CHAPTER VIII
GERMANY AND THE WORLD REVOLUTION
(From Washington to Prague. Nov. 20—Dec. 20, 1918)
The Slavs themselves will not seek this fight. Should it come, the fortune of war may waver for a while; but I am sure that, at last, the Germans will be crushed by preponderant foes in East and West. And the hour will be at hand for them to curse even the memory of the five-milliard genius[1] whom they extol—when those five milliards have to be paid back with usury.—Francis Palacký, “Memoranda.” Epilogue to the year 1874.
AT sea again, and no German submarines to fear! A last chance to rest and reflect—if I were not President! Not only on land but at sea I felt at every turn that my personal freedom and private life were gone. Now I was a public, official personage, always and everywhere official. Thus it had to be, since my fellow-citizens, and foreigners too, demanded it; and even on board ship the secret police of Governments kept watch over the new-born Head of a State.
By a happy chance I sailed on my wife’s birthday. My daughter Olga and I kept it quietly, amid roses as ever, and memories—no, not memories, for the thoughts and feelings of two souls which, despite distance, cleave to each other, are something more than a memory.
The sea, the sea! Rest for nerves and brain. Nought but sea and sky by day and night. The throb of the engines and propellers goes unheeded. In my exile I had lost the habit of regular sleep. I doubt, indeed, whether I slept well for five consecutive nights during the whole four years. My brain was ever working, like a watch, considering, comparing, reckoning, estimating, judging what the next day would bring forth on the battlefields or among Governments, a constant measuring of distances and of deviations from the goal. The sea lulls. Even the life on board is soothing. I went over the “Carmania” and the officers explained to me the progress in the art of navigation. I thought of my first voyage from France to America forty years before and of the old-fashioned steamers of the time. Then I had travelled as an unknown man with no position, yet full of hope and enterprise. Now I was returning from the same New York, perhaps on the self-
