told how violently the man had been impressed by her theatrical presence, and how he had tried to persuade her to join his troupe. After this, I observed that we heard no more about the nymph in the optical shop. While Miloš was poring over the Národní Listy after dinner that night, I took Milada to ask for her prevarications. I could not help thinking she was rather brazen about it. She said she knew I had been shocked, but she really could not let Miloš go about fascinating all the sweeping ladies in the shops. He was, she added in a dreamy tone, altogether too good at that sort of thing.
Jičín in late evening was a city transformed. Bare spots and dingy corners disappeared. Streets and house-fronts were glorified by the mellow moonlight that came flooding down the walls. We wandered about after the squares and lanes had begun to be deserted, and stood for a long time admiring an old building against whose facade we made grotesque moon shadows. There was subdued conversation within doors, and the tinkle of a piano, and soon a woman’s voice singing. A cold spring breeze swept past us, carrying the fragrance of blossoming trees growing beyond the town limits. I do not know when it was, but at last we discovered that we were very sleepy and Miloš and I suffered Milada to guide us back to the inn.
Next day we went on to Horšice, which lay glistening and sun-drenched under the morning sky. Here we might have waited for a train, but a friend whom we acquired in the course of our ramblings urged us to make use of his horses and carriage, and so we were driven cross country to Králové Dvůr. From Králové Dvůr it was a short pilgrimage to Králové Hradec, and by this time we were such children of the road that we thought of buying tents or a house on wheels. But te voice of duty suddenly boomed into the ears of Miloš, from far Prague, and it came about that our excursion, like all good things, had an ending.
“Next time—” said Miloš, dreamily, while Milada, with a practical air, distributed to us hard-boiled eggs and black bread. “Next time we shall go south, eh? But where?”
“Next time, we shall do as we did this time,” said Milada. “We shall take the most convenient train. Take care, Miloš. You are scattering egg-shells about, and that is forbidden by the ministry of railroads.”
Of course, Miloš scoffed and said that this was not true, and while they were buzzing back and forth, I stared out of the open window and watched the cherry trees, shining and white, as if they had been dipped in a basin of soft snow.
MASARYK TO THE LEGIONARIES
President Masaryk recently, March 24th, paid a visit to the Jan Hus regiment of Czechoslovak legionaries from Siberia in their barracks at Prague, and on this occasion he delivered a remarkable address in which he touched upon a number of topical questions concerning both the legionaries themselves and the Czechoslovak Nation and State in general. In the course of his remarks he said:
“One out of your number has just been telling me that many of you, perhaps the majority, are disappointed with what you have found here. To be disappointed does not, in itself, decide as to whether your disappointment is justified. There is a great and natural difference between a soldier, between a gallant fighter in the field, and the formation of a Republican State. I can see that, and I am experiencing what it means to create a military administration, with all its legal machinery. These circumstances are quite different from those under which you have lived. There is a great difference between carrying out a political revolution and a social one. A political revolution which overthrows dynasties together with everything that depends upon them, is not such a difficult matter; it can be done overnight, and of this we have examples from history. But to carry through a social revolution is quite a different matter. It means a change of labor, a change of life, not merely the removal of certain ruling sections.
You say that you have been disappointed. I have been keeping watch for nearly eighteen months and have been exerting all my endeavors to try and get our nation clear of this Austrianism or whatever you like to call it. Be fair in your criticism; our state is only a little more than a year old. The English State is 1500 years old, a period of unshaken continuity. That is quite a different thing from a state which we are only just in the act of developing. Therefore I say that we must first have a few years behind us for these foundations, these original forms to be made stable. The same phenomena are to be observed everywhere else, even in the countries which were victorious and in the neutral countries. Everywhere you will find high prices and lack o materials, as well as moral degeneration. For the war was an anarchy and it produced the same effects everywhere. I say therefore that you must observe calmly and not indulge in wholesale accusations when you criticise.”
