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The Czechoslovak people greeted the hour of their liberation with such enthusiasm and such hopes that those familiar with collective psychology felt some concern for the moment when the nation would resume its normal life. And, as a matter of fact, the enthusiasm, the unbounded hopes, the great faith that a new life, a new world, and a semi-paradise were arising gradually began to change into a feeling of disappointment among many of our people when normal life and the current political struggles of parties and persons were resumed. Each individual had formed his own idea of what liberty would be like, and had expected from it a fulfilment of his own personal wishes, and the same applies to the majority of the political parties.
There was an impressiveness about this belief even if it was somewhat naïve and superficial. But the hardships of the war were at an end, and this fact alone worked upon the imagination of those who had suffered so much that it seemed to them as if they were about to enter paradise. And the idea of national liberty, a liberty the concrete effects of which in daily life were realized by few, manifested itself to the various classes, parties, and individuals first and foremost in its most ideal form.
The humdrum routine of daily life, however, with its clash of interests and opinions, with its conflicts of classes, parties, and persons, then had to be faced, and almost immediately people forgot those memorable days of the struggle for liberty, when adversaries embraced one another, when men’s chief thought was of their common labour for the national cause, when enthusiastic tribute was rendered to the unselfishness and arduous perseverance of those who had fulfilled their duty at the darkest hour. The daily struggle of interests and aspirations brought with it a sense of disillusionment in various quarters, which was all the more unjustified according as it sought to burden others with the responsibility.
The events of the last twelve years have nevertheless strengthened my optimism—an optimism based upon the realities of life, prompted by imagination, grappling with hardships and injustices, and leading the spirit to a labour permeated with the desire for ideals; in short, a firm, active, and uncompromising optimism.
