as the State is narrower than the race and cannot comprehend its whole life, despite the State’s constant endeavour to secure centralizing control over it.
Against all forms of anarchism I, for my part, consistently uphold Democracy and the democratic State. Everybody feels a natural yearning for freedom, a yearning which the State must respect; but the study of history has taught me that society has always been organized in some form of State, that social life and cooperation have likewise been organized, and that individuals have ever been bound to each other, more or less consciously, in a community. This organization has been either set up by force or by reciprocal understanding on the basis of social need, fellow-feeling and reason; and though the early forms of society were largely fashioned by the despotic force of strong and capable leaders, so that States took on a military character and relied on the army, it is none the less true that even primitive States arose for moral reasons and through understanding. Save perhaps in germ, there was at first no such thing as Rousseau’s “Social Contract.” ​It evolved by degrees as civilization progressed. But the religious influences that played a part in the most primitive forms of society invalidate the view that the State arose solely by force. The most primitive religion contains an ethical element. It is true that the primitive society was no democracy but rather an aristocracy and a form of monarchical absolutism; yet, however strong a single leader may have been, he could never have made a State by his own strength alone if his community had not in some way agreed with him.
Nor do I accept the so-called patriarchal theory—so often upheld by Slav politicians and theorists—according to which the State arose as an extension of the family and was, as such, justified and good in itself. With the family the State had nothing in common. Other forces engendered it. The State is but the organizer of social life, which is something essentially different from family life. The latest studies of primitive peoples convincingly confirm this view. Aristotle said that man is by nature a political creature. Into this political “nature,” by which theorists explain the State, elements of reason entered from the first; and the functions and organization of the State vary according to time and circumstances. Now and again, one “estate of the realm” or social class monopolizes power and uses the State for its own ends; at other moments special economic conditions or a particular form of culture set their stamp upon the State, which ever seeks the support of the most powerful social forces, religious, scientific or financial. A strong personality may even get the power of the State into his own hands. Each of these contingencies implies misuse of the State. Indeed, its whole history proves its imperfection; but its imperfection is no better warrant for anarchism or “astatism” than a defective school system would prove the worth of illiteracy. Social life is impossible without some central, centralizing and controlling authority. If anybody wishes to call this authority by some other name than that of “the State” he is welcome to do so. It is the thing that matters, not the word; though, in politics, the part played by words, “round words,” is by no means small.
Certain it is that the State, even the democratic State, is no divine, omniscient, omnipotent institution such as Hegel conceived. It is human, sometimes very human, with all the weaknesses and imperfections of the men who organize and direct it. It is neither so bad and unreasonable as the anarchists say, nor so good and lovely as its semi-official ​apologists pretend. Taking it all round it is not worse than any other work of man; and it is a necessity.
The same applies to the laws. The law is the codification of administrative principles. In administration there is much that is purely technical, an outcome of the State machinery. Yet a law possesses moral significance inasmuch as justice and right are required of it and of the State itself. The foundations of right, its security and its protection lie in morality, that is to say, in humanity. I reject the pan-German doctrine that might creates right, in so far as might is identified with violence. But I accept the democratic contention that as little as possible should be demanded of the State, as meaning that democracy requires of every citizen public spirit and a sense of the law. Democracy is based on individualism, not on capricious individualism but rather on the effort to strengthen individuality and the sense of individual responsibility. Democracy means self-government, which means self-control, and self-government begins at home. Look at England. How is it that we find in her case a quite respectable democracy despite her aristocracy and Monarchy? Because of the public spirit of her citizens, because they do not look with indifference upon the State and the administration, because they display strong individualism politically, as well as in ecclesiastical and religious matters. The English citizen helps himself whenever he can, and therefore the State helps him. He does not call for the police in season and out of season. In England, self-government is self-administration, self-control.
Only by virtue of this general, living interest in the State, and by the constant development and extension of public spirit is democracy possible, for democracy implies a natural right to take the initiative in every domain of public life, no matter whether the right be formally expressed in law or not. Right exists de facto in a free State. Nor is it entirely true that the main object of political and State-creative activity is to organize. I think, for instance, that our German neighbours have over-organized themselves. By force of habit, any and every organization tends to become a mechanical form. We need living organizations. How are we to get them if we are not ourselves alive? Life is change, constant change, constant growth. An active people will make living organizations, new and ever new in the State and in society.
Democracy and Revolution.
Democracy was begotten of revolution. Our own Republic and democracy are no exceptions to this rule. Revolution is justified in self-defence for which the necessity arises when every other means has failed. In revolution, as in war, self-defence is morally permissible. Revolution is permissible when as during the World War-administrative and political chaos threaten; and it is justified if it brings reform and improvement. But democracy does not mean perpetual revolution. The war, and the upheavals it brought on, stimulated revolutionary fancies. But war fever and the excitement of revolution die down. Men are compelled to resume steady and peaceful work; and, for some of them, it is not easy. Political and social Utopianism, such as the notion that the State is omniscient and all powerful, has swollen the demands upon it so inordinately that disillusionment has entailed dejection and weariness; and, as usual, men are apt to blame others, not themselves, for failure. We shall have to overcome the revolutionary spirit as we overcame militarism. Bloodshed is an evil inheritance of the past. We desire a State, a Europe and a mankind without war and without revolution. In a true democracy, war and revolution will be obsolete and inadequate, for democracy is a system of life. Life means work and a system of work; and work, unostentatious work, is peace. Work, bodily and mental, will get the better both of the aristocratic and the revolutionary spirit. Even Marx and Engels had to revise the view of revolution which they put forward in 1848, to recognize that machinery, invention, technical progress, applied science and work are the surest and most efficient means of social revolution, and to declare themselves in favour of Parliamentarism.
Democracy, say its opponents contemptuously, consists of perpetual compromise. Its partisans admit the impeachment, and take it as a compliment. Compromise, not of principles but of practice, is necessary in political life as in all fields of human activity. Even the extremest extremists as, for example, Lenin when in power, make compromises. The policy of cultured and conscientious statesmen and parties is not, however, to reach a compromise between opposites but to carry out a programme based on knowledge and on the understanding of history and of the situation of their State and nation in Europe and in the world. This means, once again, a world policy. The object is deliberately to pursue a clear aim, not ​to seek the golden mean. Honest men eschew compromises of principle though they may accept compromises in detail and in method. However firm and consistent it may seem to be self-opinionated in small, secondary, indifferent matters, it is merely petty and doctrinaire. For the maintenance and development of democracy the thought and cooperation of all are needed; and, as none is infallible, democracy, conceived as tolerant cooperation, signifies the acceptance of what is good no matter from what quarter it may come. What is hateful is the readiness of puny, short-sighted men, without aim or conviction, to make compromise an end in itself, to waver between opinion and opinion, to seek haltingly a middle course which usually runs from one wall to another.
Democracy and Dictatorship.
I defend democracy, moreover, against dictatorial absolutism, whether the right to dictate be claimed by the proletariate, the State or the Church. I know the argument that dictatorship is justified, since conscience and right, reason and science, are absolute; and I am not unfamiliar with talk about the dictatorship of “the heart.” Logic, mathematics, and some moral maxims may be absolute, that is to say, not relative as they would be if all countries, parties and individuals had a special morality, mathematics and logic of their own; but there is a difference between the epistemological absolutism of theory, and practical, political absolutism. The most scientific policy depends upon experience and induction. It can claim no infallibility. It offers no eternal truths and can form no warrant for absolutism.
Absolutism did not consist in the existence of a monarch but in his assertion of infallibility. In emancipating itself from ecclesiastical guardianship, the State claimed something of the absolute authority which had been proper to the Church and to the Pope. Of this infallibility the style “by the Grace of God” is an expression; but whereas the Pope could invoke revelation and tradition reaching back to Christ, the theories of State and monarchical absolutism were only a reflection of the principles and practice of the Church. A curious sign of waning belief in the absolute authority of the French Kings may perhaps be found in the attempt of Marcier de la Rivière, shortly before the French Revolution, to appeal to Euclid as an absolutist; for it shows how, in defence of absolutism, theorists stuck at nothing in order to demonstrate the infalli​bility of the ruler, his right to dictate and his freedom from control.
Resistance to absolutism is characteristic of democratic progress throughout the modern era which has been marked by a long series of religious, literary, social and political revolutions. Even in the Roman era dictatorship was rightly limited to war time, because, in war, one leader is better than a dozen; and, in so far as revolution resembles war, it, too, gives rise to dictatorships. They are, however, unsuited to normal times. Political leaders are not infallible. Four eyes see better than two, as I have learned by experience and study. Russian Bolshevism itself proves the inadequacy of dictatorship. Claiming to be the non plus ultra of political and social development, and declaring itself infallible, it established its Inquisition for the same reasons as Spain established hers. Democracy needs to be especially on its guard against political upstarts, for none but the uncultured or the half-cultured hold themselves infallible.
During my years abroad I thought we should need a temporary dictatorship for our revolution against Austria. In case it should prove possible to unite all our Legions in France, it seemed as though they might march with the Allied armies through Germany. The victors might dictate peace in Berlin as the Germans dictated it in Paris or Versailles. When I discussed this idea with President Wilson, I imagined that our men would reach the capital of Germany and march home thence. Even the capitulation of the Central Powers did not render it wholly fantastical. Marshal Foch meant to hold the Rhine and thought of making Prague a base for the liberation of Poland. In such an event a temporary dictatorship might have been necessary, pending the establishment of a constitutional Government by regular elections ; and it seemed to me that, in the excitement of the revolution, solutions might be found for many a burning question, subject to subsequent approval or amendment by Parliament. My plans were made for all contingencies; and I need hardly say that the thought of a provisional centralized dictatorship, based upon the army, was not inspired by any hankering after absolute power or that it was conceived irrespectively of the assent of our leaders at home. I imagined that our leaders at home and abroad would act as a Provisional Directory, as a real Government ready to take responsibility. But things developed otherwise. After the revolution, which was carried through bloodlessly thanks to the unexpected collapse of Austria-Hungary, the dictatorship ​of the revolutionary National Committee and of the National Assembly proved sufficient.
The Problems of a President.
After my election to the Presidency of the Republic I pondered over the functions of a democratic President in the concrete, not in the abstract as I had done before. It had never occurred to me that I might be President, so entirely was I absorbed in the work of liberation. Though I had observed republican institutions in Switzerland, France and America, and had compared them with constitutional monarchies in England and in Italy by way of verifying the practical accuracy of views derived from study, I had conceived my future position as that of a writer and member of Parliament striving to consolidate and develop our new Republic. I had not even thought of retaining my professorship. Indeed, I had busied myself with the purely theoretical question whether the Presidency of a Republic is not a relic of monarchism. In republican Rome, I reflected, there were two Consuls; and, in Japan, two Emperors. Nor, even in a Monarchy, does one man ever govern a great State alone. It is not practically possible. A monarchy is a kind of oligarchy. Some form of Directory would respond most closely to the letter of democratic principle; though it would be inevitable that, in a Directory of several Presidents, one of them would exercise most influence and wield the chief authority.
Like other peoples, we shall evolve gradually and get away from monarchism little by little. Though the necessary conditions for a Republic exist among us, a strong royalist feeling for Crown and Kingdom was formerly fostered, only the Socialist parties and a section of the intellectual class being republican in principle. Under Austria, the whole of our education was undemocratic ; and, in politics, habit is stronger than reason. Now, under the Republic, the President and all other Republicans have to become truly republican and democratic, for the republic is a form, democracy is the thing itself. The form, the written Constitution, does not always guarantee the substance. Yet, in public life, what matters is the thing itself, the substance. It is easy to write a fine Constitution, less easy to apply it finely and consistently. There are cases in which a monarchy may be more democratic than a republic. Each of the four main types of republic—the Swiss, the French, the American and, to a certain extent, the pre-war German ​Federal Constitution (the last-named being a striking example of the difference between form and substance)—corresponds to the circumstance and to the evolution of its respective country. No institution can be mechanically and unorganically transferred to another land. But, as regards the Presidency, the Swiss and German types offer no guidance. The American and the French types remain. I have already said that, after the American War of Independence, the position of the King of England was taken as a model for that of the President of the United States. Washington was an aristocrat by birth. As President, he decorated his house at Mount Vernon with statues of Alexander, Caesar, Charles XII, Marlborough, Prince Eugene of Savoy and Frederick the Great. His successors were more democratic. In America the President chooses his Government outside Parliament, whereas the French Government is formed of members of Parliament. In our case I should favour a mixed system under which the President would select a definite number of Ministers, half of them, perhaps, or a majority, among members of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, and choose the others outside Parliament though naturally in consultation and agreement with the political parties. By this means the Government might gain expert quality, for it is one of the recognized defects of the Parliamentary system that most members of Parliament are merely party men, and few of them are specially qualified.
There is a sound idea in the American custom of appointing a special non-Parliamentary Commission to draw up the Budget, powerless though the Commission is in practice—the idea that Parliamentary parties should not mismanage finance. Party spirit is not always identical with public welfare; nor do parties remain in touch with the electorate as closely as they ought. One of the chief causes of their inertness is that they pay too little heed to the organization and education of their supporters in what I may call “peace time,” that is to say, during the intervals between general elections. They only grow vigorous when an election is in sight or when conflicts and schisms arise in their own ranks. Democracy means constant and positive work of detail. In my view, parties ought not to be allowed a long period for mere electoral agitation. The general election should follow upon the end of a Parliament as soon as the technical arrangements can be made.
Ends and Means.
The main principles that guided me abroad will guide me also as President. True, they are only a framework. Their practical application will depend upon circumstances and upon the persons with whom I shall have to work; and, in a democratic Republic, it is the duty of every citizen to work for the public weal. Under popular government all have a right to take the initiative, all are called upon to act, all are responsible—though, even in a democracy, many are called and few are chosen.
The difficulty of passing from an aristocratic and monarchical to a democratic system arises from the failure of monarchical aristocracy to accustom citizens to bear responsibility and to take decisions. Monarchism and Caesarism have left something of aristocracy and absolutism in many of us. To give orders is not always identical with leadership. Our Republic has to educate its citizens in democracy. And, for the sake of our whole future, it is important that the main lines of our development should be laid down from the outset. The general direction is weightier than the details. We have to decide upon principles and tactics so as to create a sound tradition, to march with firm step towards our national goal, and not to oscillate about “a golden mean.” My own principles and aims have grown organically out of our history in which I have steeped myself. My guide and master was Palacký, the “Father of the Fatherland,” who gave us a philosophical history of our nation, understood its place in the world, and defined our national objective. He perceived that, in virtue of our geographical situation and of our past, we are a part of the world as a whole; that we need to realize this position and to act in accordance with it. He saw that Europe and mankind were tending towards unification, and he told us what part we were to play in the “centralization of the world.” He added:—
The miraculous power of steam and electricity has set up new standards. The old barriers between countries and peoples are disappearing more and more, the families and tribes of humanity are being brought nearer together, into closer reciprocal contact. . . . International rivalry has reached a degree hitherto unknown. It will grow and grow. Those who stand out of the race will decline and presently be past saving. I ask myself whether our people, gifted beyond others, is to stand aside, through neglect or incomprehension on the part of its leaders, whether it shall take no part in the emulation which can alone assure its life in future.
​It is time for our people to awaken and to seek its bearings in the spirit of the new era, to glance beyond the narrow limits of its home and, without failing in love of its country, to become more zealously and withal more circumspectly a citizen of the world. We must take part in world trade, take advantage of the general progress, surrendering nothing of our old faith and uprightness yet discarding our old, easy-going habits, the weakness and indifference that begot our poverty and faintheartedness. We must tread new paths and renovate ourselves by industry—farmers, men of learning and officials not less than manufacturers, merchants and artisans. To the former comfortable cheapness of life we have said farewell for ever. No longer can we be coarsely ignorant of the needs of a civilized age. Whatever the Government of our State, taxes will not be lighter; and, if we would not decay and fall into penury, we must redouble our zeal and seek to stand as equals alongside of other nations whose spirit of enterprise has spread their sway to the uttermost parts of the earth.
Palacký insists that this world policy, in the true sense, must be based on humane principles. He continues:—
My last word is a warm and heartfelt wish that my beloved people in Bohemia and Moravia, whatever their station, may never cease to be true to themselves, true to truth and true to justice. . . . In the glorious era of Hus, the Czechs outdid all other European peoples in education and spiritual eminence. Now they still need to educate themselves and to heed the dictates of enlightened reason. This is the only counsel I would bequeath to them. . . . Whenever we have triumphed it has been more by the might of the spirit than by physical power; and, whenever we were vanquished, it was through lack of spiritual vigour, moral courage and boldness. It is wholly wrong to imagine that the military wonders our fathers wrought in the Hussite Wars came from blind and barbaric raging and smashing, not from high enthusiasm for an idea, for moral sturdiness and lofty enlightenment. When, in a like struggle, two hundred years later, we sank almost to the grave, it was because we no longer towered in spirit above the enemy but, being more like unto them in demoralization than unequal to them in strength, we put our hope in the sword and in force. . . . Not until we conquer and rule by the power of the spirit, in the struggle that Providence has laid upon us from time immemorial, can we be assured of a lasting future.
Time and again Palacký animadverted upon our moral failings. In considering why we were Germanized, he compared us with our German neighbours, with whom we have always to measure ourselves, and concluded that we ourselves were in some measure to blame for our decline. He did not believe that, by race and blood, the Germans are our superiors of spirit or finer of intellect, but he thought them less prone to our faults, which he thus described:—
Among the various defects of our people, the worst and the greatest is one for which there is no Czech name though it has long gnawed at ​our roots—intemperance, self-indulgence in the broadest sense. Czechs, and Slavs generally, bear themselves far better in woe than in weal. They are tender and capable, zealous and inventive, active and tenacious; but they are also sensuous and vain, inconstant, exuberant, and covetous. They find getting easier than keeping ; what they gain to-day is squandered to-day or to-morrow. In placid sensuousness our fair sex knows no bounds. Nowhere in the wide world is the goddess Fashion so passionately worshipped or so many sacrifices made to her. Nor is this a modern trait. . . . Dalemil was the first and Comenius the last to ascribe the downfall of our people to vanity and exuberance. Against these failings King George and other Fathers of the country worked fruitlessly by law and precept. Six hundred years ago the Czechs began to earn and alas! to deserve the nickname of “an apish people” because they aped and imitated everything they saw among their neighbours. In this the Germans are more coolheaded, more sober, more prudent. A German knows how to make a fortune and how to husband it. After having gained a competence abroad he is not ashamed once more to live a peasant’s life in Bohemia. Fond though he is of good food and drink, he looks further into the future and lusts less after dainties, jewels and luxury. . . . The suffocation of national feeling among us is not the only cause of our misfortunes. Other causes are our blind cleaving to home earth, our lack of enterprise abroad, a desire for novelty that seeks rather to enjoy than to create, that is more passive than active, nay, even our easy-going good fellowship that abhors violence and suffers wrong more readily than it wrongs a neighbour. . . . To get rid of this ancient, evil spirit we must first know and recognize its nature, for it is a matter of life and death ; knowing it, means can be found to exorcize it and to save our lives. To this end vigorous will is needed, firm and persistent rather than fiery. Not by noisy raving will it be achieved, only by quiet, true-hearted effort, sincere and steady, as undeviating under temptation as under terror. Reasonable moral education must be brought to a higher level so that our people may understand itself and ensure its future. Any other remedy is but a pitiful palliative. . . . To all patriots I appeal that they should strive to give our people nourishing spiritual and moral food. Then they will muster enough sound sense henceforth to eschew poisonous infections.
The Humane Ideal.
It is no accident but a natural consequence and continuation of our history that our political independence should have been restored in the form of a democratic Republic. Negatively the ground for it was prepared by the loss of our former independence, by our subjection to an alien dynasty and its anti-Czech system, its foreign army, its alien nobility, and a Church that was forced upon us. All these things estranged us from monarchism and its institutions. Positively, too, our past had prepared us for democracy. The foundations of the modern humane and democratic ideal had been laid by our Hussite Reformation in which, as Palacký shows, the Bohemian ​Brotherhood Church was especially significant, inasmuch as it surpassed in moral worth all the other Churches and the earlier attempts at religious reform. The Bohemian Brethren rejected the use of all force by State or Church, so well did it understand the intimate connexion between Church and State which was the essence of medieval theocracy. Chelčický’s extreme view was mitigated by his successors, as was the evanescent Communism of the Taborites; and though King George opposed the Brotherhood, he proclaimed the ideal of universal peace and was thus in agreement with the Brethren’s fundamental doctrine. Comenius, the last Bishop of the Brotherhood Church, built up his conception of humanity upon education and the school, and sought by means of them to carry out his national and pan-human programme. He still speaks to us through Leibnitz and Herder whose influence upon Dobrovský and Kollár Professor Denis has finely demonstrated; and their successors, Palacký, Šafařík and Havlíček likewise expressed the needs of their time in accordance with our national ideal of humanity.
In resisting the absolutism of an Austria inspired by the Counter-Reformation, we were the more disposed during the eighteenth century to welcome the “Era of Enlightenment” and the French Revolution because Rousseau, the intellectual leader of the Revolution, who had been brought up in Swiss Calvinism and Republicanism, took the ideas of the Reformation as his starting-point. Thus the thought of the West inspired our national rebirth. As Marx has justly observed, the men of the French Revolution trod the path which the Reformation had marked out. The “Era of Enlightenment,” the doctrine of humanity and the guiding principles of the eighteenth century are a sequel to the Lutheran and Calvinist Reformation and to our own Hussite reform. I do not claim that the humane ideal is specifically Czech. Nor do I assert that we Czechs and Slovaks are endowed by nature with a particularly gentle, tender, dove-like disposition. On the contrary, I think we are pretty hard, notwithstanding a peculiar receptive softness in our temperament that is not identical with kindliness or warmth of feeling. The humane ideal is pan-human and each people seeks to apply it in its own way. The English expression of it is mainly ethical; the French, political (by the proclamation of the Rights of Man); the German, social, or Socialist; and our own, national and religious. To-day it is universal, and the time is coming when all civilized peoples will recognize it as the foundation of the State and of international relationships.
​Two questions have emerged from the lively discussions upon our national programme before and after the war. The first relates to the humanitarian ideal in itself, and the second to the doubt whether it is founded on religion. On the first, I hope that what I have written will clear up some misconceptions. On the second, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to reach agreement with those who reject the ideal altogether or deny its religious basis. Those who do not admit that morality, religion and “ ideology ” generally have any serious political meaning; who claim that “moralizing” and religion represent an “obsolete standpoint” and are good for children, women and sentimentalists, whereas practical, “realist” politicians eschew sentimentality and work with practical realities, decline altogether to accept the humane ideal. Yet even between “realists” of this sort there are differences. Neither Bismarck nor the pan-Germans disdained religion. They repudiated the humane ideal, but they either, like Bismarck, attached great value to ecclesiastical religion or, like Lagarde, to the new pan-German religion.
Among ourselves as well as in Germany the doctrine of humanity is controverted in the name of nationalism. For instance, I read recently the following statement by one of our Legionaries: “We gained freedom because we promised the Allies that we would form a dam against German Imperialism. Not on account of our glorious past, or of our mature culture and economic development, nor because we are the people of Hus, Comenius and Palacký was our nation set free, but because our representatives abroad contrived to spread the conviction that our national independence would strengthen the Allies against the German Imperialist danger. We made this engagement and we must keep it. We shall keep it if our State is nationalist and the whole spirit of its public administration is Czechoslovak.”
This is a wrong and one-sided view. It is my right to say what I promised the Allies. I fought pan-Germanism very vigorously and insisted on our right to independence. But I never asserted, and could not assert, that we should form a dam, that is to say, the only dam, against German Imperialism. My object was to awaken the Allies to a full understanding of the pan-German plan and to convince them of the common danger; but I sought also to convince them that, as the people of Hus and Comenius, we were entitled to aspire to freedom and to ask for their help. The number of our Legionaries’ bayonets certainly came into the reckoning. From the outset ​I myself called for bayonets, not in a merely nationalist or chauvinistic spirit, but persuaded of our good right to defend ourselves, to justify our independence morally and legally, and to make it clear that we were upholding something of value in culture and civilization. To have talked in England and America of bayonets, of nothing but bayonets, would have been suicidal short-sightedness, for the idea that bayonets alone count is precisely what the Great War refuted. Our whole propaganda abroad was, indeed, a refutation of chauvinistic nationalism. If nationalism means love of one’s own people, I have nothing to say against it. The “national idea” thus conceived is a noble and worthy political force that welds individuals into a self-sacrificing whole ; and humanity is made up of organized national wholes. About love of one’s own people there can be no dispute. Only the quality of such love, its aims and the tactics by which they may best be realized, can be open to discussion. It is Neruda’s deliberate and discerning love of our nation that appeals to me, not the indiscriminate love that assumes everything to be right and righteous merely because it bears a “national” label. Notwithstanding Havlíček’s strong protest, there are still too many speculators in patriotism, just as there are not a few well-meant but weak and impracticable “national” programmes.
Neither in politics, literature nor journalism have the leaders of any people been content to appeal solely to the number of their bayonets. They have always offered other proofs of their people’s worth. Even the pan-Germans sought to justify the primacy of the German nation by the excellence of its science and philosophy. The French extol their political continuity since Roman times, praise the State-creative skill with which the central administration was built up and the French idea of State sovereignty carried through. A Frenchman will point to the contests of the Kings of France with the Papacy—that is to say, against theocracy—and, above all, to the Great Revolution, its policy and ideas. Even should he refer to Napoleon he will lay stress on the Republic and democracy, to the French contribution to the literature, civilization and culture of the world and, latterly, to the part taken by France in the World War and in the Peace. In his chain of reasoning the French bayonet by itself appears as a very minor link.
In the same way the Englishman will mention the State-creative capacity with which the greatest World Empire has been built up; and precisely he will insist that it was built ​up by policy and administration, not by the sword. He is proud of his Reformation, be he Anglican or Independent, and will explain what services the English Revolution rendered to democracy. He will cite the weighty fact that the form of his State, “Constitutional Parliamentarism,” has been adopted throughout the world—a world that speaks more English than any other language. Nor will he forget his literature or his unique Shakespeare. And all other nations will agree upon the value of English and French culture, accepting them without repugnance. Germans, Italians, Russians, Dutchmen, Danes and Norwegians have likewise their own stories to tell the world. For us the question is what we have to tell it. What will be its idea of us?
Politically, we shall be able to show that we founded our State, a fairly big State, in very ancient times, and that we possessed, and possess, State-creative capacity. This was proved not only by Charles IV and King George but, before their time, by the effort to form a Great Moravian Empire and by the organization of the realm of the Přemyslides—a State created by a native dynasty and administration in the very neighbourhood of the Germans who had crushed the other Slav States. We shall instance the administrative ability shown in our Doomsday Book and other institutions; but we shall lay especial emphasis upon our school system in earliest periods, and upon our having founded the first university in Central Europe. Our Hussite Reformation will, however, be our most valid title in the eyes of Europe. It was begun by a number of moralists, Štítný and others, before Hus. He and his successors continued it. It was mainly ethical. To theological doctrine it attached minor importance. In the Hussite wars we defended ourselves against the whole of a Europe marshalled by the Papacy. Žižka’s saying, “The Czech is a captain” we shall not forget; nor shall we overlook Chelčický and his Brotherhood or Comenius as their offspring. If the English are able to invoke Shakespeare, the French Rousseau and the Germans Goethe, we can call ourselves the people of Comenius. Before the Battle of the White Mountain our Estates compelled the Emperor to issue a “Letter of Majesty,” an Edict of Toleration, rare proof of the Czech striving against intolerance, all the rarer if it be compared with the keenness of ecclesiastical strife in Germany. We shall remember the Battle of the White Mountain, the hostile Counter-Reformation, our national downfall and our national rebirth at the end of the eighteenth century, thanks to the steadfastness of a people which, out​lasting all religious storms, remained unbroken in body and soul. We shall point proudly to our indefatigable resistance to Austria-Hungary—a resistance that was moral at heart, for we should often have been ready to recognize Austria politically—and, finally, we shall describe our part in the World War and assure Europe that we shall strive for democracy, peace and progress. In a word, Palacký’s philosophy of our own and of world history is our best recommendation. From the beginning of the fourteenth to the end of the eighteenth centuries, the Czech question, the question of our existence, was in essence the question of religion and of humanity.
These were, briefly, the main arguments with which we upheld our title to fight for freedom, and showed why it was the duty of others to stand by us. National they were, but not nationalist in the sense of the Legionary whom I have quoted. Nor were they Liberal after the manner of many Liberals who reject the moral and religious foundations of the humane ideal. Among such Liberals some essay to ascribe our whole Reformation to the awakening of the national consciousness in a struggle against the Germans—a view so shallow and thoughtless that it needs no special refutation. Others admit that the humane ideal of the Reformers and the Reformation (and, subsequently, of Comenius) was, indeed, based on religious feeling yet allege that it was otherwise with the leaders of our national renascence. Though the more reasonable of them confess that Palacký, and possibly Kollár, may be looked upon as religious humanitarians, they insist that all the other leaders of our renascence were devoid of religious convictions and were Liberals in the sense of insisting upon the importance of nationality and of upholding the contemporary Liberal principles of democracy and of freedom of conscience.
Recently, too, I read a Liberal explanation of my own humanitarian doctrine. It was described as that of a theorist, whereas our real national ideal of humanity was alleged to have been evolved as the weapon of the weak amid the circumstances of the modern era. Assuredly the small and the weak in the struggle against the great and strong will not straightway put their faith in iron but will see what can be done by reason and reasonable methods. Thus it has always been. Like Comenius before them, Kollár and Palacký taught the humane ideal on principle and as good discipline for the character, not on utilitarian or tactical grounds. We wished, and we wish truly to be human. A Czech “Liberal” is ​usually a Catholic, according to the ecclesiastical register, and is illiterate in religious matters. Since he cannot conceive religion apart from his Church, its ritual and its doctrine, he understands neither Palacký nor our other greatest writers, though their names are ever on his tongue. Nor, even if he be an historian, does he understand our history.
Sentimentalists, who dislike making up their minds on religious matters, who have little faith in themselves but cherish pleasant childhood memories of incense, ritual and church organs, appeal from Palacký the historian to Palacký the politician, arguing that he deprecated religious dissensions and, though a Protestant, was more than reconciled to the Catholic Church. Yet Palacký himself repudiated all belief in external religious authority, and declared: “I myself am incapable of ever becoming a Catholic.” Not religious indifference caused him to lead the nation away from dogmatic disputes, but the feeling that they were harmful; and he agreed with Brother Lucas, who stood against Luther in defending the rights of reason in the interpretation of Scripture. Palacký undoubtedly had a religious conception of the national humanitarian ideal. His whole philosophy of history proves it, as his opponents recognize; and his writings suffice fully to establish the religious basis of our humanitarian outlook.
Can it be an accident that three of the chief leaders of our renascence were Protestants? Besides Palacký there were Kollár and Šafařík, both of them Slovaks and Protestants, who took our Reformation as their starting-point. Though, as I have observed, Kollár’s grasp upon the principle of humanity was not so deep and conscious as that of Palacký, the decisive fact is that he too was a Protestant, and that both felt themselves to be children of the Reformation, ecclesiastically and religiously. Indeed, our Slovak Protestants in general were fully aware of their spiritual descent from Hus as well as from Luther. If we would understand the true significance of our renascence, we must comprehend that among us and throughout Europe the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries carried forward the ideas and the yearnings of the Reformation. We must perceive clearly what are the guiding ideas in history, how they develop and how, despite all changes of detail, they remain essentially the same. To take an example: Palacký was a disciple of Kant, and Kant was the philosopher of Protestantism. This does not mean that Kant expounded Luther’s catechism—he rejected theology of all sorts—but it does mean that he accepted Protestant individualism and subjectivity, that he ​laid stress upon the ethical side of religion, repudiated authority in matters of belief and transformed the leading ideas of Protestantism into a philosophical system which was nevertheless incompatible with Protestant Orthodoxy. In much the same way Palacký, a Czech Protestant, transformed the Church of the Bohemian Brotherhood into an humanitarian system and, like Kant, discarded Lutheran Orthodoxy.
Our Liberal historians might learn a lesson from the philosophical Pope, Leo XIII. He, the restorer of Thomistic Scholasticism, condemned the Reformation and, in his encyclical “Diu Lumen illud” (1881), described the Reformation not only as the mother of modern philosophy but of modern politics, and, above all, of democracy. To the Reformation he traced the modern conception of right and law, and of Socialism, Nihilism and Communism. In subsequent pronouncements he thundered against “the Lutheran Rebellion” and demanded uniform Catholic education. Though I do not agree with the head of the Roman Church in his estimate of the ideals, aspirations and institutions of the modern era, and need hardly point out the exaggeration of placing Socialism and Nihilism on the same footing, I think Leo XIII was right in the main, that is to say, in claiming that the modern outlook on life, the modern State and modern democracy arose by and through the Reformation. It is in this sense that our renascence and modern development pursue the work of our Reformation, and that our “Awakeners,” like Palacký, set out more or less consciously from the point at which our history attained its climax. None of our distinguished men and spiritual leaders was so careless of things religious as our “Liberals” pretend. Dobrovský, as a Freemason, deliberately opposed the Church, though not religion. Upon Kollár, Šafařík and Palacký we are agreed. Havlíček was a Liberal yet not religiously indifferent. The first and greatest of our poets, Mácha, was religious through and through, though tormented by scepticism; for him the problem of religion was the problem of life. Neruda was deeply religious, as every reader of his “Songs of Good Friday” must feel. Světlá and, more profoundly, Nováková sought traces of the Reformation among the people. And, among our contemporaries, how moral and religious are Holeček’s and Čapek-Chod’s analyses of character. Šalda even preaches a return to God. Nor are Svatopluk Čech and Vrchlický, though Liberals, exceptions to the rule; the former prayed to an Unknown, and the latter suffered throughout life from the problem that tormented Faust.
Our Relation to Catholicism.
The Catholic historians and politicians who judge our Reformation from their religious standpoint are serious and consistent opponents of Palacký. In their eyes the Reformation was, and is, a religious and political mistake; the Catholicizing of our people by the Hapsburgs was its spiritual and national salvation; the Bohemian Brotherhood and Protestantism would have Germanized us; the Battle of the White Mountain was a blessing.
In Germany, England and elsewhere Catholic historians and public men look more objectively upon the origins and significance of our Reformation. Admitting the defects and errors of their own Church, and the need for reform at the end of the Middle Ages, they recognize at least the relative and temporary justification of Protestantism. If Providence directs the course of history, if there is order and purpose in the sequence of events, how can the Reformation and the rise of Protestantism be condemned in the lump without thought of the significance, for Catholics in particular, of so huge and lasting a movement throughout the world? Precisely from the theistic point of view, the Catholic opponents of Palacký take up an untenable position in their interpretation of history. Could there have been a Reformation if the Church had satisfied the peoples’ needs? Did not the Reformation proceed from the bosom of the Church itself? The best Catholics have ever criticized the shortcomings of their own Church. Indeed, their critical literature, from the beginning down to the Reformation, would fill more than one library. But as soon as the movement for reform went on outside the Church, and new Churches were founded, the old Church became a Party of which the main object was to retain power by compromise or by force. Hence the “Compacts” made with us, hence the Inquisition, hence Jesuitism—and the Inquisition and Jesuitism carried through the Catholicizing process in our midst also. Yet, if the Church was inadequate I do not assert that the Reformation was adequate in all things and everywhere. Among Protestants, party strife soon replaced spiritual emulation; new theocracies, eager for power, sprang up against the old theocracy; the Churches that professed the religion of love resorted to violence and readily allowed themselves to be misused by temporal Powers.
Our Catholic opponents of the Czech Reformation, who maintain that the Catholicizing process saved the nation from ​Germany and Prussia, are able to invoke the authority of Bismarck, who is said once to have spent a sleepless night in trying to imagine what the course of history might have been had the Protestants won the Battle of the White Mountain. Bismarck may have wondered whether a Protestant Bohemia would have associated herself with the Protestant policy of Prussia against Austria. Austria would thus have remained an unimportant German borderland while, with the help of Bohemia, the Germans would have been masters of the Danube and the dream of Berlin–Baghdad might have been fulfilled with Czech assistance. We know how much weight Bismarck assigned to the geographical position of Bohemia in the mastery of Europe.
There is much virtue in “if”; but I have little liking for “ifs”? in history. I prefer facts. Our Reformation fortified our nationality as never before. While Catholicism pre-dominated, Germanization went on and the Hussite movement saved us from it. German historians bear witness that, among us as in Poland, the Reformation worked mightily in an anti-German sense. In our case as in others it fostered the national language and literature, because public worship and, especially, the reading of the Bible in the language of the country had far greater influence upon literature and national education than they have to-day. In endeavouring to raise the level of morality, the Reformation strengthened our national character; and victory at the White Mountain might therefore have invigorated and renewed the nation yet more, despite some initial penetration of the Germans among us during the Protestant era. Where is it written that the Evangelical Czechs would have let themselves be led tamely by Prussia, seeing that Protestant Prussia and pan-Germanism were defeated in the World War by Protestant England, Protestant America and revolutionary France? Comenius, who was the flower and fulfilment of the Bohemian Brotherhood, is, by himself alone, a proof to the contrary, as are all the writings and the activity of our exiles. The Hussites, the Brethren, and the Evangelical Czechs kept up lively intercourse with the Germans, who received them well, and also with the Dutch, the Swiss, the English and the Swedes; yet in all lands they worked for the liberation of their Fatherland. In defence of his people, Comenius carried on a true world-policy of education. And after the White Mountain the Catholic Hapsburgs catholicized us, not merely as they had done before but Germanized us by fire and sword, by confiscation and by the suppression of ​education; and the Catholic adversaries of the “Arch-Heretic,” Hus, made the Czechs an object of general hatred as a people of heretics. It was Catholic, ultra-Catholic, Austria that fell politically under the sway of Protestant Prussia and became her obedient vanguard on the Danube.
Notwithstanding the Battle of the White Mountain and its sequel, Catholicism failed to take deep root among us. It was addicted to violence, its leaders were alien in blood and in creed—especially the Jesuits, who are alien even to-day—and, with few exceptions, its hierarchy was German and Hapsburgian, not Czech. The argument that the Czech defeat on the White Mountain was a national advantage is mistaken. It seeks to turn a religious into a racial question in order to appeal to patriotic sentiment. The Catholic historians and those non-Catholics who judge the Reformation solely as a strengthening of our national consciousness misunderstand the essence of religious feeling and the whole sense of our history.
To examine exactly how far Protestantism and how far Prussianism was a decisive influence in the evolution of Prussian Germany would be to go beyond my present purpose. The Lutheran Church unquestionably became a handmaid of the Prussian State; but half of Germany was Catholic, and there is no proof that the German Catholic or Centre Party, despite its opposition to Bismarck, would have acted otherwise than Bismarck towards the non-German Catholics. The case of Luther, founder of German Protestantism, is significant. As long as he was a Catholic he opposed the Czechs. After leaving the Church he always stood out for a just and sober estimate of them, preached racial peace, extolled the moral purity of the Bohemian Brethren, and held them up as an example to the Germans by declaring that he and his followers were Hussites. Leading German thinkers, like Leibnitz, Herder and Goethe afterwards showed goodwill towards the Czech people and condemned the Hapsburg hangmen. Herder, in particular, embraced the ideas of Comenius and desired the restoration of Czech independence, while poets and writers such as Schiller, Lenau, Alfred Meissner and Moritz Hartmann gladly sought in our history material for their works.
An impartial history of our religious development will show the relationship between Catholicism and the Reformation in a light different from that which the adversaries of Palacký throw upon it. The facts that the Reformation affected us so profoundly (nine-tenths of the people are estimated to have accepted it); that it so long withstood the fierce pressure of ​Rome, the Hapsburgs and their German partisans in Bavaria and elsewhere, the last religious rising of the Moravian peasants taking place as late as 1775; and that the fight for religion and morality formed for four centuries the main substance of our history, prove that our Reformation arose from and responded to national character. True, our historians should enquire to what extent the spirit of Catholicism was national before and during the Reformation, and whether it did not suffer from the drawback that it came to us from abroad, from Germany, Italy and elsewhere. I know well that Catholicism is international. Yet its centralizing tendency did not prevent it from assuming a national complexion which theologians and ecclesiastical experts have noticed in France, England, Germany, Italy and other countries. Our lower Catholic clergy, who are recruited mainly from the people, had and have the same national sense as the people, and some of them took an active part in the literary work of our reawakening. But the Hierarchy, which determines ecclesiastical policy and life, was, like the training of the priests, with very few exceptions, non-Czech. It is a striking fact that, among us, Catholicism has never brought forth a Czech theology, and that it has not shown the same independence and individual character as in other lands.
The problem whether this or that religion and Church is best suited to the character of a people deserves to be more carefully studied. Half the Germans, for instance, are Protestant and half are Catholic; the English are chiefly Anglican, but most of them are thoroughgoing Protestants; and in France there is an important Protestant minority. I name these, the most cultured and most important nations, as evidence that nationality does not exclude ecclesiastical differentiation and that this very differentiation has been of value to those nations themselves and to mankind at large. On the other hand, the nations that did not pass through the Reformation and failed to differentiate themselves religiously, have not yet attained the same historical importance as the others. We belong to these others; and our history, especially since the fourteenth century, is one of the most living and spiritually valuable.
Church and State.
What is the meaning of the Hapsburg Counter-Reformation for us to-day? Save for some tiny remnants our Reformed ​Churches—the Hussite Church and the Bohemian Brotherhood—were utterly destroyed. The Hapsburgs, encouraged and helped by the Roman Church, carried through the Catholicizing process with fire and sword, by confiscation and banishment. There is no other instance of the overwhelming majority of a Christian nation having had its religion thus changed. In France, Italy and Spain, where the Reformation was likewise violently suppressed, it had affected only a minority. In those countries, moreover, the Counter-Reformation was carried out by their own people, whereas, in our case, it was the work of an alien dynasty, hostile to us and to our spiritual traditions. In the light of these facts, every enlightened and educated Czech is bound to ask what this violent Catholicizing signified if, as Palacký held, our Reformation and the Bohemian Brotherhood marked the highest point of our history. How is the comparatively rapid reversion to an older religious and ecclesiastical form to be explained ? Does violence suffice to explain it or did the fault lie in the Reformation itself? If so, what was it ? Does the success of the Hapsburgs in forcing Catholicism upon us reveal some failing in our national character, some lack of endurance, of steadfastness, of political capacity? What meaning are we to ascribe to our Protestantism, in which—according to the Emperor Joseph’s Edict of Toleration—Hussitism and the Bohemian Brotherhood, that is to say, Palacký’s perfect Church, were preserved in the guise of Lutheranism and Calvinism? If, as I hold, Palacký’s philosophy of our history is essentially true, the cleft between Church and culture has, in our case, peculiar national importance, an importance not solely philosophical and religious as in the cases of other nations; it means that our Reformed Church was suppressed by an alien dynasty with the assent of the Catholic Church, and that the Hapsburg Counter-Reformation yawns as an abyss between the Reformation period and the present day.
No Czech historian can escape the problem of the Counter-Reformation. From the very beginning of the national reawakening the memory of our Reformation revived and stimulated intellectual freedom. The names of Hus, Žižka, Comenius and afterwards of Chelčický, became dear to all. Controversy began upon the meaning of the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation and the religious question generally. Palacký—with whom I do not agree on this point—looked upon the division of the Church into Catholicism and Protestantism as a result of historical theological evolution. He ​thought that each form of belief responds to a need of the human spirit, Catholicism representing the principle of authority and Protestantism the principle of reason. The difference between them seemed to him relative, not absolute; and he expected this relativity to develop not by the triumph of the one principle over the other but by their reconciliation, harmony and interpenetration. The two Churches, he held, should tolerate, not oppose each other, since disbelief would in future menace both of them.
As an explanation of the relationship between Catholicism and Protestantism I think this interpretation too general and abstract. Moreover, it is insufficient to cover our contemporary religious position. We are confronted with the special relationship between Protestantism and Catholicism in our own country, and have to judge the religious and moral value of the Hapsburg Counter-Reformation. Now that hundreds of thousands of our people are taking advantage of their religious freedom to leave the Catholic Church and to found another on the basis of the Reformation, the religious question is acquiring practical importance and is compelling thoughtful minds to revise the Liberal standpoint on the subject of religion. To assert, as some indifferentists do, that religion is out of date and that the dispute between Catholicism and Protestantism is consequently of no moment, is a view at once shallow and mistaken—and fatal to Liberalism everywhere.
Palacký’s interpretation of the relationship between Protestantism and Catholicism cannot stand even against the strictures of our Liberals; for in Czech Liberalism there has always been some disposition to understand the religious side of our renascence, however little it grasped the essential nature of the Reformation and of religion itself. To what lengths this disposition could go may be seen in the case of the Young Czech Radical leader Sladkovský, who went over to the Orthodox Church and expected his followers and all opponents of the Catholic Church to do likewise. What I opposed in Liberalism was its religious indifference. I claimed and proved that religious feeling is not dead and that, in the last resort, we should not be able to ignore the Churches or to escape from the necessity of making up our minds about them. For my part, I declined to coquet with Orthodoxy, and urged that the religious question should be earnestly studied in order to prepare means of solving it. As a result, there arose the dispute upon the meaning of our renascence, the Hapsburg Counter-Reformation and the religious question.
​In the name of “Progress” not a few demand that the religious question should be left severely alone. We cannot return to the Middle Ages they say. This is a very foggy and unprogressive outlook. Nowhere does the religious question nowadays imply the mere adoption of old ecclesiastical forms. Protestantism and Catholicism are alike in a state of crisis. If we are to bridge the abyss of the Hapsburg Counter-Reformation and to establish new links with our national Reformation, we must continue its tradition in harmony with the spiritual needs of our time. If it be said that the present generation of Czechs no longer believe as Hus believed, and that Hus stood nearer to Rome than we stand, the answer is that though we no longer believe as Hus believed, he and his disciples are models of moral resolution, steadfastness and religious uprightness. Hus began the fight against the worldliness of the Church and the people followed him. His fight for higher morality and lofty piety, sealed by the sacrifice of his life, was a fight against the moral decadence of the Church, the priesthood and the Papacy. When, in the name of the Cross, Rome declared a European war against us, Žižka, sword in hand, upheld victoriously the living principles Hus had proclaimed. Even Chelčický recognized that the struggle against the temporal rule of the Priesthood necessarily involved hostility to the State which the Church was supporting, that is to say, simultaneous antagonism to the political and the ecclesiastical power; and, with a truly Žižka-like vigour, he took up the fight for the humane ideal against ecclesiastical and political violence. If he overshot the mark, his great idea survived him. Comenius, the last Bishop of the Bohemian Brotherhood which Chelčický founded, taught us that education and careful upbringing are indispensable to any thoroughgoing religious and moral reform. The examples of Hus and Žižka show that life is worthless without truthfulness and unless it be guided by conviction. Chelčický and the Brotherhood show that a system of life based on ecclesiastical and political force is evil. Comenius pointed the way to an exalted, all-embracing wisdom and humane sympathy. In the spirit of these masters we must go forward and hand on their torch to future generations. What names has the Hapsburg Counter-Reformation to compare with these four—Hus, Žižka, Chelčický, Comenius—names dear to our whole people and respected throughout the world? Over against a great idea it can set nought but naked force.
The relationship of religion to political and practical life ​I sum up in the command that we should seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and that all other things shall be added unto us. A man and a people religiously convinced, a nation steadfastly determined to realize its ideals, will always reach their goal. This I have learned from life; this too is the teaching of our own history and that of all nations.
Our Reformation was a democratic revolution against theocracy. Its faults, the faults of a first attempt, do not prove its principles and essence to have been wrong; and, when I think of our Revolution of October 28, 1918, I reject the view that, merely because the Reformation was ultimately crushed by force, its overthrow shows it to have been a mistake and ourselves to have been politically inert and incompetent in statecraft. The task of finding a solution for the general religious crisis awaits us all, our thinkers and our Churches. Our Republic must ensure full liberty of conscience to every citizen so that discussion may be free and every conviction be expressed. Unlike Austria it must, moreover, carry through the separation of Church and State and, in education especially, the reforms which that separation implies.
No Church, least of all the Roman Catholic, has ever welcomed separation from the State even though religion may gain by it, as it has gained in many lands. Therefore we must be prepared for resistance. It will demand much diplomatic tact and clear definition of our educational policy. In order that the separation might be accomplished without conflict I decided before the end of the war that our Republic should at once be represented at the Vatican. I foresaw that, after the war, the ecclesiastical question would be acute. The object of separation is to set the Churches free from the State and the State free from the Churches, and to make religion a matter of unconstrained conviction. Under Austria, the Church relied on the police power of the State, whose officials were obliged to profess the official religion. In consequence the Church suffered and came to rely more upon the police than upon its doctrines and religious life. The State suffered likewise in that it relied upon the Church, not upon itself and its own worth. To “de-Austrianize” ourselves means, first of all, to separate the Church from the State.
The Law of Love.
In old Austria there was no freedom of conscience. In our Republic it must be real, not merely recognized in legal Codes but practised in every domain of public life. It is a national demand, a demand that arises from our whole history. Our religious development as well as ecclesiastical conditions make it incumbent upon us to separate the Churches from the State. I foresaw that ecclesiastical convictions would be complicated by the union with Slovakia and by the inclusion of Sub-Carpathian Russia in our Republic; and because I anticipated that political freedom would, as it has ever done, tend to aggravate them, I wished to confine the separation question to the purely ecclesiastical and religious domain.
Within our borders we have several races and a considerable number of Churches and denominations. Alongside of our new Czechoslovak Church, Orthodoxy is spreading. The ranks of our Protestants have been swelled by the considerable number of Slovak Lutherans of the Augsburg Confession; as have those of the Catholic Uniates in Sub-Carpathian Russia. Thus we have Roman Catholics and Uniates, adherents of the Czechoslovak Church, Protestants, Orthodox, Unitarians and the Jews. Besides, many of our citizens are undenominational, members of no Church, yet holding private religious convictions of their own.
Under Austria-Hungary the Roman Catholic Church was predominant throughout the territories which now form our Republic. True, the native Protestants, Calvinists, and Lutherans of the Augsburg Confession were recognized by the State in the Historic Lands of the Bohemian Crown, though they enjoyed no official favour. Some foreign missions like the Baptists were more or less tolerated. In Slovakia the Protestant minority was, like the Catholic majority, racially oppressed by the Magyars, who sought also to Magyarize the Uniates in Sub-Carpathian Russia and to suppress the Orthodox movement. The Jews, on the other hand, had managed to gain the goodwill of the Hungarian and the Austrian Governments. How things have changed since the advent of religious freedom may be judged from such figures as are available.
A comparison of the official returns in 1910 and 1921 shows that, since the establishment of the Republic, the Czechoslovak Church has been founded and that in 1921 its members numbered 525,323, nearly all of whom left the Roman Catholic Church to join it. Its membership is now much larger. In addition, ​724,507 Roman Catholics left their Church without adopting any other creed. The losses of the other Churches have been insignificant. In 1910 there were only 12,981 persons in the Historic Lands of the Bohemian Crown who professed no religion. Similarly, the Roman Catholic Uniate Church has lost heavily in Sub-Carpathian Russia, where under Hungary, in 1910, only 558 professed the Orthodox faith, whereas in 1921 the Orthodox numbered 60,986. In the regions inhabited by Czechs all the Protestant Churches show a strong increase of membership, quite apart from the adhesions to the Czechoslovak and the Orthodox Churches. Among the German population, on the other hand, the increase has only been normal. In 1910 there were 157,067 Calvinist and Lutheran Czechs as compared with 153,612 Germans. In 1921 the figures were 231,199 Czechs and 153,767 Germans. The smaller Protestant Churches also show an unusual increase—the Brotherhood from 1,022 to 3,093, the Free Reformed Church from 2,497 to 5,511, the Baptists from 4,072 to 9,360, besides 10,000 Unitarians and 1,455 Methodists. Altogether there were, in 1921, nearly 1,000,000 (990,319) Protestants in the Republic.
Even in the Historical Bohemian Lands and in Slovakia the Orthodox (including the Armenian Orthodox Church) have increased their membership, the totals being 12,111 in 1921 as compared with 2,502 in 1910; and the Old Catholics, who are mainly German, have grown from 17,121 to 20,255. On the other hand, the number of Jews has decreased from 361,650 to 345,342. Yet the Jewish communities show a strong religious life, Orthodox Eastern tenets being preponderant in Slovakia and Sub-Carpathian Russia, and more liberal tendencies in the West. Among the Jews Zionism and the Jewish National movement play an important part.
It is natural that the religious developments in our Republic should attract foreign attention, because among us Catholicism is losing ground, while elsewhere it is gaining in authority if not in extent. Even abroad it is beginning to be understood that the importance of the Czech question was not solely political. All our Protestant Churches are linked in various ways with our Reformation and with the Hussite tradition, just as, in Sub-Carpathian Russia, there is an analogous movement towards Orthodoxy. The Czech Reformed Church and the Lutherans have united themselves in the Evangelical Church of the Bohemian Brethren, with which other denominations, including the Unitarians, are also associated. The new ​Czechoslovak Church is Hussite. It is natural, too, that these Churches should seek contact with the foreign Churches to which they are most akin. The Czechoslovak Church is related to the Anglicans and the Old Catholics. It has, too, a certain kinship with the Polish Mariavites and, in some respects, with Orthodoxy. The Orthodox movement is in touch with the Greek and Serbian Patriarchs. Orthodox, too, are our neighbours in Roumania and Russia. These varieties of ecclesiastical allegiance obviously strengthen the principle of religious toleration, a principle that sprang from the Reformation, though it was by no means immediately observed in the Reformation itself. On the authority of Augustine and of Thomas Aquinas the lives of heretics were forfeit in the Medieval Church—a barbaric doctrine that took time to overcome, as is proved by the case of Servetus, whom Calvin had burned at the stake in 1558. So gradually, indeed, did the spirit of toleration develop that Locke, who was one of its strongest advocates, would not tolerate atheism. Not until the French Revolution was the full right to freedom of conscience codified and practised in the religious field, but even then by no means in the field of politics.
In our Democratic Republic, freedom of conscience and toleration must not merely be codified but realized in every domain of public life. Palacký’s philosophical interpretation of our history esteems the Bohemian Brotherhood as its consummation. The Father of our Nation and our historical past alike enjoin upon us pure Christianity, the teaching of Jesus and His law of life. Democracy is the political form of the humane ideal.