for the sake of him who is the fine flower of that land, the man who by his patriotism and humanity has earned the eternal love and admiration of the world. thi THOMAS G. MASARYK NATION BUILDING M BY WILLIAM HARD ASARYK came to the city of Washington last spring and lived in a little tiat, quietly, a private person. When he left the city of Washington, a few months later, he was in course having to go to formal diplomatic dinners at official Washington houses and of having to walk out from drawing-rooms to dining-rooms at the head of all processions of guests and in precedence of even the greatest and most senior of ministers and ambassadors; for he was now in the rank of those who appoint ministers and ambassadors to their posts and send them on their errands. He was the chief executive of a government. He was the first President of Bohemia. He was the received and recognized ruler of a people and a country. It is sometimes called a small country. But it is by no means tiny or insignificant. Quite the contrary. For population it is the eighth country of all Europe. It has more people than Norway and Denmark and Sweden put together. And it is Europe's central citadel. Fortified by mountains, it dominates the military strategy of Europe between the North Sea and the Ægean. And it is Europe's central interpreter. It looks westward to the great established nations now joined together in the Entente; and it looks eastward and southward to the numerous new nations about to arise in the New Europe of the peace settlement. For the whole of that New Europe Masaryk has been the most powerful and persuasive spokesman at the ears of the statesmen of Washington and of London and of Rome and of Paris. And for the first country in that New Europe to give itself a genuine effective government, Masaryk has been the chief organizer and the chief diplomat and is now the supreme political head, ruling Europe's midmost fortress from the independent capital of Prague. For a man who at the age of fifteen was apprentice to a blacksmith, here is success. But here is more than success: In the fall of the year 1915 Masaryk was in Paris. His property at Prague had been confiscated by the Austrian Government. Even his books had been seized by the police, and also his manuscripts. He had just published two volumes of his learned work on |