come the first period of our difficulties, but he emphasized that we were now faced by the second period, involving the work of elaborating the State at home, and in many respects this would be far more difficult. And when I reminded him of the authority and popularity which he enjoyed, and which would make everything possible, he only made a deprecatory gesture with his hand and remarked: “We shall see.”
He also pointed out what I ought to do, and how I should prepare for my return, adding his ideas of what my political future was to be. To this I said nothing: the matter was still new to me, and I had not given any thought to my political future. I had always merely fulfilled my duty, and work which creates, work which challenges, has always been my element. During this time in Paris the President often looked tired and nearly always preoccupied. A sentence has remained fixed in my mind which he uttered on several occasions, and which he repeated to the soldiers at Darney: “We have reached the top, but it is easier to reach the top than to stay there.” I could see why he was anxious, and the reports which we had in Paris at that time about the early difficulties of the Republic did not relieve his anxiety.
On the evening of December 14th, accompanied by M. Clement-Simon, the first French Minister in Prague, President Masaryk left Paris for Prague via Italy. At Padua he stopped to visit the King of Italy and our Italian troops, and then, accompanied by General Piccione, the new commander of our legionaries in Italy, he resumed his journey to Prague, where he arrived on December 21, 1918, almost by the same route as the one by which, four years earlier, on December 18, 1914, he had left Prague on his adventurous pilgrimage around the world. The nation welcomed him with enthusiasm and emotion, with unbounded gratitude and hope. He was referred to as the people’s liberator, and rightly so, for his life’s work marks him out as the last of our great revivalists. He brilliantly completed the task of national revival in the spirit of Komenský, Palacký, and Havlíček.
President Masaryk took up his quarters in the castle at Prague in the same serious mood which he had shown on his arrival in Paris. This can be understood only by those who consider the great scope of his undertakings during the war, and the responsibility both as regards present and future which devolved upon him at that juncture.
