December 16, 1918

At his request I had another talk today with President Masaryk an hour before he entrained for Prague to assume his post of president. He has been tireless during the short week of his stay here in trying to bring together the discordant elements from Central and Southeastern Europe who here abound. He told me of a long conference he has had with Take Ionescu, of the Rumanians, and also with Venezelos, the Greek Premier, for whom he expressed unbounded admiration. In his endeavor to bring about an understanding between the South Slavs and the Poles, the roaming Rumanians (the Wallachs) and the Greeks, he got a clear insight into the disturbing territorial disputes that separate them all and particularly the Serbs and the Rumanians. He admitted that he had not been entirely successful but thought that I was unduly pessimistic. Admitting that there were obstacles, very serious obstacles, in the path to concord, he protested that he still cherished high hopes.

“Solutions are still beyond our immediate reach,” he admitted, “but I am confident we have cleared the ground for co-operation at the Peace Conference. These bickerings are undeniable, but we laid the cornerstone of the peace edifice at the Rome and the Paris Congresses of the Oppressed Nationalities and we started to raise the superstructure by our organization in America of the Mid-European Democratic Union.” Cheerfully he added, “Don’t let Colonel House get discouraged. Many of these noisy people are talking for what they call in that part of America that I know best ‘home consumption.’ Remember Rome was not built in a day, and it is natural that the New Europe, with its constellation of little states, will require patient and intelligent readjustment.

“I assured President Wilson when I first reached Washington from Siberia,” President Masaryk went on, “that the prophecy of the great Komenski that the government of the Czech nation would come again, and soon, into the hands of the Czechs has been fulfilled, and indeed a little sooner than we had dared to expect. German-Bohemia, so called? These districts where the Germans are intermixed with our people is our territory, and ours it shall remain. We have recreated our state with assistance from the democratic world and most of all from my second country, America. We hope that these Germans may collaborate with us, but I for one understand the difficult position in which they find themselves. They were so ready to support the Pan-German attacks on the Czechs! They were intoxicated by the ephemeral military victories and failed to realize what was the true balance in the world situation. But because we understand these people who have remained strangers in our midst for so many generations is the strongest reason why we are not disposed to sacrifice our important and very precious Czech population who are their neighbors in what some propagandists call, mistakenly, German-Bohemia. [Sudetenland.] It remains where it belongs, our bulwark against invasion where the danger is greatest.”

As I was leaving, President Masaryk brought up once again the problem which the presence of the large German minority in Bohemia undoubtedly presents. He expects that they will soon invoke the Wilsonian doctrine of self-determination. “Our first answer will be that these ideas were never expressed before the war. Not a voice was raised in favor of union with Germany in the days of Austrian rule. The present agitation is simply the work of Pan-German propaganda.” Beneš, who had joined us, mentioned that some were advocating a division of the disputed territory. This he argued was far from practicable.

“The Sudeten hills,” said Masaryk, “afford to us Czechs the only defensible frontier against our formidable and aggressive neighbor. A division of the territory in dispute is also far from practical. The three million Germans do not present a solid bloc which could be more easily dealt with. They are widely scattered, and in many of the districts which they have hitherto dominated are to be found almost an equal number of Czechs.”

Masaryk then pointed out: “These troublemakers in Reichenberg say that they fear that Prague will attempt what they call the Czechization of their fellow Germans. It seems to me that this only would be possible if, as is proposed by some, two millions were ceded to the Reich. One, the remaining million, might be Czechified, if anyone were so foolish as to attempt it, but surely not three million! These Germans are as stiff-necked as the Poles, and we know how many hundred million gold marks the Berlin attempt to Germanize the Poles of Silesia cost and what a complete failure it has been.”

A new and I think an important aspect of the situation was brought to light by the following words of Masaryk. “The present agitation is due almost entirely to the fact that under the Vienna government the Germans of Bohemia were favored, perhaps pampered is the more correct word, for obvious political reasons, and rightly they do not expect that this favoritism will be continued by the new government in Prague.”

Beneš expressed the hope that the German minority after a little calm reflection would be willing to remain outside the Reich, just as the three million Germans in Switzerland are enthusiastic about remaining with the Bund. “From us,” he added, “they will have no cause of complaint, once they have divested themselves of their pretenses to race superiority and their claims for special privileges. The only hardship that awaits them is that they will have to learn to live under a democratic government which guarantees equal rights to all, irrespective of race, religion, or language.”

Both Beneš and Masaryk lived up to this promise; Only when Henlein and other agents of Hitler came with money and promises did irreconcilable differences develop and the Sudeten Germans lift their voices in complaint.