as a member of the Austrian Reichsrat and of the Bohemian Diet (1891–98) gave me pleasure but did not satisfy me. I was oppressed by the partisanship, the narrowness, the sectarian spirit of the small parties and groups; and, above all, I felt the need of a better political education and of getting others to work with me. I was still immature. In Parliament I was concerned not only with party politics but with culture, that is to say, politics in a broader sense, unpolitical politics, and with journalistic work. After my first brief experience of Parliament I gave myself up therefore to the study of our national rebirth, of Dobrovský,[1] Kollár, Palacký, Havlíček and their contemporaries. From them I learned how our people could evolve, and what our aim and our essential task in future would be.
The Czech question I always conceived as a world-problem. Therefore I constantly compared our history with that of Austria as a whole and of Europe. The object of all my journalistic writing and of my books was, so to speak, to fit our people into the structure of world-history and world-politics. Since we lived under the sign of Austria, Europe knew little of us. Hence my journeys throughout Europe and America and my eagerness to study the chief civilized countries and their history, philosophy and literature. I travelled in Austria, Germany, America, England, Russia, the Balkans and Italy. To France I did not go because I had learned her language and followed the course of her culture since my schooldays. The value of this experience of the world proved itself during the war, as did my knowledge of languages.
In the second period of my membership of Parliament, from 1907 onwards, I made Austria and the whole Austrian structure the subject of careful investigation. In Vienna and elsewhere I collected information upon the Emperor, the Court and the Hapsburg family, observing very keenly the principal Archdukes, like Francis Ferdinand and Frederick. During the sittings of the Reichsrat, which I did not fail to attend, I often read political works and memoirs; and, as a member, I made myself familiar with the mechanism of the State and of public administration. Nor did I forget the army. When people began to talk of General Conrad von Hötzendorf, I
