The Making of a State/Chapter 2

ON December 17, 1914, I left Prague for Italy by way of Vienna. I had decided to go first to Italy in order to find out what people were thinking in Rome and whether Italy would remain neutral. Then I meant to go to Switzerland. I was not without fear that the police in Prague, or on the Austro-Italian frontier, would put obstacles in my way, though luckily their hands were tied to some extent by my possession of a passport, made out before the war, that was valid for three years and for all countries. There was also a report in the newspapers that my daughter Olga was ill; as I took her with me this was an explanation of my journey. So things went pretty smoothly. On the frontier an official did make some difficulty and inquired by telegram from Prague whether he should let me pass; but before he could have got an answer the train for Venice would have left. Therefore, claiming for the first time my rights as a Member of Parliament, I took my place in the train and left.

From Venice, where I met one of our newspaper men, M. Hlaváč—who was extraordinarily well informed on all Viennese and Austrian matters and especially on the activities of Count Czernin, the Austro-Hungarian Minister at Bucharest—I went on to Florence and reached Rome on December 22. During the journey I thought of my first visit to Italy in 1876 when I had seen all the larger Northern and Central cities and had been impressed by the many memorial inscriptions bearing witness to the tyranny of Austria. Italy had then been to me a museum and a school of art; I had lived in the Renaissance. Later on, I had lived in Classical Antiquity though I had been equally able to enter into early Christianity. The Italian Renaissance had attracted me by reason of the remarkable synthesis of Christianity and Classical Antiquity which it offered—a synthesis that really dates from the very beginnings of the Church. Though Christianity was antagonistic to the traditions of Antiquity it had to carry them on and to preserve them in spite of itself. I am more and more convinced that the Emperor Augustus was really the first Pope. Or think of ​Thomas Aquinas—Aristotle’s Janus—like countenance. The “Reception of Roman Law,” of which so much has been written and said, was preceded and accompanied by the reception of classical thought and culture. The strange transition from pagan Rome to Catholicism may be traced in the plastic arts, especially in architecture, e.g. in the Roman Pantheon. This ocular proof impressed me more deeply than the arguments of modern theologians who draw from literary sources their accounts of the Classical-Catholic synthesis.

And Catholicism itself, the Church and the Papacy, the grandiose continuation and culmination of the Roman Empire, is the work not of the Romans alone but also of their successors, the Italians. Catholicism is a product of the Roman spirit, though Jesuitism, the basis of neo-Catholicism, came from Spain. Italy has contributed, besides, notable moral and religious individualities standing more or less apart from the Church, like St. Francis of Assisi, Savonarola, Giordano Bruno and Galileo.

Nor do the later periods of Italian thought lack interest. I was attracted especially by the genius of Vico, his philosophy of society and of history, his psychological insight into the real social forces and their workings, his grasp of the spirit of Roman Law and of Roman civilization—again and always a synthesis of Catholicism and Classical Antiquity, for Vico was a priest as well as a philosopher of history and the first of modern sociologists. Indeed, Catholicism, with its long ecclesiastical tradition, led to the philosophical writing of history; and Vico’s predecessor was Bossuet.

Politically, the rebirth and unification of Italy commanded our sympathies; and, in point of time, the period of the Risorgimento coincided with that of our Czech national revival. In Italy likewise there arose the serious problem of the relationship between Church and State. Many a powerful Italian thinker racked his brains over the fate of the Papacy and the part it might play in relation to national unity. In this respect Rosmini and Gioberti, both priests and men of keen mind, interested me as did their opponent, Mamiani, who ended by adapting himself to their ideas—far more than the Italian disciples of Kant and Hegel; and in all three of them can be felt the pulse of Italy and the nature of her problems after the French Revolution. At length Italy was unified, in despite of the Papacy. For her, and not for her alone, the year 1870 is memorable. In July the Vatican Council proclaimed the new dogma of Papal Infallibility; a few weeks later an Italian ​army occupied the Papal territory which, by a plebiscitary vote of 153,000 against 1,507, threw in its lot with Italy. No Catholic Government raised a finger on behalf of the Papal State—in such fashion fell the Temporal Power of the Church and of its theocratic Head, Pius IX. Nor could his successor, Leo XIII, save the Middle Ages, notwithstanding his revival of Scholasticism and of the study of Thomas Aquinas. My hope that other theocratic States might fall in their turn was naturally and logically linked with this world-historic event.

It is no accident that the most recent Italian philosophy should have turned so strongly towards sociology and the study of social phenomena. Apart from a philosophy of history based upon a long and rich tradition, the substance of modern Italian thought reflects the problem of a growing population—a problem which has necessitated a colonial policy and has stimulated the industrialization of the North, the intellectual awakening of the Centre and the South, an increasing consciousness of national and political importance and the practical unification of the country. To me, moreover, Italy symbolized the question of revolution in various forms, particularly in those of secret societies and political outrages. On this subject Mazzini and his philosophy are a living storehouse of ideas.

Somewhat unsystematically, my study of modern Italian literature had begun with Leopardi—on account of his pessimism which had interested me from early youth as a psychological problem of the period. From Leopardi to Manzoni was but a little way, though Manzoni—a follower of Rosmini—preached Christianity and both Leopardi and Manzoni were Romanticists and parents of the newer tendencies in Italian poetry. Then, with a jump, I came to D’Annunzio, who revealed to me the decadent movement and its relationship to Catholicism; and, however anachronistic it may seem that I should have returned from D'Annunzio to Carducci, there is an organic link between them, for Carducci’s blasphemous “Hymn to Satan” belongs naturally to what I call “decadence.” On this matter I shall have more to say when I deal with France. Here I would only point out that D’Annunzio’s political activity is in line with his literary work, for it is a vain attempt to fill his decadent spiritual emptiness. The transition from Romanticism to Realism and subsequently to Futurism and other phenomena of “revolt” are, on the other hand, characteristic of the spiritual crisis in the whole of Europe, not in Italy alone. In Italy, as elsewhere, physicians have arisen to offer remedies for this literary anarchy, some prescribing a return to Dante and others to Leopardi—​physicians and patients alike obviously suffering from equal impotence.

All these things I pondered, in much fuller detail, as I was weighing in Rome the question whether Italy would or could join Austria and Germany against the Allies. My answer, dictated by my own philosophy of Italian history and civilization, was always: “It is not possible.”

In Rome there was a chance of getting news and of establishing political relationships. Diplomatic representatives of all countries were there, in many cases two from each country, one being accredited to the Vatican. First of all I approached the Serbian Minister, Lyuba Mihailovitch, and the Southern Slav politicians. Some Southern Slav members of the Austrian Parliament had already joined other well-known Southern Slavs abroad, and their numbers were constantly growing. I was the only Czech Member of Parliament outside the country—to my regret, because a Member of Parliament is thought, in the West, to be a more serious politician than a professor. Therefore I did a thing which I should never have dreamed of doing at home, or had there been no war. I had visiting cards printed as follows: “Professor T. G. Masaryk, Czech Member of Parliament, President of the Czech Progressive Group in the Austrian Reichsrat.” Mestrovitch, the Southern Slav sculptor, who was then in Rome, was also a political asset. The Italians had recognized and esteemed him as an artist since the Venice Exhibition in the spring of 1914. Working beside him were Dr. L. Voinovitch and Professor Popovitch. Among Southern Slav members of the Austrian or Hungarian Diets and Parliaments were Dr. Trumbitch and Dr. Nikola Stoyanovitch, while Supilo was in London. By a lucky chance he had been in Switzerland when war broke out and had stayed abroad. Of the Slovenes, Mr. Goritchar, a former Austro-Hungarian Consular official, was in Rome as well as Dr. Županitch of the Belgrade University Library. So as to elude the Austrian spies, we met late at night at the Serbian Legation, discussed the whole position and agreed to work closely together. The idea of a corridor between Slovakia and Croatia interested the Southern Slavs in Rome, though I thought that, at best, it should only be mooted as a tactical move. Several Southern Slavs took it up, but Trumbitch was reserved and wished it to be left to the Czechs.

​At that time an agitation was beginning in Italy about Dalmatia, “Our Dalmatia,” as it was called, though the Italians themselves, as distinguished from the Austrian Italians or Irredentists, paid little heed to it. They thought rather of Asia, the African Colonies, Trieste and Trent—and of Trieste more than of Trent. I advised the Southern Slavs to start careful counter-propaganda. Notwithstanding the difficulties, which were serious, they could probably have made headway among a section of the politicians and of the people; for I noticed that the people were influenced less by Imperialism than by hereditary dislike of Austria. Against the Germans of Germany their feeling was not so strong, though it was affected by the German violation of Belgium. Imperialism does not come from the people. Its vanguard and its main forces are everywhere monarchs, generals, bankers, merchants, professors, journalists and “intellectuals.” Nor ought it to be forgotten that, in 1913, Italy twice resisted an Austrian temptation to assail Serbia. But many Italians looked upon the war as something that concerned the French, the Russians and Germany, not Italy; and I often heard the argument, which Nitti repeats, that the war was a struggle between Germanism and Slavdom. This argument could be used either in support of neutrality or in favour of joining the Germans against the Slavs in the cause of “Our Dalmatia.”

Though, as I have said, I envied the Southern Slavs for having so many political men abroad, I saw even in Rome that dissensions might spring up among them. They all had one programme—the unification of the Southern Slav, or Serb, Croat and Slovene race—but they had not worked it out in detail. This was clear from all they said, and the influence of the old quarrel between Serbs and Croats could be felt. The Serbian Minister strongly favoured unity in good understanding with the Croats; yet it seemed to me that many Croats were over-insistent upon the superiority of their culture and forgot that what mattered chiefly then and in the whole war was military and political leadership. As my Southern Slav friends knew, I thought their unity should be achieved under the political leadership of Serbia, and imagined it as the result of a consistent and gradual unification of the Southern Slav Lands, each of which had its own culture and administrative peculiarities.

In December 1914 Count Tisza, the Hungarian Prime Minister, praised the Croat troops of Austria-Hungary for their “true-hearted bravery in the fight for the common ​Fatherland.” Against him the Southern Slavs in Rome issued a protest, which was published in the Corriere della Sera. It was signed by “The Croatian Committee,” this collective name being used in order to preclude the reprisals which the authorities in Vienna and Budapest would have taken against the families of individual signatories. In those days the Southern Slavs also talked of an “Adriatic Legion” to act under the guidance of a “Southern Slav Committee.” Indeed, in January 1915 a “Southern Slav Committee “issued a number of declarations. Thus, in organization at least, the Southern Slavs were ahead of us; and I used this circumstance to urge our people in Prague to send some of our journalists and members of Parliament to join me abroad.

Neither in Rome nor afterwards did I waste time on people who merely held official positions. Though at first our people at home took it amiss if I failed to visit this or that Minister or Member of Parliament, I knew the value of the men who were politically active in various countries and always sought to ascertain on the spot their real influence. In Rome I saw the Polish Professor Loret, and also the Germanophil Danish writer, Rasmussen, but I had little contact with the Russian Embassy except through some of its officials and the military attaché, for the Russian Ambassador had no influence either in Rome or in his own country. M. de Giers, the Montenegrin, was more interesting. M. Svatkovsky, with whom I had got into touch while still at Prague, I have already mentioned. Though I had known him for years I had not worked much with him as I did not wish to damage his official position as the representative of the Russian Official Telegraph Agency for Austria-Hungary and the Balkans. When I returned from Germany in the autumn of 1914, he had sent me a trustworthy messenger through whom I let him know that I should be in Rome towards the middle of December; and he was waiting for me there when I arrived. As his name shows, his family was originally Czech. He was a descendent of the Svatkovskys of Dobrohosht who took part in the Bohemian insurrection of 1618. After the confiscation of their estates, his ancestors emigrated to Saxony and thence to Russia. Hence his sincere interest in our affairs. The Russians had been defeated in East Prussia, and there were rumours of treason in the army and in the Russian administration. Svatkovsky knew many ​details of this business (the notorious Masoyedoff affair) and his keen criticism of official Russia and of the army surprised me. He shared my views of Russia and also my fears. With the Russophilism of our people in Prague he did not agree; and he aptly remarked that a Russian Grand Duke, installed as ruler in the Royal Castle there, would mean champagne and French mistresses. Svatkovsky settled presently in Switzerland where we saw each other often; and he followed me to Paris afterwards.

We went quietly over the whole situation. I found that I could trust him and therefore I informed him of my plans. He reported to St. Petersburg not, or not exclusively, through the Russian Ambassador of whom he thought little. Finally he compiled a complete memorandum setting forth my views and plans and sent it to St. Petersburg. Thus the Russian Foreign Minister, Sazonof, received a second report from me (January 1915), the first having been sent through Seton-Watson in October 1914. In point of fact I kept in constant touch with representatives of Russia; and the closeness of my relations with them from the outset is one reason why I did not hasten to Russia, although our own people, there and elsewhere, who knew nothing of these relations, thought I kept away because I was a “Westerner” and anti-Russian. The truth was that the whole position obliged me to remain in the West, where we had no political relationships and had to make people understand our ideas. Before leaving home I had recognized that the fate of Europe would be decided in the West, not in Russia; and the longer I stayed in the West the clearer did this become.

With the French I did not establish permanent relations while in Rome. I thought I would leave that until I had studied the position in Paris, and I imagined that France had been better informed of our affairs in former years than proved to be the case. The British Ambassador, Sir James Rennell Rodd, I saw occasionally and he forwarded letters for me to London. Prince Bülow, the German Ambassador, I did not see though a meeting with him had previously been arranged. I should have been glad to talk to an official German public man, but Bülow begged to be excused, saying that he had no time. He was then trying to win Italy over to the side of Germany and Austria. He offered the Italians parts of Austria—and Vienna got angry. Indeed, Vienna was suspicious of the whole relationship between Italy and Germany.

Italians in official positions I did not approach. Italy was ​neutral and, as I was obliged to assume that the Austrian and perhaps also the German Embassies were watching me, I had no right to compromise anybody. One episode I remember. When I visited the Italian historian, Professor Lumbroso, who was publishing the “Rivista di Roma,” he was taken aback, for he heard that I had been knocked on the head in Prague at the beginning of the war and, as a conscientious historian, he had published an article on my death. “You will live long,” he said.

Rome gladdened me. The result of my observations and information was that, for the time being, the Italians would remain neutral, and that, if they should march, it would be rather against the Austrians than with them. Against England, Italy would not fight and with France she had a secret agreement, dating from November 1902, that pledged her to neutrality in case of war. In this war Germany had hardly acted according to the defensive spirit of the Triple Alliance since she had declared war upon France and Russia; and Austria had been positively disloyal towards Italy by ignoring Clause VII of the Triple Alliance which bound her to inform Italy of the action to be taken against Serbia—a characteristic display of Austrian contempt for the Italians. Therefore Italy had declared her neutrality as early as July 31, 1914. Moreover, her expedition to Valona had seemed to foreshadow active intervention on the side of the Entente, though it foreshadowed also a dispute about the Balkans, especially with the Southern Slavs.

By December 1914 and January 1915 a strong movement had begun for Italian participation in the war. Giolitti, the former Prime Minister, was attacked for favouring Germany and Austria. In reality he was opposed to war because he believed that Austria would make the necessary concessions without it; but he was not for peace at any price, particularly if Austria would not give way. I thought it unlikely that Austria would give way—people in Vienna were too puffed up. They felt no fear of Italy against whom the Austrian military clique, with General Conrad von Hoetzendorf, the Chief of General Staff, at its head, had long wanted war, regardless of the Triple Alliance. It had taken Aehrenthal all his time to defend himself against Conrad, as the Italians well knew.

The bearing of the Vatican had been at first decidedly pro-Austrian and pro-German. Statements were circulated by the ​Austro-Hungarian Embassies to the Vatican and to the Quirinal that Pope Benedict XV personally favoured Austria and Germany against Serbia. Count Pálffy, the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador to the Vatican, of whom I had trustworthy information, gave it out that Austria, as a Catholic State par excellence, was the protectress of Catholicism against Orthodoxy and that both the Pope and the Cardinal Secretary of State approved unconditionally of Austrian action. Austria-Hungary was, indeed, the only great Catholic State in Europe, and it was natural that the Vatican should side with her. Besides, the close personal relationship between the Papacy and the Emperor Francis Joseph was a weighty factor. True, the Vatican knew that Austrian Catholicism was a “morass” (an opinion which the chief Catholic authorities in Germany shared); but it put its trust in German Catholicism whose vitality and political power would, it hoped, control the Austrian and the Hungarian Catholics. The German Centre or Catholic Party and, in particular, its principal leader, Erzberger, certainly played a conspicuous part from the very beginning of the war by propaganda and political initiative.

Yet Vatican policy in the war could not be determined solely by regard for Austria-Hungary and Germany. The Catholics in other belligerent countries had to be taken into account. Statistically there were more Catholics on the side of the Entente than on that of the Central Powers. Therefore the conduct of the Vatican was bound to be cautious, that is to say, indefinite. Hence the continual disputes among Catholic politicians as to its real opinion. For the same reason the Vatican press and even Cardinal Gasparri, the Secretary of State, had constantly to “explain” Papal utterances. Not that Vatican policy was decided only by numbers. When the South American Republics turned against the Central Powers, less weight was assigned to them than to the Catholic nations and States of Europe. Especially delicate was the position of the Vatican in relation to France. During the war some French Bishops spoke out against the Vatican and the Pope alike; nor was the position easier after Italy had joined the Entente. By degrees the Vatican toned down its Austrophilism-a point on which Belgium and the influence of Cardinal Mercier had some effect. In general, the Vatican may be said to have specialized in attempts to make peace, and to have directed Catholic propaganda in all belligerent countries towards an early cessation of hostilities. As things then were, this proved advantageous to the Germans, particularly in England and America.

​But, on both sides, the standpoints of political Catholic leaders were national rather than religious. The German Catholics sent a memorandum to Rome early in September 1914; the French Catholics answered it early in 1915, and the Germans issued a rejoinder. Outwardly the Vatican kept up a certain degree of impartiality, chiefly by evading positive issues and contenting itself with general observations upon its divine mission. It is necessary to distinguish between the official policy of the Vatican and the personal opinions of this or that Pope or of the individual Cardinals and Prelates who work in its various departments. Throughout the whole war I watched the Vatican very keenly. Presently we established relations with it; and, in conducting them, I never forgot that “qui mange du Pape, en meurt.”

In Rome I thought at times of returning for a while to Prague in order to put heart into our people and again to discuss with them our whole plan in the light of what I had learned in Italy. I wished also to store my most valuable books in a safe place, for I did not doubt that the police would ransack my home if I stayed abroad. To this end I drafted a letter assuring the police that they would find nothing political among my papers. At all events I made while in Rome provisional arrangements for an escape from Trieste into Italy. But I was not destined to go back. On January 11, 1915, I left Rome for Geneva after having visited my beloved Pantheon for a last time.