This was a demand which he repeated in all his messages and also verbally by the couriers. Later on we all emphasized it still more in all the messages we sent home in the years 1917 and 1918 when both at home and abroad an actual policy had been started.
(d) If Masaryk did not obtain the consent of the people at home, he would wait for some time, but in the end he would take action on his own account.
Finally, he asked me to let his friends know that at the end of April he was going to Paris and London. His purpose was to get into touch with Delcassé, Grey, and the Russian Ambassadors in Western Europe. He promised to send by courier a detailed account of the result of his journey.
16
These were the results of our discussion which I took back with me to Prague. I made a short stop at Zurich to meet Dr. Sychrava. He had left for Switzerland in September 1914 with the express intention of furthering our political aims, after conferring with his friends in radical Progressive circles. I knew Dr. Sychrava from my schooldays and we had met also at the beginning of the war. Through Svatkovsky and Masaryk we had begun to work together between Switzerland and Prague in January 1915.
The success of our work was due largely to Dr. Sychrava. It was he who for a long time managed our underground connection with Prague, and throughout the war he directed our foreign paper, the Československá Samostatnost. A considerable part of the work in connection with our general propaganda also devolved upon him, and he also helped to organize our movement. He was one of the first who, to his own detriment, threw himself into the struggle. Everything he did revealed his integrity, his devotion to our cause, his unselfishness and his modesty. He was one of those few people who were well acquainted with the conditions at home, with a sound political instinct and a well-balanced judgment. In short, he was one of those who realized that the decisive hour in our national history had come and were able at such a juncture to eschew all compromise throughout consistent in their policy.
It was with him that I arranged all the details relating to
