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go home, she said. Both little girls’ expression changed mutually. It was just that way in one of the novels Ida had read. He felt, the dear fellow, the dear, foolish fellow, their difference in rank, and so he left; he conquered himself. Could there be any other explanation of his departure? The girl in the frame never entered their minds. And in the corner, their own corner, they both cried over it, each trying to outdo the other in grief and depth of feeling for—the eyes of sapphire. Their tears quickly came, and as quickly dried over the strawberries, cherries and currants, over the carnations and roses, and perhaps even over—their dolls.

“THE UTTERANCES OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE CZECHOSLOVAK REPUBLIC, T. G. MASARYK, FROM THE TIME OF HIS ELECTION TO THE DAYS OF THE JUBILEE” (December, 1918, to December, 1919). Edited by Th. Kratochvíl, Prague, 1920.

“A YEAR OF WORK,” Prague, 1919. (Published in Czech by the Press Bureau of the Office of the Premier of the Ministry and Edited by Dr. Rudolf Procházka).

These two publications reveal the heart and soul of what the leaders of the Czechoslovak nation have done and are aspiring to do in their new state.

President Masaryk’s speeches are guideposts for the future. They are a nation’s catechism in which “the little father” (tatíček) speaks to the common man about whose future actions elsewhere in Europe many statesman are now so seriously concerned.

The “Year of Work” is a report of the Provisional Government’s activity in the first year of the republic’s existence. It is official in character in so far as it was got together from official reports and, in one case, includes a speech by Beneš, Minister of Foreign Affairs, before the National Assembly.

Both publications speak intimately, almost confidentially. They are intended for Czechs and Slovaks, not for foreign consumption. For that reason they are the more important for us. They tell of successes and failures, of an ugly past, of hopes for a brighter future. In all recent political (official or unofficial) literature in Central Europe I know of none which so openly tells the nation what has been attempted against great odds and what are the dangers ahead. Should this beginning be developed into a regular act of the Government each year it would be a signal contribution to the establishment of a new regime in Central Europe.

President Masaryk lays down in his speeches, it appears, two fundamental axioms: that the Czechoslovaks, in order to be a thoroughly new nation for the leadership of the new order in Central Europe, must “de-Austrianize and re-educate themselves,” and that social reform, not social revolution, should be the future programme of the republic, if they do not wish to undo what they have already accomplished.

By “de-Austrianization” President Masaryk means a thoroughly democratized army, a new bureaucracy, free, equal nations living contentedly within the state, and a new moral outlook for a freer, healthier development. The remnants of Old Austria, with its militarism, its decaying bureaucracy, its oppressed nations, and its degenerating effect on the cultural development of individuals, classes, and nations, are to be swept away.

By urging the nation to “re-educate itself” President Masaryk is urging a rebirth in education, in moral outlook, in ordinary, every-day ideals. The re-education is to be in the spirit of American ideals and American achievement. In that respect he wishes his nation “to Americanize itself.” A nation with moral teachers of the eminence of Hus, Komenský (Comenius), and Havlíček will have rich inspiration to draw from in this respect.

In his [[../../../Volume 3/Number 12/Masaryk's Message on First Independence Day|second message]] to the National Assembly (October 29, 1919) President Masaryk reviews in particular the demand for the social revolution. He advocates penetrating or thorough-going social reforms. Through his acquaintance with Socialism and Bolshevism he bravely faces the issue. There is no hedging. There must be social reform, but there must be no social revolution. Leninism or Bolshevism is “rather revolutionary anarchism, rather syndicalism than Socialism.”

President Masaryk expounds Bolshevism with especial care to the Czechoslovak laboring classes, because the masses in Slavic speaking countries show more sentiment than reason in that regard. They virtually reject Marxism because it is “German,” and instinctively and, likewise, sentimentally have an unconscious interest in Bolshevism because they feel it is “Slavic.”

Here is a statesman, no longer purely a theoretical social reformer, wrestling with the problem and thinking before his nation. He knows he cannot do all the thinking himself, and so he thinks before his people in order to have them “catch the habit.” He leaves them in no doubt that civilization will mean a grand transformation of the evolution of the ages and that it is a long way off. And, finally, he points out that it