not wish to repeat in detail what is already sufficiently well known about our spiritual, political, and social revolution from the Middle Ages until modern times. It is a process associated with the names of Hus, Žižka, the Taborites and Bohemian Brethren, Chelčický, Komenský, Havlíček, and Palacký, and in it our nation opposed Rome, the Habsburgs, and our conservative neighbours, the Germans.
It was not merely its immediate political interests which led our nation into the camp of Western Europe. On the contrary, the whole of its cultural development conditioned its political struggle and its political interests during the war. Between the two there was no conflict. That struggle in which our direct political interests and our spiritual and cultural development were entirely identical had been continued until the most recent times. Our revivalist endeavour and our development in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were actuated by the same characteristic ideas as our spiritual revolution, shaping, in addition, the new social structure of our nation, which was brought about by our struggle against the Austro-Hungarian surroundings in the nineteenth century. It was a struggle on the part of the small Czech farmer, town-dweller, and workman to assert himself, and to achieve independence in spirit and in material affairs. The whole of our bygone political and economic struggles had been waged against the same opponents as in the Great War.
Thus, there was no divergence between our spiritual development and our actual political interests during the war. Nor is there any divergence to-day. It is in this sense that I interpret also the philosophical factor in our history. This is not the proclamation of an aimless external Western drift in our cultural and political life. I am not, and never have been, in favour of a mechanical Westernizing as opposed to the Eastern tendency. I have been, and still am, in favour of a European and, in fact, a world-wide outlook as a means towards developing a strong Czech national spirit with world-wide standards. I shall not here attempt to formulate a theoretical policy which may perhaps be based upon noble ideas, but lacks any vital foundation, and does not take into account stark political realities. My purpose is to seek a synthesis of interests and ideas, of life and theory, with a due regard to the future, both in respect of potent ideas and material needs.
The Great War was a phenomenon of such enormous scope,
