Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk

“ The war and its significance have knitted mankind closer together; humanity is to-day an organised unit, internationalism is much more intimate than it ever was; it has been created and renewed by this war and at the same time democratic views of society are everywhere strengthened—the fall of Tzarism is but one of the unexpected results of the war.
The unified organisation of all the nations of the world, of all humanity is the beginning of a new era, an era in which nations and all mankind will consciously control their development. ”

“ Let me say with all possible emphasis that our new state, that republic and democracy needs not only an administrative machine and an army, but also a firm moral foundation. Without individuals with morality and character, without healthy families, without faithful friendship, without loyalty to various social organizations of which we are members, without a sound basis in all we do, there can be no strong republic. Democracy without homage to moral authority—authority of principles and chosen persons—is impossible. ”

“ The best known Czech daily, the Národní Listy, speaks of Masaryk in the same tone: “The Czechoslovak people upon the occasion of the glorious return of the President manifested nobly their gratitude, respect and love; today upon his birthday they remember him in their hearts with the same feeling. In his message he indicated the ways which we should follow. If we govern ourselves by his councils, we shall reach the goal that he set for us. After the hard days which have been his lot in the past may he live to see his dreams realized and may happiness and peace shine long over his head.” ”

“ We have always demanded, and still demand, to form a moral ideal federation, each member of which would develop freely its own genius for the benefit of civilisation as a whole. And for that purpose we claim liberty and political independence. That is why we seek the aid of Russia, as the greatest and most powerful Slav nation. But to-day we also hope to find support from the Allies. The small Slav nations are now passing through a very grave crisis, a crisis which justifies our determination to rely not only on the Russians, but also on the French and the English. ”

“ To-day we feel that the warm blood of nations, shed in torrents all over Europe, compels all thinking men to face the decisive question: who is guilty of so hideous a crime as the present war? Like all its predecessors, this war is a question of conscience; but in it, as in them, we see the churches each following its own country. They do not lead—they are led. Foolish atheists are never tired of pointing to the fact that one and the same church is praying in Germany for a German, in France for a French victory ”

“ The tyranny exercised over literature and over academic freedoms was all the more intolerable in Russia, because in these respects liberty had already for the most part been secured elsewhere in Europe, and because such liberty could not be kept out of Russia, unless the tsarist censorship should attempt to gag the whole of Europe. None the less the impossible was attempted. Forcibly and brutally Russian absolutism stamped on every movement towards freedom. Each revolutionary outrage had to be atoned for by the sacrifice of countless victims on the scaffold, in fortresses, and in Siberia. ”

“ Such a life would be grey, monotonous, devoid of strong impressions, lacking great joys and great sorrows, a vegetative life of mediocrity, life in a rotting swamp. "Be strong!" cries Kropotkin to his neighbour, and he demands that life shall be lived to the full; we must strive to give more than we receive, to produce more that is great, beautiful, and powerful. "To live means to spread one's energies abroad; to live means to strive for the attainment of perfect freedom; mere justice, mere equality would be the death of society. ”

“ What makes a nation great? What is the problem of a small nation and how does such a problem come to exist?
The very notion of greatness and smallness is relative and correlative; the more so, if the number of the population, or the extent of the territory of a state or a nation is taken as the principle of the classification.
The most numerous population is in Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary, and the Russians and Germans are in this sense the greatest nations; the English, French, Italians and Spaniards (we are not considering the nations outside Europe) are smaller. ”

“ While I would not be satisfied merely with the thought that we are better off than some of our neighbors, I must admit that conditions are growing better. But in any case it will not do to look for moral help and salvation only from the state, and that means concretely from the bureaucracy. On the one hand there are constant complaints against the bureaucracy, on the other hand we turn over to it our fields and meadows, our shops and factories and in the end we would turn over to it our very souls, the training of our character. ”

“ He thinks the blind impulse of aggression is by nature checked by an equally blind impulse of resistance to aggression, but there is also a moral conviction deepened by experience and the study of human nature, that man must resist aggression; that defence and even a war if defensive is legitimate and not immoral.
War is not the greatest evil, though it is an evil. The open struggle of the battlefield is not the greatest evil; worse is that chronic condition of society which makes possible the violence of the stronger to the weaker; worse than war are insincerity and falsehood ”

“ Prussia herself is an instance of such absorption, but France, Italy, England also—in a word, all big states were formed out of small ones. History then proves that the law of political development makes the formation of great states and nations unavoidable. Small nations and states, under the most favourable circumstances, have only a temporary duration, historical development favours and promotes the growth of big nations and states; Germany is big, bigger than the rest, with one exception, which is more apparent than real; therefore her legitimate aim is World-Policy, World-Power! ”

“ For the anarchists the problem of problems is this. Can the existing unjust social order, established and maintained by force, be forcibly swept away, so that the new order, in which force will be unknown, may take its place? Will the physical-force anarchist, the forcible expropriator, of to-day, be the peaceful brother of to-morrow? Anarchism is opposed on principle to the use of force; is it then permissible for the anarchist to slay and to expropriate; can Beelzebub cast out devils? The philosophic theorists of anarchism do their utmost to establish the right to kill. ”

“ History and the Philosophy of History became the favourite sciences, and still hold their ground to this day. And by a strange destiny it was the German followers of the great philosopher of Universal Harmony who sought to justify the Discord of War. Death on the battlefield has been glorified by them, and the primacy of the German nation and its world-power has been revealed as the destiny for which the nations were waiting. Pangermanism is indeed nothing else than an endeavour to erect a system of the teleography of war and of human death. ”

“ Hence the heroes of freedom and the leading revolutionaries were not the heirs of the revolution, and its fruits were harvested by the bourgeoisie. But the bourgeoisie contented itself with half-measures in religion and politics, with Protestantism and liberalism. Liberalism is the religion of the bourgeois, of the trader, of the man without individuality, of the intermediator between the possessor and the non-possessor. An instrument, a means to an end—such is the bourgeois. ”

“ No honest man can avoid thinking about the War; science, according to a French thinker who was the living antithesis to militarism and even to politics, has to foresee, to know beforehand, to antipate the future. The man of science does not give up his patriotism; but that patriotism cannot be blind or dumb; it must proclaim what he has found to be the truth. The highest aim of science is to understand the aims of life and to find the right means of realizing these aims. ”

“ Militarism is the real evil which people have in mind, when they talk of the evils of war. Militarism is the mathematics of aggressiveness, the fighting spirit turned into a bureaucratic system—all state activities guided by military considerations, the officer becoming the standard of the citizen and of the world in general. Prussian militarism is universally recognised as the pattern and source of this social evil; the Prussian militarists themselves point out correctly that all life in Germany is militarized. ”

“ From God and chaos, Solov'ev evolves the world and its history, evolves them as do all mythagogues, notionally and in their reality.
The sophia strives against chaos; this struggle presupposes a soul, the world-soul, the materia prima, the potential mother of the created world. The creation of the world proceeds from the father; the logos brings forth the higher world of ideas, but these ideas are mere contemplative and impassive beings; from the holy ghost originate the pure spirits or angels, which have feeling and will, and possess a higher order of freedom than man. ”