purpose of visiting Dürich. At Geneva I settled the question of how we were to establish touch with the people at home, and on December 12th returned to Paris, where I set about organizing my personal work. I secured A. Kudrnáč, the chairman of the Social Democratic society "Rovnost" in Paris, as my secretary, and in my small room I set up my first provisional propaganda office, in which the chief item of its scanty equipment was a typewriter.
(c) Štefánik Joins the Revolutionary Movement. Masaryk at Paris in February 1916
24
On December 13, 1915, the day after my arrival from Geneva, I met Dr. Milan Štefánik[1] for the first time during the war. Two days later we again met to discuss plans for our further co-operation and the general directives of our political activity in France. I have given a detailed account of Štefánik elsewhere, notably in a speech which I made when laying a foundation-stone for his mausoleum. Here I will mention only the leading facts of our co-operation in accordance with the actual development of events. We became loyal and devoted friends and fellow-workers. There were many points upon which I did not agree with Štefánik, just as he, on his part, did not agree with me in everything, but this never hindered us in our common task. We had only one dispute, but that was not until the Peace Conference, and it was settled in a friendly manner.
Dr. Milan Štefánik, who was then a lieutenant in the flying corps, had returned to Paris from the Serbian front on December 6, 1915. He had called on Masaryk at an earlier date, as soon as he had heard of his residence abroad. He had then gone off on active service, after which nothing was heard of him until he now reappeared in Paris. My first meeting with him in Paris had been exactly ten years earlier, in 1905; now we saw each other again under new and strange conditions. Štefánik
- ↑ Milan Rastislav Štefánik (1880–1919), a Slovak who, at the outbreak of the war, was director of the observatory at Meudon. He entered the French Army as a volunteer, and served as an aviator. Later he became a member of the Czechoslovak National Council and Minister of War. He performed several military and political missions in Russia, the United States, and Siberia. His death was caused by an aeroplane accident which took place while he was on his way to Czechoslovakia.
