CAREER OF MAN OF PEACE

Southland Times, Issue 23633, 7 October 1938, Page 5

CAREER OF MAN OF PEACE

“EUROPE’S GREATEST DEMOCRAT”

COURAGE AND PATRIOTISM OF DR BENES

This article was written last May by Patrick Maitland, when Dr Benes, the enlightened and patriotic President ot Czechoslovakia, was of the opinion that a succession of war scares was likely. Dr Benes has always been a fierce worker and a courageous patriot. His strong personality has been developed by experience until he looms up among European rulers as a figure of distinction. He is essentially a man of peace, who prefers to reason rather than to fight, but, as the article discloses, he has always been ready to risk his life for his country. . In a large, lofty, light room in the Castle at Prague, Czechoslovakia, aroom with tall mullioned windows looking over the weird , scramble of roofs and turrets, the jumble of chimneys, the gently flowing river—in this room the radio blares out programme after programme all day long. At a huge desk sits a smallish, wiry man, active to the fiinger-tips—a man with a tanned skin, high forehead, wide nose, oval facer His head is bald in front, his mousy-brown hair is going grey at the sides. He has' a short stubby moustache. With a smile he excuses the radio, says it helps him to think; then tells

you half a dozen of his best stories. You may try to egg him into some sensational political remark. You won t Dr Eduard Benes, at 57 Europe’s youngest President, her greatest living democrat, never* loses his head, keeps as calm as a marble statue. Nothing perturbs him, he is never flurried. This man is head of one of the world’s youngest States, the one in the most exposed position in Europe, hemmed in by aggressive Nazi Germany with a dissident German minority of 3,000,000 just by the border; 'hemmed in, too, by unfriendly Poland, unfriendly Hungary, and a distant Rumania as next-door friends. PEASANT PARENTS ■ ■ Bom of peasant parents, Benes has all the inborn caution of the • peasant, all the instinctive love of peaceful security and freedom to live unbothered by outsiders. This slim and attractive man gets up before six each day, takes violent exercise, often tennis (he used to play regularly with Sir George Clerk, British Ambassador) or else a long fast walk, before breakfast. He works all day, takes care to keep his evenings as free as possible, drops off to sleep at night the moment he lays his head to pillow. In the afternoon, if time allows, he goes out riding. He learned to ride five years agd—stern tribute to the energy of a man of 52. Talk to him and you’ll' notice he speaks fast, poises his spectacles in the air, jabs home his points with his fingers. If you don’t quite follow, whether you say you understand or not, he’ll give endless illustrations till he’s convinced you, made you understand. He’s a diplomat, too. Lord Curzon, introducing him once to Lord Baldwin, said, “This is the little man we always send for at Geneva when we’re in trouble. And, by Jove, he gets us out.” One of his most brilliant diplomatic successes was in 1922, when, on the eve of the Genoa Conference at which Lloyd George was to propound a scheme for the economic rehabilitation of Europe, a dangerous rift kept the British and French Governments apart at the eleventh hour. Benes hastened to London, persuaded Lloyd George to meet Poincare at Boulogne and smooth things out. Benes is a soccer football “fan” and loves watching matches. In his school days in Prague football was banned. He secretly organized a team, and the game flourished—secretly. He used to play outside left. One day the game was a good deal rougher than usual; Benes broke his leg with a compound fracture. The authorities found out and he lost his scholarship in punishment. STUDENT DAYS In those days he was already the keen student of sociology which he has been ever since. In 1904 he went to the Czech University in Prague, studied philosophy, sat at the feet of Professor Masaryk. Seeing the brilliance of his admirer, Masaryk took an interest in him, advised him to go abroad, study at Paris, and travel in Britain and Germany. One day in 1905, with no more money than enough to pay for his ticket, Benes set out and went to Paris. There he struggled along in a garret near the Sorbonne University, and later moved to Dijon to take his Doctorate of Law with a thesis on the Czech question in Austria. Thence he moved to London, lived in a lodging-house in Waterloo Road, and ate 2/6 dinners at the then bohemian Boulogne Restaurant in Gerrard Street, Soho. From London he went to Berlin, meanwhile eking out a slender existence by writing for Czech newspapers at home, occasionally getting an article into one of the learned reviews. From Berlin he went home to Prague, began lecturing at the university in law and sociology, and added to his income by more journalism. Came the Great War, and the broken leg which had stopped him playing football also saved him from being called up. With Masaryk and other Czech patriots he joined the Maffia secret society to liberate Czechoslovakia from the Austro-Hungarian yoke. Ever hunted by police, moving furtively between Vienna and Prague, Benes kept hard at work agitating, planning, while the gigantic military steam-roller slashed up the Serbs and Russians. Masaryk moved in 1915 to Paris. After an exciting night-and-day chase over the snow-blocked passes of the Western Tyrol Benes followed him to Switzerland and Paris. An outlawed, fugitive professor, with nothing more I material to live on than zeal, Benes

became secretary to the Czechoslovak National Council, which he and Masaryk founded in 1916. ' For two years the Allies took no notice of them and remained obstinately uninterested in the hair-brained schemes of a pack of Central European intellectuals. , PEACE CONFERENCE By 1918 things had changed. The Austro-Hungarian army had crumbled under the weight of wholesale desertions by Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croatians and Transylvanians. Masaryk and Benes had by then had many a 2/6 dinner at the Boulogne, and laid their plans with care. In November Benes was, to use his own words, “thrilled to see myself driven through the streets of Paris in a car flying the national flag—being driven to the Allied Councils.” While he and Masaryk were making a masterly presentation of their case at the Peace Conference Czechoslovakia was already coming into existence as the Hapsburg Empire fell to bits. The Czech legionaries, like the Polish, had done for good and all with Austria, and proclaimed their country’s freedom. In 1918 Benes became the first Foreign Minister of Czechoslovakia, and in 1935 its President after the death of President Masaryk. The key to this man’s brilliant career is a secret. He himself would say his wife held it. A tall, stately woman, blonde, handsome, a person of great culture and good education, a devoted lover of arts, daughter of a Czech railway worker, she runs his home smoothly and without fuss. When he is at his desk in Prague, or out weeding his garden at his villa near Tabor, Bohemia, or giving an official reception at Llany Castle, the President’s official residence, she is there, quietly arranging everything to go simply and easily The two are ideally happy and have only one regret —there are no children.

This man, born orator and financial genius, has more than once needed his wife’s calm and his own unruffled temperament. It stands him in good stead in these anxious days. Once, in 1925, a murder plot was hatched against him in Budapest. When told the news of its discovery, he is said to have shrugged his shoulders and turned on the dance music.