Robert Joseph Kerner

“ These nations will see in France a leader as long as France does not desert the ideals which actuate them.
It has not been my purpose here to treat in detail the diplomacy of the moment in Central Europe, but rather to point out the ideals which actuate two powerful statesmen in that part of the world—ideals, which, it might be said, move in fact the entire nation. Much might be argued both good and bad about the bases on which these ideals must operate—I mean the treaties of St. Germain with Austria and Trianon with Hungary, and of Neuilly with Bulgaria and Riga with Russia. ”

“ He did not want to Slavicize Austria and Austrianize the Czechs; he wanted each nation to retain its own nationality. If he shifted at all, he shifted to the left and though he started out with his own party insignificant in numbers, he soon influenced the spirit and ideals of all the parties. He was their political Tolstoi. And when the war broke out he was not only the recognized leader of a party, but he had the moral authority to lead the nation. His achievements during the World War made him the "little father" of his nation. ”

“ Nobody has better expressed their position than Beneš when he said.
To repeat the history of Old Austria, with its oppressed and disgruntled nations and classes, is for us to abdicate our great opportunity. We shall be done for, if we do it. We must find a new way. [33]
And translating Masaryk’s philosophy into practical advice, we find him telling his Parliament:
The only way to solve the problem of Bolshevism is to create an atmosphere of peace and to devote ourselves to pacific efforts, to economic and social reform. ”

“ It is evident from their utterances and their publications, [31] that President Masaryk and Dr. Beneš hope to assist in the construction of a New Europe in at least two ways.
The first of these is to found in Czechoslovakia a democracy in which the people will be "de-Austrianized and re-educated," in which individuals and classes and nations may freely realize themselves economically and socially, as well as politically, and in which these ends are to be obtained by methods of peace, education, patient social and economic reform, and by sacrifices by both capitalists and working men. ”

“ All Austria is a bundle of small nations. This problem of the little nations is really only the political and international phase of the Social Question. We, Czechs, know well what a serious Social Question it is, if one nation is exploited by an another; political exploitation means cheap labor to the laboring classes. I emphasize this social significance of nationalism. [14]
With a healthy family and a healthy nation, as a satisfied individual in the great family of nations, he believed he had the lever of Archimedes to lift up humanity. ”

“ He foresaw that the greatest danger from without to Austria was Pan-Germanism which was pleased to see her become embroiled further and further in quarrels among the Balkan nations whose peaceful existence and relationship with Austria-Hungary he wished to see safeguarded.
In internal politics, he aspired to be the statesman who would put into practice the scientific results of the social sciences. He was more than a social philosopher. He was a statesman without portfolio. Born a commoner, he never lost his contact with the common man. ”

“ If leaders who have a realizable vision and who are resolved to tread the path of sound social reform are found, the task will be accomplished. But can they be found? And having been found, will they have an opportunity to put their policies into practice?
It is the object of this article to examine in what way Thomas G. Masaryk, President of the Czechoslovak Republic, and Edward Beneš, Minister of Foreign Affairs, are qualified to be considered among the new leaders of a New Europe. They hold the fate of Czechoslovakia in their hands. ”

“ He became filled with the idea that his own nation must learn from the West and not from the East; that like the West it must depend on realism—it must know how to do things, it must learn to observe, to analyze, to contemplate, sanely. It must not remain romantic as the other Slavs. [21]
After receiving his degree in law at Dijon in 1908, Edward Beneš returned to Prague, where the next year he took the degree of doctor of philosophy. He became thereafter a professor of political economy in the Prague Czechoslovak Academy of Business (about the equivalent of a junior college) . ”

“ If a socialist at all, he was not a Marxist. His strong religious and moral convictions, his great appreciation of spiritual values, his appraisal of scientific research, led him to seek progress by social reform based on the social sciences. ”

“ Not only has a democracy been established which is beginning to answer to these ideals, but it is making progress in reforms and is a good way on the road to solidification. And in foreign policy, [36] Beneš' success in constructing the Little Entente has been the beginning of a movement which will have as its object the inclusion not only of the original states, Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, and Romania, but Poland, Bulgaria, Greece and perhaps even the Baltic countries and the Ukraine. ”

“ Whether as individuals, or classes, or nations absolute equality was perhaps unattainable. But equal opportunity, abolition of exploitation of one kind or another, respect of the one for the other as human beings, all these he believed could be obtained. ”

“ Social justice, in his opinion, could come only by parallel reforms of morals and ideals. Economic reforms alone would not suffice. The Social Question [13] concerned not the laboring class alone, but all classes, and they would have to experience a regeneration if it were to be solved. ”

“ If, then, I have correctly analyzed the ideals and motives of Masaryk and Beneš, the central question which this study has propounded should, it seems, be answered in the affirmative. They are qualified by ideals, by education, and by experience to rank among those to whom the reconstruction of Old Europe may be entrusted. ”

“ It was the task of such men as Masaryk, Beneš and Štefaník, the noted Slovak astronomer, from among the Czechoslovaks, and Pašić and Trumbić from among the Jugoslavs, with the assistance among others of Steed, later editor of the London Times, Seton-Watson, later editor of the New Europe, and Tardieu and Berthelot, later right-hand men of Clemenceau, to convince the Entente that in the guilt for bringing on the war Austria-Hungary's share was not at all a modest one—a fact now amply confirmed by the official German and Austrian revelations in 1919. ”

“ What has already been achieved stands solidly enough to break the forces of reaction led by Habsburg or Hohenzollern, German or Magyar, or the forces of extreme radicalism of the Bolsheviks, if the statesmen who guide these young nations are aware of what the new order signifies. ”

“ His philosophy he founded on Hume, Mill, Spencer, and particularly Comte. In his early years he rejected Kant and Kantism and the whole German school of philosophy. He evolved a system of looking at life from a deeply religious and moral (almost puritanical) point of view. [4] Influenced by these ideas he read widely the history of his nation and believed to have found its philosophy in the religious ideals and motives of the Hussites and the Bohemian Brethren. ”

“ Continuing his post-graduate studies in the social sciences, especially in sociology, he became in 1912 instructor in sociology at the University of Prague and a year later likewise at the Prague Polytechnic. ”