Czechoslovakia and the World

Abstract

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 organisation 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 ‘selfdetermination’. 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.

Masaryk, the opposite of a consistent and methodical writer, never wrote memoirs summarising his life and work. His book Světová revoluce (literally Wold Revolution), published in 1925, is a partial compensation for a full-scale autobiography. The work is a combination of personal reminiscences and political and historical study. It records mainly Masaryk’s experiences during the First World War but includes comments on other periods and is valuable as a documentation of Masaryk’s philosophy of history. An abridged English translation appeared in 1927 under the title The Making of a State: Memories and Observations, 1914-18, and was reprinted in 1969. The selected text consists of essential parts of the tenth chapter in which Masaryk elaborates his concept of democracy, using Czechoslovakia as an example.