Page:President of the Czecho-Slovak Republic, Thomas G. Masaryk.pdf/16

 only a means to attain the righteous living of the nation–we lost it when we ceased living morally as a nation. In our case even the political party, besides having its narrower program, must stand on the firm foundation of a broad cultural program".

"The entire attention of our national leaders and journalists was turned to Vienna, all salvation was expected from politics. Such an expectation must be disappointed—was disappointed and will yet be. So much can be done through our work for the improvement of our national life even under the existing constitution that this incessant calling for the help of the state borders on being a sad state of affairs."

It was upon educational work that Masaryk put greatest stress, as well as upon the enlightened understanding of the nation's principles and upon enlightened love of country. "The idea of nationality is for an enlightened person a whole cultural program.—If I say, "l am a Czech", I must have a cultural program.—"As the tendency to national development increases, states become national. Nationality creates states, or in other words: every nation strives for its own political being, which is necessary even to a small nation We strive for political independence, so that we would not be under a foreign curatorship. Even as the individual wishes to be his own master, so likewise does the nation. The foundation of this striving must be the enlightement of national self-consciousness."

The third life question of our nation is according to Masaryk the social program.

"The social question is not the question of only one class or caste, it is the question of all. The granting of universal suffrage as a concession to the pressure of the labouring class is only a partial and negative solution of the problem; the question must be solved wholly and positively, and that means to enlighten and to warm the heads and hearts of all, it means to give spirit preponderance over matter, it means to suppress selfishness. The social question is the question of morality or immorality, it is the question of brute force against effective humanity".

"It is all very well to sing and preach about one's country, but one must keep to the concrete; for what does a humble Czech see in the poor novel which to him is his country? What does he know of his Czech fatherland when his children are perishing morally and physically in an insufficient lodging? You must not go to such a person with patriotic phrases; give him a better lodging, and he will have a new horizon, he will have an entirely different national feeling than when he lives in unen- 8