and socialistic thought and the practical movement of non-doctrinaire French Socialism.
England moved me profoundly by its impressive inner strength, which could be felt on all sides, by its harmony and order, by its development towards political and constitutional liberty, by its economic advance, by its endeavour in its national culture to form a harmonious human individuality, and by the strength of religious feeling and conscious religious life which even the average Englishman reveals. This practical experience of religious matters in England then led me to the study of philosophy and theory of knowledge, and also to an anti-positivist change of views on religion.
2
I returned from abroad strengthened in my original opposition to our political and social conditions. In comparison with England and France, and with Western Europe in general, Austria-Hungary, disorganized by its welter of nationalities, struck me as the prototype of a reactionary, aristocratic-bureaucratic State, resembling in many respects the reactionary, militaristic, and bureaucratic character of Germany, but without its administrative and financial order, without its inner strength and influence. I had felt repelled by Germany, but the Habsburg Empire repelled me more. The traditional anti-Austrian training of a Czech had caused all these feelings to take systematic shape from my youth onwards; I was instinctively a social and national malcontent when I left home. After some time, in 1907 and 1908, believing almost fanatically in the strength and influence of democratic principles, I expected that a change and a regeneration would result from universal suffrage in Austria. Nevertheless, I returned a convinced radical and revolutionary, even though my early training and the hardships of life had taught me at home before the war to suppress passions and sentiments, to master them by means of the intellect and to preserve a political calm and balance.
The long study of Socialism and social problems at home and abroad had strengthened the conviction in me that we were approaching a period when several fundamental problems concerning the structure of our society would be basically solved. The political struggle within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the fight for universal suffrage, the Bosnian annexa-
