“Maffia.” I used to visit Dr. Rašín regularly and often in the office of Národní Listy or at his home, and was in continuous daily touch with Dr. Šámal. I met Dr. Kramář at our meetings, and on two occasions I went to see him at his villa. Sometimes I used to accompany him from the meetings of the “Maffia,” and we then had interesting political discussions which plainly showed me what his political tendencies and aims would be in the future, and how great the divergencies were between his views and those of Professor Masaryk and myself.
After I had collected material every day from various sources I would arrange it at home, and then, with the help of Hájek, Werstadt, and my wife, dispatched it regularly to Switzerland. This was done in various ways, and it was done frequently, sometimes every day. Professor Masaryk began to send couriers to me from Switzerland as early as January 1915. The first of these, as I have already mentioned, was the student Lavička and another was L. V. Fáček, who, for the purposes of his revolutionary activity, assumed the name of Strejček. It was he who supplied me with a cipher code for correspondence and a number of addresses in Switzerland to which letters and couriers could be sent. He also devised a set of fictitious names for those concerned in the conspiracy. Thus Professor Masaryk was called Hradecký; Svatkovsky was Fürst; Dr. Scheiner—Dr. Soukal; Dr. Šámal—Trkal; Dr. Kramář—Holec; Dr. Rašín—Schiel, later Ritter; Hájek—Král. I was known as Spolný, and later, on my numerous journeys, I assumed the names of Bělský, Berger, Novotný, König, and Šícha. It was under the latter name that I managed to escape the frontier, and in Holland I was known as Leblanc.
I used to send news regularly by post to Switzerland to the addresses of our fellow-countrymen who had settled there, most of whom were artisans. Various devices were adopted for this purpose. I prepared postcards in the following way: I would open them out into two halves, each of the same size, and insert the cipher message between them. I then had them joined together by a bookbinder so that no trace of the operation was left and the suspicions of the censor were not aroused. At other times I employed the same device with books, which formed our most frequent means of communication. I inserted long reports into the covers or the backs of books and sometimes I made word for word copies of documents obtained by Machar and Kovanda at Vienna. These reports
