The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 4/Masaryk to the legionaries

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MASARYK TO THE LEGIONARIES

President Masaryk recently, March 24th, paid a visit to the Jan Hus regiment of Czechoslovak legionaries from Siberia in their barracks at Prague, and on this occasion he delivered a remarkable address in which he touched upon a number of topical questions concerning both the legionaries themselves and the Czechoslovak Nation and State in general. In the course of his remarks he said:

“One out of your number has just been telling me that many of you, perhaps the majority, are disappointed with what you have found here. To be disappointed does not, in itself, decide as to whether your disappointment is justified. There is a great and natural difference between a soldier, between a gallant fighter in the field, and the formation of a Republican State. I can see that, and I am experiencing what it means to create a military administration, with all its legal machinery. These circumstances are quite different from those under which you have lived. There is a great difference between carrying out a political revolution and a social one. A political revolution which overthrows dynasties together with everything that depends upon them, is not such a difficult matter; it can be done overnight, and of this we have examples from history. But to carry through a social revolution is quite a different matter. It means a change of labor, a change of life, not merely the removal of certain ruling sections.

You say that you have been disappointed. I have been keeping watch for nearly eighteen months and have been exerting all my endeavors to try and get our nation clear of this Austrianism or whatever you like to call it. Be fair in your criticism; our state is only a little more than a year old. The English State is 1500 years old, a period of unshaken continuity. That is quite a different thing from a state which we are only just in the act of developing. Therefore I say that we must first have a few years behind us for these foundations, these original forms to be made stable. The same phenomena are to be observed everywhere else, even in the countries which were victorious and in the neutral countries. Everywhere you will find high prices and lack o materials, as well as moral degeneration. For the war was an anarchy and it produced the same effects everywhere. I say therefore that you must observe calmly and not indulge in wholesale accusations when you criticise.”

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Original:

This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published in 1919, before the cutoff of January 1, 1930. The longest-living author of this work died in 1937, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 87 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.

Translation:

This work was published in 1919 and is anonymous or pseudonymous due to unknown authorship. It is in the public domain in the United States as well as countries and areas where the copyright terms of anonymous or pseudonymous works are 105 years or less since publication.