return to Bohemia within the next few days.” The telegram had been sent just before Masaryk’s departure from Rome and we had received it rather late.(6) In conjunction with former reports which had arrived from Vienna we, together with Machar and later also with our friends in Prague, inferred from the telegram that matters were really serious. I therefore immediately acted as had been agreed. I sent a code telegram to Geneva announcing that the situation was very dangerous and that it was impossible for him to return. Fearing, however, that something might happen to the telegram, and being uncertain whether Lavička had already reached Masaryk with our message, I was alarmed at the thought that Professor Masaryk might cross the frontier and be arrested. I therefore decided at the last moment that at all costs I myself would cross the frontier to warn him personally and induce him to remain in Switzerland.
I had a passport dating from August 1914. In the meanwhile, however, passport regulations had become more stringent and my passport was no longer valid because it contained no photograph. Moreover, I had been called up for the second levy and therefore had no military permission for a journey abroad. For these reasons, on the day of my return from Vienna, I obtained an identity book through an old school friend who was at the Vinohrady police headquarters. With this and my old passport I started off for Zurich via Vienna. After a double inspection in Tyrol and numerous difficulties on the frontiers, I reached Buchs just at the time when Professor Masaryk, in accordance with the pre-arranged plan, was to have left Geneva.
10
We met at Zurich at the beginning of 1915 at the Hôtel Victoria. Professor Masaryk had been accompanied there by Vsevolod Svatkovsky, a Russian journalist, who afterwards rendered valuable services to our cause in the Government circles at Petrograd and in diplomatic Russian circles in Western Europe. Before the war he had spent a long time as a journalist in Vienna. He knew Professor Masaryk, Dr. Kramář,[1] and other
- ↑ Dr. Karel Kramář (b. 1860), a prominent Czech politician, who, before the war, represented the Young Czech Party in the Reichsrat at Vienna. During the war he was sentenced to death by Austria, but was afterwards amnestied. He was the first Czechoslovak Prime Minister, and is now the leader of the National Democratic Party.
