MY WAR MEMOIRS
I
MY PREPARATIONS FOR WAR AND REVOLUTION
(a) My Political Preparations
1
The war surprised me, in one sense, and in another it did not. I had gone to Paris in 1905 at the age of twenty-one and had spent nearly a year there. Then I had stayed for several months in London and had returned to Paris for another year. In October 1907 I had gone for a year to the University of Berlin and devoted myself to a study of social conditions in Germany. Having returned to France (Paris and Dijon) for my law examinations, and having completed my studies there, I went back to Prague in September 1908.
I had gone abroad to study modern languages and prepare myself for a university professorship in this subject. My fondness for political matters, my bent for the study of social problems, and also material considerations, had caused me to turn to journalism, and from that to the study of law, political science, and sociology. I had occupied myself closely with philosophy while still at Prague in my first university year. As a young student who had been through hardships, who had had a difficult time during his studies, and who had been repelled by the political and social conditions at home, I was soon impressed by everything I saw in France and in Paris. I was greatly moved by the whole of the French and Parisian revolutionary tradition; I was carried away by the revolutionary and radical phraseology of the French Socialists, syndicalists, and other Left Wing parties; I was absorbed by the study of extremist movements, revolutionary syndicalism, French Socialism, anti-militarism, and anarchism, the French and Russian Revolutions with all their offshoots.
The endeavour to learn as much as I could abroad, and to acquire sufficient knowledge so that I could return home fully
