BECAME PRESIDENT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 147, 23 June 1934, Page 7 (Supplement)

BECAME PRESIDENT.

MASARYK THE PEASANT,

HIS EARLY STRUGGLES

WHAT HE TOLD TOLSTOY.

Masaryk, President of Czecho-Slovakia since 11)18, is a man of peasant origin. His father was a Slovak frofn Kopcany born in serfdom, and a serf to the end of his life. 110 learned to read from a soldier s widow, digging potatoes for her in return. Young Masarvk was slightly .111010 fortunate; he attended the village school, run by a master who was little better than a pauper. At vintage time, lie says, "we boys would go with a barrel from ono winepress to another and collect for 'teacher,' as much as each farmer would pour in; then, all the winter he kept the barrel in the schoolroom behind the stove, since he had no cellar and tho must fermented there."

Wlien the time eiinie for liim to pro to college, a suit was made for him out nl" nn old coachman's livery—blue with brass buttons—which amused his school fellows.

In the Smithy. TTo was attracted by mechanic*?, and in duo course apprenticed to the blacksmith on an estate at Cejc. In summer lie often worked in the smithy, mending ploughshares and shoeing horses, from three in the morning till ten or eleven at night.; but "it's line work," be says', "a smith at his forge and at his.anvil is master of hard matter." Young Masaryk could forge a nail in one heating of the iron. Not bad training for one who, in the fulness of time, was to help to forge a new republic. Tho Schleswig-Holstein war of isn't, and the Austro-l'russian engagements of two years later, deeply affected young Masaryk. At Tfolie he and his companions were clinsed by a Prussian outpost; he had a close, view of an old-style spectacular battlo from a hilltop—saw the infantry advance and fire, then the cavalry of both sides hacking at. each other. Tho drama was interrupted by a colonel riding up with bis face cut open from temple to chin. That fjame year Masarvk was returning from a funeral after dark, carrying a. candle, when a man leapt out, of a ditch, caught him by the throat, and stabbed him in tho side. "I think the man must have been lying in wait for somebody else, and that he mistook me for him." 1 olstoy's Workshop. Masaryk becamo a successful teacher and lecturer, with decided views on education which will interest all scholastic readers of tho book. An interesting interlude was a, visit to Tolstoy in Moscow. Tolstoy" showed me his workshop with an air almost of pride; it had a wooden ceiling like a farm kitchen, and so low that I could touch it with my hand; but flic ceiling had been artificially added to one of the high palace rooms. . . . Tfe wore a. belted shirt like a mujik, and boots which lie had sewn himself—it goes without saying that they were badlv sewn."

T!ie Tolstoyan simple life struck him as "affected, artificially primitive, unnatural." Later, at Yasnav.i Polvnaiia, he told the r.ecr lie was wastinjr time and energy which might ho belter employed. The village doctor—a Czech named Makovicky, who attended Toktov shortly before his death "carried a .piece of pencil-lead stuck in his fingernail with which he wrote down in a notebook in hip hip pocket all that, Leo Nikolaicvitch said without his seeing."