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and its horrors will shake our consciences and make us accept this conviction.
In spite of the fact that the historical development follows a definite law, the freedom of such decision is not taken away from us; lawful determinism is not passive fatalism. Velentem ducunt fata, nolentem trahunt. . . .
43. Even when one is scientifically conscientious, it is too much to expect that a philosophical attempt toward the understanding of the war will be free of the personal element, of personal sympathies and antipathies.
Since my young days I have tried to become acquainted with the accomplishments of all nations. Besides the foundation given me by my own nation, I learned to know not merely the classical world but also the principal national cultures of the present day; being brought up also in German schools, I learned diligently and much from men of genius like Lessing, Goethe, and others. At the same time I penetrated into the French and Anglo-Saxon world—the French and English philosophies (next to the classical, principally Plato’s) were my teachers; only later did I understand the German philosophy, expecially Kant’s.
As to the Slav world, I owe much to the Russians and Poles, also to the Jugoslavs. The Italians also, and the Scandinavians, enriched my store of knowledge and widened my horizon.
All my life I was an assiduous, passionate reader and a conscious observer of contemporaneous world happenings. If I had to say which culture I considered to be the highest I would answer, the English and American; at any rate, my stay in England during the war, and a very critical observation of English life convinced me that the English, as a whole, come nearest to the ideals of humanity. The same impression was made upon me by American life. I do not say that the Anglo-Saxon civilization is to me the dearest—that is another question; I see and appreciate the faults of the Slavs, but I love the Slav’s faults and virtues. I was always attracted by France and her spirit, even though I criticized and condemned much, as I condemn our own national faults and defects.
The German spirit I always respected, but seldom have I felt at home with it. It does not inspire me. Prussia especially I cannot love; but I strive to be fair to her. If I really hate anything, it is Austrianism—or rather Viennism, that decadent aristocratism, chasing after tips, gratuities, that false, mean Habsburgism, that nationally nondescript and yet chauvinistic medley of people, known as Vienna. I do not like Prussianism, but still I prefer it, with its robust militarism and hungry harshness of the parvenue, to the thin-blooded, pleasure-seeking spirit of Vienna. Even Tsar William, with his amateurish talking and with his pretended conniving with Providence, unwittingly did more for democracy than the taciturn, “blood-thirsty sovereign,” who believed himself, and was regarded by others, to be the most perfect aristocrat of the world—a man mean to the very core.
I have hope that of my German friends a part, at least, will agree with me.
19. The Significance of the Czecho-Slovak State for the Liberation of Europe.
44. In the Pangerman literature much attention is paid to the Czech question; and the Pangerman politicians are totally hostile to the Czechs and Slovaks, as the views of all of them, from Lagarde to Winterstetten, prove. Mommsen formulated the Pangerman aims when he harangued his countrymen to break the Czech’s hard skulls. We Czechs watched, therefore, carefully the development of German politics, and especially the Pangerman plan of Central Europe, and when the decisive moment came we took a stand against it.
The geographical location of Bohemia and Slovakia in the very centre of Europe gives to our nation a significant position; Bismarck said that
