March 30th

Vienna—Prague—Belgrade—Budapest

Note: General Smuts left on his tour of southeastern Europe on April 1st and the following excerpts are from the diary of Colonel Bonsai, who joined him in Vienna. Generally, but not invariably, they are headed by the day of the week and not by the day of the month. While, as will appear, Colonel Bonsai on this tour covered a good deal of ground, he was back in Paris on the afternoon of April 11th to resume his duties with the Commission engaged in drafting the League and the Covenant.

The Colonel came in this morning, quite excited. “Smuts,” he announced, “is leaving tomorrow night for a tour of investigation and, as we hope, of pacification in southeastern Europe. With him on the mission will be a Frenchman and an Italian, and he has asked me to let you accompany him as the American representative. He intimates that the Frenchman and the Italian will merely serve as camouflage or window dressing but that he wants you, whom he regards as a ‘common-sense’ American, to assist him because you are perfectly familiar with conditions down there before propaganda got to work and covered up the facts. Here,” explained the Colonel, “as regards the Covenant, things are at a standstill and will remain so for two or three weeks, and by that time you will be back. Perhaps Smuts will not accomplish much but he will learn a lot about the actual situation at first hand and that cannot fail to be helpful. Here we have put all the pressure we can upon the stubborn factions, and, while it is sinking in, for the present it is best for us merely to tread water and hope for the best. I told Smuts I would like to have you go and Hankey¹ is arranging the diplomatic passports and the reservations on the international train to Vienna where the real tour begins.”

I welcomed the change and, awaiting further developments, set to work to clear my desk.

At the appointed hour on the following morning (April 1st) I was at the station. On hand also was Major Hankey, the bear leader of the British Empire delegation, and a General Thomson. Hankey was in a rage, or pretended to be. I never knew which. “There has been a mix-up,” he explained. “Of course the telephone is to blame. Smuts left in great haste last night but you can overtake him in Vienna. There he will wait for you, and no harm done.” To this the tall, red-tabbed general agreed, but he was put out and seemed to think that the telephone was not entirely to blame, and this first impression was confirmed later on.

Thomson and I were not at all pleased with our stuffy and far-from-clean compartment on the French train and we drew up a formal complaint which we proposed serving on M. le Conducteur in the morning. But the cold, searching light of the dawn revealed how extremely lucky we had been—and were. Out in the corridor, taking what ease they could on uneasy strapontin seats, unshaven and unwashed, were a number of princes of the blood and half-a-dozen great ones of the earth whose lofty lineage and diplomatic passports had gotten them on the train but had not secured for them the accommodations they were accustomed to. So our displeasure vanished, and having concluded that as a transport officer Hankey was a wizard, we tore into scraps our complaint and moved into the dining car for morning coffee.

At Buchs, Paderewski boarded the train, very friendly but most mysterious as to whence he came and where he was going. Suddenly a real baby blush overspread his face, and, with the characteristic gesture of pushing up his back hair which later on during the sessions in Paris we found so amusing, he said:

“Sometimes I wake up at night and cannot be comforted. Why? I’ll tell you. It is the memory of that morning in November when I arrived in Paris and burst into your colonel’s bedroom at seven-fifteen. How I must have harassed him! That is one of the things I could only have done for Poland. Do you think he will ever forgive me?”

He was pleased when I assured him that all his visits were welcome and all were timely whether he came at midnight or early morning. “You cannot come at an untimely hour,” I insisted, and indeed mine were true words. “Paddy is the Colonel’s pet,” as I once heard the yeoman of the guard explain. “We boys think he likes ‘Paddy’ better even than the Tiger.”

We found General Smuts at the British Embassy in Vienna. There all the cabinets and archive cases were still covered with the Spanish seals of His Catholic Majesty, which had protected them through the long war years. The South African soldier-diplomat greeted me in the most friendly manner, but he was noticeably curt with Thomson. Of this frigid reception the explanation only came some days later, when I learned on excellent authority that Smuts was displeased with this last addition to his party and would have stopped Thomson if he had learned of his assignment in time. It all goes back, apparently, to the bad feeling that has long existed between Smuts and General Henry Wilson, a wordy and pompous ass, who presides over the British imperial delegation to the War Council in Versailles, because it is said “he can outtalk Lloyd George.” Wilson, I learned, was furious that so important a mission should have been entrusted to the interloper from South Africa and without asking leave of anyone had sent Thomson to keep an eye on the proceedings which Wilson regarded as most irregular because he had not been consulted.

This was not the first time I noticed that the red tape which enmeshes the brass hats is even more disastrous in its effects than it is among the civilian delegates and that it afflicts all nations pretty much alike. Be this as it may, Smuts evidently concluded that Thomson had been sent to spy on his movements and decided to exclude him as much as possible from the proceedings. I think Thomson personally was wholly innocent, and when Colonel Cunningham, whom we found in temporary charge of the Embassy, asked him rather stiffly why he had come, he answered: “Oh! for a lark.” And that was, I think, the truth.

Smuts offered no explanation of why we had been left behind in Paris, but the cordiality with which he greeted me and his coldness to Thomson gave color to the explanation I have already given. “Well, here you are, Thomson,” was all that the lieutenant general said as he caught sight of the man he regarded as an unwelcome recruit. It seems that the ill feeling between Smuts and Sir Henry Wilson dates back to the Boer War, when they fought under opposing flags. Now Wilson as chief of the Imperial General Staff opposed the choice of Smuts for the mission, and when Lloyd George insisted he sent Thomson, one of his men, and a devoted adherent, to keep tab on the South African. Smuts had evidently thought to escape this surveillance by anticipating his departure by twenty-four hours. Left at the post, Smuts hoped that Thomson would remain there, and of course it was not a matter of great importance that I also should be left behind. I did not mind, but Smuts evidently thought I might take umbrage and laid it on with a shovel in the presence of Colonel Cunningham, the British agent in Vienna, and of poor Thomson, who was hurt by his treatment and had reason to be.

“I am so glad you have come,” the Afrikander repeated over and over again. “I shall lean heavily on your assistance because you are perfectly familiar with the politics and the other conditions in the countries we are about to visit, of which so many of us are woefully ignorant. You, indeed, can be helpful.”

The general’s thanks sounded a little more sincere when I interrupted to tell him that I had brought along with me his batman or soldier “striker,” who had also been left behind in the hurried departure.

“Splendid, splendid!” he said. “I’m an old soldier, but I’m lost without that man.” The inside story was that the batman could shave the general without awakening him—a rare accomplishment in Europe, but not unknown among Chinese “boys.” Indeed I enjoyed the ministrations of one such artist myself in Peking years ago, but only for a month. He was, alas! in my service only on loan.

Domestic matters having been settled, Smuts drew me aside and talked politics. “You have missed nothing by not being with me the few hours we spent in Budapest. Nothing came of our gesture, but I am glad we made it. It is clear that Bela Kun will not last long and I am advising Paris to assume a waiting attitude. Kun will soon be displaced by the Majority Socialists, and while they are by no means men after my own heart with them I think we could discuss matters— seriously.”

Late in the afternoon we boarded our special train and reached Prague shortly before midnight. There was at the station a huge gathering of military men and civilian officials of the new state to greet the general and do him honor. Some palace or other of the vanishing territorial lords, now deserted by its owner, had been arranged for our occupancy, but in view of the shortness of his stay Smuts decided that we should all remain on board the train where we had now shaken down and were fairly comfortable.

Thomson, with the temporary rank of brigadier general, with whom I now shared a compartment for several days, was an English officer of an unusual type. During the war he had served in military intelligence and also with a combat unit in Palestine under Allenby.

He talked incessantly about the tangled affairs of Europe and was outspoken in his prophecies of the dark, dire things that were to come. Generally I thought they were based on false premises and misinformation, but he had a slant on the collapse of Russia which was new and I thought interesting.

“If the government of the Tsar had made a separate peace in 1917 little Nicholas would be alive now and probably still on the throne. Those who advised him to take this course were denounced as pro-Germans, and in a sense some of them were, but they were for the most part simply Imperialists who wished to safeguard the Empire against the rising tide of democracy—if you wish to call it that. It was stupid of us to cajole Kerensky and drive him back into the war, and it was stupid of him to allow himself to be driven.”

Out from his tunic now and again, indeed quite often, Thomson² would draw a small photograph of Lenin. He would look at it for a long time and then slip it back into his pocket again. “A remarkable man! a most remarkable man!” he would mutter, and I certainly was not in a mood to gainsay him.

. . . Certainly in his talk with Masaryk on the morning following our arrival in Prague, General Smuts had no assistance from me or from any other member of the mission. It was strictly a tête-à-tête. He was closeted with the President for half an hour, and when he rejoined us he kept his own counsel. In the meantime we passed the time in wandering through the interminable corridors of the Hradcany Palace and wondering as to the why and the wherefore of the many paintings of sea battles that were hung along them. Perhaps they tell of the days when, on the authority of Shakespeare at least (no great shakes as a geographer, it must be admitted), there was “a seacoast of Bohemia.” I was then summoned into the presence of the new chief magistrate of the brand-new republic, and had I been miffed, which most certainly I was not, by my exclusion from the first meeting, I would have been consoled by the fact that he talked to me twice as long as he had talked with the great Afrikander.

At first, for the moment at least, Masaryk turned away from the world in turmoil and indulged his reminiscent mood. Again he referred to our first, our, at the time, little-noted meeting and the small gathering of friends that welcomed him a short year ago on his arrival at the Union Station in Washington from the far-flung battle line in Siberia.

“That was an important moment in history,” he reflected aloud, “not because of my insignificant person but because of the great cause I had the good fortune to represent. At last I had come to the city where the noble Wilson was continuing the battle which the great Lincoln had only half won. In a few days, thanks to the President’s sympathy and assistance, the crusade for the liberation of all peoples was under way.”

I mentioned with what interest I had noticed the great ships putting out to sea, at least from the palace walls and galleries. The President smiled but evidently was not inclined to elucidate this historical mystery. “Yes,” he said, “Prague has had many changes and transformations, and in the wars of long ago she suffered many vicissitudes. Prague was once an imperial city and, seated here, the Hapsburgs ruled the world in their unhappy way. Our purpose is to make of Prague the Mecca of Democracy. We have the task to liberate Central Europe. From here must radiate the only gospel acceptable to free men. It is a great and noble task but I am confident my people will prove equal to it—with God’s help!”

Only then the President came back to the actual, indeed the urgent, situation. Fortunately, for I had no instructions and would have been unable to answer them, he put to me no questions as to the American view of the political situation, but he admitted that things were not moving so smoothly in his reconstructed country as he had hoped. “And as they will,” he added confidently, “when the war fever subsides and our people see clearly the important peacetime tasks with which we are all confronted.” On one point the President was evidently a little anxious. Undoubtedly the rumor had reached him, as it had come to us, that a certain Czech general, dissatisfied with the proposed territorial adjustments, was preparing to “pronounce” against the new government in true Latin-American fashion. Masaryk was evidently aware that his sober, intelligent policy was not universally popular and that some of the hotheads were decidedly restive.

“When I saw Colonel House in Paris,” he said, “I told him that the German fringe and the scattered German settlements along the northern and western border of historic Bohemia present a difficult problem. What is to be done with them? We cannot expel them as did the Berlin Government the unwelcome Poles in the provinces which at various times, but always by ruthless force of arms, they had annexed. If we tell them to go with their Germanic brethren and take with them their poor farms, we abandon our only defensible frontier, and it is exceedingly doubtful that such a solution would be acceptable even to them. Most of these people fled to the Sudeten hills to escape German control and they have long and unhappy memories of why they sought refuge with us.

“And, unhappily, there is another aspect of the problem that should not be overlooked. Surely it will have to be met. These German settlers, although they came as refugees, for nearly three hundred years now have lorded it over their Czech neighbors. They have for political and racial reasons always been favored and indeed at times pampered by the Hapsburgs. Some of our people think and unfortunately how very human is the thought—that with the change in the fortunes of war their day has come and they may wish to profit by it. It has been suggested (the motive is obvious) that by joining up with Austria the best solution is found or at least an escape is presented to the German communities, to avoid their more pressing problems. Those who think so take, I fear, a superficial view of the situation. The_; war that was not of their choosing has left the Sudeten people greatly impoverished and their economic condition would be worsened by being annexed to the Austrian poorhouse. To cite but one reason which is ignored by those favoring annexation to the Reich. Within the borders of the Austrian Empire, at least before war came, these people have prospered through their little cottage industries. Now they fear, and not without reason, that once they become a part of the great German industrial machine their means of livelihood would be wiped out. Please tell Colonel House about my hopes and also my fears. They will not be surprising to him. He knew better than I did when we talked last fall that the peace would develop problems but little less difficult than those that beset us during the war.”

Acting on a sudden impulse, Masaryk began to fumble among the papers which littered his desk.

“I want to read to you,” he said, “the draft of the message which I sent to your great President on New Year’s Day (January 1919). With characteristic modesty, the President did not publish it.”

Then he went on and read it.

“On this great day, when the darkness that has for so long hung over us yields to the light of liberty, I salute you, Mr. President, in my name and in the name of our redeemed Czechoslovak State.

Apparently he was translating it from his native tongue and it came rather slowly.

“Our nation, Mr. President, will never forget that you by your support of the cause of liberty and justice brought about the downfall of that immoral combination of states formerly known as Austria-Hungary. Much less can we forget that you by your firm decision in favor of our rights, at a most critical moment, made possible the revolution that has brought about our national independence. We salute in you the great exponent of the political ideals of the noble American Republic. Those ideals represent the creed, the hope, and the aspirations of my people. The Czechoslovak Republic stands today ready to defend them against a world in arms.”

Then the President darted off on another tangent and began to talk politics, indeed, world politics:

“The era of imperialism has closed,” he said. “The self-seeking, ruthless plans of the Germans, of the Russians, and of their imitators, the Austro-Hungarians, have failed, as did those of Napoleon. The little states are free. The war task is accomplished, but a still greater task lies before us: it is to reorganize not only eastern Europe, but the world as a whole. As I see it, we are on the threshold of a new era in which the human race feels its unity. My people are determined to contribute all that is in their power to the realization of this sublime task.”

I told President Masaryk that Colonel House, and also the president of the Conference, M. Clemenceau, had received a memorandum from the German minorities in Bohemia setting forth their hopes, their fears, and their claims. Apparently Masaryk was not entirely satisfied with what he had already said upon this, so he returned to the subject: “The territory which the Sudeten Germans occupy belongs to us and with us it shall remain. We created this state and it is we who have restored it, with the help of world democracy, to its present independent status. I should be glad indeed if the German minorities would collaborate with us; that would be, I think, a wiser policy than the one they are called upon to follow by a few of their leaders whom I consider unworthy of their confidence. Unhappily, these men have adopted a Pan-German program and seek to array their misguided followers against us. Let them remember that it is we who built this state. They came to us as emigrants and as colonists; their juridical status should be as clear to them as it is to us. They should also remember the occasion when we stood together and together how we were deceived; they should remember that with us in 1861 they demanded of the Emperor in Vienna that he come to Prague to be crowned King of a united Bohemia. I trust they will stand with us now when a nobler future beckons us both.

“I hope and pray that an accord will be reached; but I do not close my eyes to the difficulties that have to be surmounted. It will not be easy to forget that our German minorities, as well as the Germans of Austria, approved the atrocities of the Hapsburg soldiery; that they did not protest at our treatment; indeed that in many, many instances they participated in the crimes of the war years. I recall these unhappy memories not in a vindictive spirit; we shall accept their participation in building our new independent state, but they must not be surprised if in the light of our bitter experiences we act prudently and without haste. I can assure them that their fate is in their own hands and that as a law-abiding minority they shall enjoy equality of citizenship and full national rights.

“As to the Germans of the new Reich on the north, that is a different matter. Our relations with them must be determined by the attitude they assume—ours will be correct. Of course we cherish the hope that the total defeat of Prussian militarism will result in the redemption of an emancipated German people. We trust that they will abandon their dreams of expansion to the east and of political supremacy over their neighbors. If their activities concentrate on the development of their resources, our relations with them might become cordial. I trust so.”

* * *

The situation that caused Masaryk to leave Paris so hurriedly last December evidently still exists and causes anxiety to neutral observers as well as to the new government so recently and so suddenly installed. It cannot be said that today the Czechs are one happy family! The Bolshevik propaganda is said to be spreading and certainly in the Kladno districts it is going very strong. At least three orators, who may or may not be emissaries of Moscow, are touring the country; namely, Slivine, Vorel, and Zapotecsky, and where necessary their meetings are protected by the police. Their talking points, as reported to me, are, first, that the peasants and the industrial workers are even worse off than they were under the Austrian regime. Second, that the Entente is sending beribboned generals to organize an army but does not send much food to feed the starving people. Third, that the millionaire exploiters are still in control and that consequently the famous Revolution of October 28th stands revealed as a swindle. They exhort the people to gather their strength for a second revolution, one that will bring the warmth of the Bolshevik sun to the shivering, starving people of Bohemia. Those near the President say that he does not attach any importance to these radical orators. “I shall continue to handle the situation in the American way,” is his reported comment. I hope the sequel will justify this attitude, but there are many here who disapprove of it.

* * *

Later I had a long talk with little Caesar,³ a glorified office boy in the sub rosa Czech Legation in Washington during the war, before recognition came, and now one of Masaryk’s secretaries. Escorted by a mounted guard, Caesar took me for a drive through the beautiful capital. How different it is from the mourning city I last saw in the dreary days of March 1915, when the hard-fisted Magyar troops were in control and the jails were crowded with political prisoners, men and women. The town was bathed in a white mist through which now and again the golden spires of the many churches emerged in radiant glory. As we passed through the Square of Good King Wenceslaus and over the Charles Bridge, many groups drew to the curb and cheered us. “I have let it be known,” explained Caesar, “that you were a friend in the dark days.” Pledging me to secrecy (but of course I have no secrets from my diary), Caesar told me it had been the wish of Masaryk to rechristen the town of Pressburg, redeemed from the Hungarians, as Wilson City, and he had only desisted upon receiving an intimation from the President that he preferred the old Slovak name of Bratislava should be restored.

Little Caesar was amused at the only request I made of him on our sight-seeing tour, but upon this I was insistent. As in all my previous visits to Prague, I now wanted to see again the strange little cell-like dwellings in which the medieval kings of Bohemia lodged the alchemists and the other magicians of their dark but hopeful days. These little hovels lean against and indeed form an humble part of the Hradcany Palace. Here these wise men were fed and clothed and passed their time in exploring the earth and searching the heavens alike for the alkahest, the universal solvent, that would enable them and their royal patron to treat refractory ores, even to convert common clay and shining pebbles into refined gold. It seemed to me that this was a job almost topical, and that it should appeal to the rulers and the statesmen of this disastrous day who are called upon to invigorate depreciated currencies and restore to life the industries which have been shattered in the whirlwind of war. Some of these latter-day magicians are gathered together even now in Paris and are loudly proclaiming their panaceas. Temporarily, at least, they are better housed and better fed than their predecessors of medieval Prague, but I fear the long-sought alkahest still eludes their eager grasp!

In one of our halts Caesar produced his memorandum also. He wanted me to know that Masaryk in his inaugural address had used the words that Lincoln had spoken on the tragic battlefield.

“This nation,” he said, “under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

Two hours later we were on our way back to Vienna. The warm, almost hot sun had now burnt away the concealing mists and we had an excellent view of the scenes of farm activity through which we were passing. The people were at work, at hard work, men, women, and children; horses, cows, and dogs, harnessed and coupled together, were plowing and harrowing the long-neglected fields.

Before we reached Vienna, Smuts sent for me. He wished to set me straight as to the various versions of his talk with Kun which have appeared in the papers. “Unfortunately,” he explained, “his first answer to my inquiries as to the course he meant to pursue was so offensive to our allies, the Roumanians, that I declined to receive it. My information is that the little man is at the end of his tether and my purpose was to facilitate his departure which cannot be long delayed. I came here with the impression that we have neglected the many and grave problems resulting from the collapse of the Dual Monarchy. As a result of my personal survey this impression has deepened into a strong conviction. In my talk with him it was clear that Masaryk also was of this opinion; he insisted that there should be no further delay in tackling problems too long neglected.”

“Hearing nothing from Paris,” Masaryk admitted, “I have been forced into entering into tentative negotiations as to our boundaries with the Reich through a German agent who is now in Prague.” After a moment’s reflection, Smuts went on to say that further delay was unwise and would prove costly. “It is absolutely necessary for the Supreme War Council to call a subconference to deal with the problems which we have inherited upon the demise of Austria. Where should it be convened? That also is quite a problem. If it is summoned to meet in any of the capitals of the Succession States that would not fail to provoke bickerings among the statesmen of the brand-new political creations. When I return to Paris I shall insist upon such a conference being called, and in my judgment it should sit in Paris.” We pulled into Vienna late in the afternoon. I separated from the mission and went to the hotel to enjoy a rest, of which I was in great need. In the morning I learned that Smuts had been called back to Paris; the tour to Belgrade and Bucharest had been abandoned. Now he was to delve into the baffling Irish problem. Perhaps Dublin was to be his next port of call and of course I immediately advised Paris of this sudden and radical change of plan.

When, on the following day, my instructions came, detaching me from the mission and instructing me to continue certain researches as a “lone wolf,” I sought out General Smuts, but as I did not find him I saw no reasons why I should not tell the other members of the mission I met with that I was not returning to Paris with the general that evening. According to Thomson, this step provoked severe criticism from at least one of my colleagues, little Captain L’Hopital, one of Foch’s socially ornamental aides, in distinction to his fighting aides, who represented France on the mission, and who burst out with, “I have heard of shirt-sleeve diplomacy as practiced across the Atlantic and now I see it. This is very discourteous to our general. The American commandant should return to Paris with General Smuts and then when released act according to his instructions.”

To keep the record clear, I went after Smuts again, found him this time at the English Mission, and explained the point of etiquette that had been raised. He roared with laughter. “I approve of your course. I suppose I m something of a shirt-sleeve diplomat myself. I think it would be absurd for you to go to Paris with me and then return.” Then he said something about L’Hopital which I shall not repeat; it would not further cement the entente cordiale. “I give you my blessing and my thanks but on one condition. I, too, wish I could remain down here longer. We are just beginning to find things out, but the P.M. has wired me he wants me to meddle in the Irish business and after all that is nearer home. The condition I make on releasing you is that when you return to Paris you call on me and tell me what you have found out.”