CHAPTER II
ROMA AETERNA
(December 1914—January 1915)
ON December 17, 1914, I left Prague for Italy by way of Vienna. I had decided to go first to Italy in order to find out what people were thinking in Rome and whether Italy would remain neutral. Then I meant to go to Switzerland. I was not without fear that the police in Prague, or on the Austro-Italian frontier, would put obstacles in my way, though luckily their hands were tied to some extent by my possession of a passport, made out before the war, that was valid for three years and for all countries. There was also a report in the newspapers that my daughter Olga was ill; as I took her with me this was an explanation of my journey. So things went pretty smoothly. On the frontier an official did make some difficulty and inquired by telegram from Prague whether he should let me pass; but before he could have got an answer the train for Venice would have left. Therefore, claiming for the first time my rights as a Member of Parliament, I took my place in the train and left.
From Venice, where I met one of our newspaper men, M. Hlaváč—who was extraordinarily well informed on all Viennese and Austrian matters and especially on the activities of Count Czernin, the Austro-Hungarian Minister at Bucharest—I went on to Florence and reached Rome on December 22. During the journey I thought of my first visit to Italy in 1876 when I had seen all the larger Northern and Central cities and had been impressed by the many memorial inscriptions bearing witness to the tyranny of Austria. Italy had then been to me a museum and a school of art; I had lived in the Renaissance. Later on, I had lived in Classical Antiquity though I had been equally able to enter into early Christianity. The Italian Renaissance had attracted me by reason of the remarkable synthesis of Christianity and Classical Antiquity which it offered—a synthesis that really dates from the very beginnings of the Church. Though Christianity was antagonistic to the traditions of Antiquity it had to carry them on and to preserve them in spite of itself. I am more and more convinced that the Emperor Augustus was really the first Pope. Or think of
