Orzoff Andrea. Battle for the Castle: The Myth of Czechoslovakia in Europe, 1914-1948

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106 Battle for the Castle

He was frustrated by Masaryk and Beneš’s decision to observe the Bolsheviks

warily, while covertly aiding White Russian groups in Prague and Western

Europe. Certain that Czechoslovakia would need Russian support to ward

oﬀ inevitable German aggression, Kramá

r still hoped to oust the Bolsheviks

and bring to power a Russian government willing to play protector of the

Slavs. When Beneš and Masaryk refused to work against the Soviets, and

did not aid the Poles during the Polish-Soviet war, Kramá

r accused them

of fomenting Bolshevism abroad and at home. Kramá

r distrusted the new

country’s ethnic minorities; his ideal Czechoslovakia would ensure perma-

nent Czech supremacy over the country’s substantial German and Hungarian

minorities, avenging centuries of presumed oppression under Austria and

Hungary.

Kramá

r also mistrusted Masaryk’s reliance on Beneš, who for his

part had resented, and publicly criticized, Kramá

r’s wartime refusal to join or

do much to aid the resistance abroad. Kramá

r’s representative Josef Dürich

had tried to sabotage the National Council’s Russia policy, on Kramá

r’s

instructions. Kramá

r, meanwhile, insinuated that Masaryk and Beneš had

somehow come upon misbegotten funds to subsidize their wartime activities,

and misappropriated those funds for their own use.

Thus various factions vied for the liberators’ mantle, and with it moral

high ground and political legitimacy. For the Castle, protecting Masaryk’s

legacy as President-Liberator also meant protecting Beneš’s chances of presi-

dential accession and Castle policy. For Kramá

r and fellow National Demo-

crat Viktor Dyk, as well as former National Socialist Ji

rí St

ríbrný, highlight-

ing their wartime courage and leadership meant the possibility of limiting

the Castle, reestablishing their own political power, and shifting the country’s

international orientation away from the West. The National Democratic

party press, and later St

ríbrný’s tabloid press, became the main arena for these

ﬁgures to defend themselves. After May 1927, they were joined by a pointedly

nationalistic journal titled Fronta (Front), edited by former Castle ally and

diplomat Lev Borský. Dyk wrote for it, as did Karel Horký, Josef Dürich’s

embittered son-in-law. Fronta brought together writers and thinkers opposed

to the Castle. Its primary target was what it termed the Castle’s “liberation

legend,” especially as embodied in Masaryk’s memoir Svˇetová revoluce.

Kramá

r threw down the glove in 1922, with the publication of Five

Lectures on Foreign Aﬀairs. The lectures addressed the previous forty years

of European history in broad outline, centering on Central European events

and emphasizing his own signiﬁcance to Austrian foreign policy. Kramá

claimed that he had spent the previous twenty years participating in foreign

aﬀairs as a member of delegations; much of the book responded to criticism

of his “Slavic” politics before the war, praised the actions of the Maﬃe in

1914 and 1915 (when he had been a member), and pointedly avoided much

mention of Masaryk or Beneš.

A review published in

Cas, Masaryk’s former

Battles of the Legend Makers 107

Realist daily, criticized the book. The author identiﬁed himself only with

the initials V. S., soon to become one of Masaryk’s standard pseudonyms;

Kramá

r deduced immediately that his critic was the president. Another

anonymous article in

Cas, published November 3, 1923, reacted to one of

Kramá

r’s Národní listy articles about October 28, 1918 (the country’s found-

ing day) with the following terse condemnation: “[the National Democrats

under Kramá

r’s leadership] must one day be silenced in the interest of

internal peace.”

These articles created immediate bad blood. Ji

rí St

ríbrný

likewise “believed that Masaryk was the author of the anonymous articles

in journals such as

Cas,

Ceské slovo,andNárodní osvobození, which crit-

icized St

ríbrný, Kramá

r, and other defenders of the role of the domestic

resistance.”

The Masaryk and KPR archives in Prague, as well as the

recently reissued series of Masaryk’s writings titled Cesta demokracie, contain

anonymous manuscripts proving St

ríbrný right.

In a series of anonymous articles written between July and October 1924,

intended for Národní osvobození and the Prager Presse, Masaryk continued

the argument. He claimed to be a Legionnaire, responding to Dyk’s assertion

that a wall shut the Legionnaires away from the rest of Czech political

life. Masaryk blamed Dyk and his party for building it, claiming that they

had begun a battle over the relative worth of the two wartime struggles

for independence. The author defended the contribution of the struggle

abroad, writing that “the entire nation, and the entire world” understood

the Legionnaires’ achievements—and, implicitly, the Castle’s.

While his anonymous articles demonstrate respect for some of the domes-

tic leaders, such as St

ríbrný and Social Democrat František Soukup, Masaryk

persistently questioned the value of their wartime work. Without the exiles’

work for Allied recognition, he argued, Austria might have been able to

conclude a separate peace, and Czechoslovakia would never have existed.

Moreover, even on October 28, 1918, the very day of glorious indepen-

dence, Masaryk implied, the country lacked an exact recounting of the

domestic leaders’ actions. Masaryk quoted the Austrian wartime military

governor, Count Maximilian von Coudenhove, who recalled in his memoirs

that the Czech domestic resistance had agreed to cooperate regarding the

new republic. Was the supposedly revolutionary National Committee of

domestic leaders, then, in fact collaborating with the Habsburgs, possibly

strengthening the eleventh-hour Austrian attempt to retain the empire in

federated form? This criticism was aimed most bluntly at Karel Kramá

Masaryk reported that Kramá

r, as he traveled with the representatives of

postwar Austria in 1919 to Paris, to attend the peace conference at Versailles,

was said to have conﬁded that he was a monarchist. Neither Kramá

r nor the

other members of the domestic resistance adequately refuted Coudenhove’s

version of October 28.

108 Battle for the Castle

In another anonymous article, Masaryk claimed that their refusal to do so

was important not just for their personal political legacies but for the young

republic as a whole. By keeping information from the historical record,

they were preventing the country from fully understanding itself; they were

damaging the nation they claimed to found. The members of the National

Committee, Masaryk revealed, had agreed among themselves not to divulge

details of their revolutionary activities. Why was the Austrian military gov-

ernor left to set his memories into the historical record uncontested? For

the sake of history and country, these political questions had to be laid to

rest, Masaryk insisted. But “Dr. Kramá

r has tried for years now to elaborate

our national liberation in a manner which is purely partisan and directly

personal.”

At roughly the same time, the president asked St

ríbrný to critique chap-

ters of Svˇetová revoluce.St

ríbrný expressed deep frustration with the presi-

dent’s characterization of the Prague uprising in late October 1918. Without

the uprising, demonstrating de facto Czech territorial control, the Czechs

would not have been entitled to representation at Versailles, St

ríbrný argued.

In addition, St

ríbrný emphasized that the domestic leaders were risking

execution under martial law.

But the president responded intransigently,

refusing to amend his text. Masaryk reminded St

ríbrný of National Demo-

crat Alois Rašín’s comment that the Prague uprising was not as decisive as

other events from the nation’s liberation. He also cited a letter from French

minister Stéphen Pichon that Beneš had been invited to Versailles without

having had to demonstrate a right to be there.

His conclusion seems less

than sincere:

I see from [your notes about our discussion] that you do not respond

in fact to my chapter and its tendencies, but rather to the journalistic

discussion of issues. For example, you defend yourself against the

assertion that the relationship in Prague with some representatives of

Austrian power was [the result of an agreement]. This I myself have

never said anywhere, and I have never thought it.

One of the last prominent Boj legendist˚u arguments took place in 1929

between Masaryk and Dyk, who had moved far to the Right since the

republic’s founding. Dyk’s Czech chauvinism was mystical: “he viewed

national consciousness as a fundamental, powerful, and enduring force all

but inaccessible to scientiﬁc inquiry or interpretation, and in Dyk’s view

diﬃcult, if not impossible, for a foreigner to understand.”

He was a

dominant force in the party and on Národní listy, defending Gajda and

fascism and attacking the Castle. Because Dyk died unexpectedly in 1931,

his 1929 exchange with the president, much publicized in the Castle and

Battles of the Legend Makers 109

far-Right press, was one of his last contributions to Czechoslovak polit-

ical life. An excellent encapsulation of the Boj legendist˚u arguments, the

Masaryk-Dyk debate is worth recounting not just for its content but also

for its process, which relied on mutual friends as intermediaries and textual

critics.

In the spring of 1929, Dyk published a political pamphlet titled “Ad usum

pana presidenta” (For the Use of the President). He dedicated the book to

Masaryk: “I do not know whether the president will read these lines or not;

but I wrote them for him to read during the period [that witnessed] a debate

over the methods of Dr. Eduard Beneš. Ad his usum,innowayad usum

delphini.”

The dauphin in question was, of course, Beneš himself, in Dyk’s

view responsible for inexcusable moral corruption within the government

and for the antipathy between the country’s political Right and Left. Dyk

reminded Masaryk that at the beginning of the Great War he had had no

quarrels with Beneš, and had in fact welcomed Beneš’s decision to join

Masaryk abroad. Beneš had asked Dyk to come as well, and tried unsuccess-

fully several times to help him leave the country. Soon after these attempts

failed, Dyk was arrested for anti-imperial activity; throughout the war he

publicly opposed the empire and supported the resistance abroad. However,

Dyk complained, after the Castle leaders returned home in 1918, they began

to attack those who had remained, bringing disharmony into Czech politics.

Dyk accused Beneš of using this conﬂict to strengthen his own position:

for example, Beneš had ensured that the age of presidential eligibility had

been lowered. Dyk also criticized Castle policy, particularly its beneﬁcent

treatment of the country’s Germans, which he viewed as near-treasonous. He

accused the Castle of attacking Kramá

r, St

ríbrný, Švehla, and Milan Hodža,

sharpening political stridency after 1925, and planning an executive coup.

“Must all within the republic suﬀocate so that one person can breathe?” Dyk

pleaded. “Is Dr. Edvard Beneš more than Czechoslovakia?”

Masaryk responded to Dyk’s pamphlet with deliberation, rather than

another ﬁery anonymous editorial. The president drafted a personal letter

and enlisted various Castle colleagues to read it and strategize, including

presidential chancellor P

remysl Šámal, Karel

Capek, Beneš, and František

Udržal, the newly appointed prime minister.

Šámal recommended that

Masaryk enlist friendly National Democrats, such as Jaroslav Preiss, chair of

the Živnostenska Bank. Preiss suggested Masaryk invite Dyk to his regular

autumn meeting with Castle allies and prominent political leaders, which

might mollify Dyk by making him feel more important.

Capek also oﬀered

his home.

But Masaryk and Dyk do not seem to have met: the rest of their

conversation took place via correspondence.

Masaryk’s response addressed Dyk’s points and other questions from the

nation’s ﬁrst ten years. First, the president defended his activist policy of

110 Battle for the Castle

bringing the country’s Germans into the government, and rejected Pan-

Slavism as a basis for Czechoslovak policy.

I want to say that our policy towards the Germans cannot be

structured by chauvinism; it cannot be revengeful. ...Thatwemust

lead the Germans is a matter of course; the question can only be, how

wewillleadthem....Who,please,isforanon-national state? ...And

[Pan-Slavism]: Beneš, now in Belgrade, has done more for Slavic

politics than a heap of your Slavs, who content themselves with Slavic

speeches and preaching without deeds.

Masaryk refused to accept the idea of a Castle clique: “You reproach me

for byzantine-ness [byzantinism], that I have forgotten how to hear the truth,

you accuse [me] of [participating in] a camarilla, [in] attacks and intrigues,

and that I am surrounded by people who have cut me oﬀ from a great

part of the nation. Pardon me, Mr. Senator, all of this is falsehood and

untruth.”

Though the Castle had suppressed or eliminated certain people

from political life, Masaryk admitted, these actions had been necessary to

stem corruption and to purge the less able from leadership. Gajda, St

ríbrný,

and Hodža were not patriots but dangers to the nation. Why, the president

asked, was Dyk, as a leading politician, not educating himself more fully?

Masaryk reserved his strongest rhetoric for Beneš’s defense. “Without

Beneš,” Masaryk thundered, “the republic would not exist, and despite

this you and the rest of his opponents recite political fairy-tales about

Beneš, who has slaved morning till night for years [in the name of] the

republic ...pardon me, these are—bluntly stated—hyperbole and entirely

unproved condemnations.” Could Dyk provide him with a single concrete

example of Beneš’s wrongdoing? The president rejected outright Dyk’s sug-

gestion that Beneš retained his position out of sentimentality or loyalty. On

the contrary, no one but Beneš was capable of resolving the problems still

facing the republic, and Masaryk would not countenance replacing him. He

also rejected Dyk’s accusation that Beneš had at his disposal suspiciously

large discretionary funds. “From this purely triﬂing amount he [Beneš]

could never make a single bribe; inform yourself, please, what kind of funds

the Yugoslav and German foreign ministers have, for example.”

Finally,

Masaryk acknowledged that Beneš’s cabinet position was an odd one, given

that his party was in the opposition, but that both Prime Minister Švehla and

leading ﬁnancial advisers had recommended that Beneš remain in his post.

Masaryk turned to attack the National Democrats, although he claimed

that he did so reluctantly. For a long time, he wrote, he had hoped the

National Democrats could serve as the republic’s true conservative party.

“Mr. Senator, I assure you, I wish I had a decent and politically adept party

Battles of the Legend Makers 111

of the bourgeoisie, that I wish I had a party of the real intelligentsia, which

could lead its opponents, in a businesslike manner, both in parliament and

[through its] journalism.” But the National Democrats’ anti-Castle politics

had in fact strengthened factions, such as the Communists, who wanted

to destroy the state entirely. The National Democratic leaders had acquired

their political habits under Austria, Masaryk wrote: “they are used to the

jargon of opposition.” But National Democratic politicking had become

dangerous, the president argued. National Democratic papers and leaders

called him a Bolshevik and claimed that he created the state for the Jews.

They falsiﬁed both domestic and foreign news reports, and even maliciously

edited his name and Beneš’s out of oﬃcial news reports.

Dyk’s accusation

that the president refused to speak with him or with the leaders of his party

was sheer nonsense, Masaryk countered. He had approached Dyk himself

various times, through various mutual acquaintances, and had spoken with

many National Democrats about their activities, which Dyk well knew.

The president’s letter ended with a challenge, calling on Dyk to prove out

his accusations—even to demand an oﬃcial government investigation on

the ﬂoor of Parliament, so that Masaryk and Beneš could defend themselves

publicly.

I would not be being entirely direct, were I not to say to you openly a

few words about your special polemical method. ...Ihaveseeninthe

past how frequently you aid yourself with half-truths; Ad usum is also

a half-truth. [Y]ou in fact have said nothing, for you have not

indicated even a single piece of evidence [behind] your polemical

insistence.

Dyk and Masaryk corresponded for the next several months, touching

upon two main issues of diﬀerence: Masaryk’s attitude toward the National

Democrats and the president’s involvement in political life. Dyk identiﬁed

a 1920 interview with the president in the Viennese Neue Freie Presse as the

beginning of ill will between the Castle and the Right. In the interview,

Masaryk had called the National Democratic antipathy for the country’s

Germans a source of danger for the young republic. Since then, Dyk com-

plained, all dissenting or separatist factions within the National Democrats

had named the president as their source of authority and legitimacy.

Masaryk argued that the Neue Freie Presse interview constituted only one

among many public statements he had made. Then, shifting approach,

the president noted that the journalist had not even bothered to sign his

name to the piece, implying that anonymity in this case meant carelessness

with the facts—in other words, that Masaryk had not spoken as harshly as

the reporter recorded. As for dissenters within the National Democrats, he

112 Battle for the Castle

wrote, he had in fact advised dissatisﬁed National Democrats to remain in

the party. He repeated his earlier hope that the National Democrats could

have been the country’s much-needed bourgeois, urban-centered conserva-

tive party, commanding the respect of the nation’s intelligentsia, professo-

riate, and bureaucracy. In the National Democrats’ belligerence toward the

president and ﬂirtation with fascism, Masaryk saw a nationwide crisis of

the intelligentsia made manifest. But Masaryk’s response also betrayed his

continuing worry that a government party, with real inﬂuence over powerful

sectors of society, harbored resentment toward the state’s leaders and its

rapprochement with its national minorities. “As for your accusations about

lacking empathy for the National Democrats, how can you expect me not

to respond to direct attacks on myself and Beneš, which have continued for

a decade?”

Masaryk and Dyk diﬀered strongly on what Masaryk labeled chauvinism,

and what Dyk defended as appropriate national loyalty and self-defense. “We

do not apotheosize our own state,” Dyk claimed, “nor do we hate other

[nationalities] or try to destroy them.” But, he warned, the Germans did.

They had tried to extinguish Czech nationality; they would always want

to dominate Central Europe. The Czechs’ only defense was an assertion of

national strength. Dyk and the National Democrats worried that Masaryk’s

tacit deﬁnition of Czechness as enlightened European humanism—leavened

with aﬀection for Czechoslovakia’s language, geography, and history—in

fact ruined healthy Czech patriotism and weakened the republic. Dyk’s

view invoked social Darwinism: for him, nationalism was associated with

the ability to defend the nation, spiritually, physically, and economi-

cally, against competitors or aggressors. Peaceful coexistence was unlikely:

Masaryk’s visions of pan-Europeanism and world citizenship were chimeras.

Neither Masaryk nor Dyk made any real eﬀort to bridge this ideological

chasm; Masaryk tried only to lessen the amount of ﬁnger-pointing by writ-

ing that his remarks on chauvinism in 1920 had not implicated only the

National Democrats but also other groups and events, such as the Red-and-

Whites (an early protofascist group), the illegal occupation of the German-

owned Estates Theater by Czechs, and random local shootings of Germans.

Can’t we have diﬀering ideas of patriotism, the president asked Dyk, without

accusing the other of nonpatriotism?

They also continued to diﬀer over Masaryk’s public presence and the

existence of the Castle organization. Masaryk maintained that his presence in

public life was necessary, and that rumors of some Castle political grouping

were largely exaggerated. Dyk rightly pointed out that the presidential chan-

cellery functioned as a political institution; he repeated his comment that

it was a camarilla and insisted that the president surrounded himself with

informers and yes-men.

Masaryk, again dabbling in half-truths himself,

Battles of the Legend Makers 113

wrote back that he had no informers; rather, he spoke with appropriate

ministers, leaders, and party ﬁgures. As for the putative camarilla, he

rejoined, “my chancellery is a purely administrative oﬃce.”

But a plaintive request by Dyk highlighted the sticking point of their

disagreement: “Finally, please, admit that liberation is a collective work.”

The Castle had rejected this possibility as early as 1919; it seemed even less

possible by 1929. As long as the National Democrats’ “patriotism” was an

integral, aggressive nationalism, the president would not allow them to share

the mantle of liberator with himself and with Beneš. Masaryk and Dyk

never came to any kind of rapprochement. Their correspondence trailed

oﬀ. Unlike Karel Kramá

r, who socialized with Masaryk in 1926 even as

they attacked one another in the media, Dyk and the president never met

privately.

Given the divergence of their beliefs and a decade of forceful

arguments, perhaps reconciliation was impossible.

These and other Boj legendist˚u debates articulated the causes of enduring

antipathy between the Castle and the Right: competing claims to the libera-

tor’s mantle, the diminution of the National Democrats’ electoral successes,

Beneš, the Czech-German relationship, Czechoslovakia’s Western orienta-

tion, and the Castle structure. They also proved yet again the centrality

of journalism to interwar Czechoslovak political culture. Moreover, the Boj

legendist˚u had concrete political ramiﬁcations. The country’s rejection of the

moderate socialist parties at the polling booth meant increased insecurity for

the Castle, who viewed the socialists as the country’s natural leaders. Given

an overall shift rightward between 1922 and 1930, the growing extremism

of the National Democrats might have poisonous domestic repercussions,

among them the alienation of the country’s German minority and a foreign-

policy shift away from the Western democracies. Thus the Boj legendist˚u

represents more than haggling over a place in the history books: for the

Castle, it oﬀered the opportunity to discredit a group of inﬂuential, and

possibly dangerous, political opponents. It was one of many ways the Castle

worked to isolate the National Democrats, defend Masaryk and Beneš, and

iterate the values underlying Castle policy.

The Unpredictable Ji

rí St

ríbrný

rí St

ríbrný, hailed almost unanimously by historians as one of the First

Republic’s most talented, ambitious, well-connected politicians, began his

career on the side of the angels. Before the war, St

ríbrný joined the Czech

(later Czechoslovak) National Socialists, founded in 1898 by Alois Simonides

and Václav Klofá

c, and rose quickly through the ranks. He was a member

of the domestic resistance, representing his party on the Prague National

114 Battle for the Castle

Committee and contributing to Czechoslovakia’s founding in 1918. That very

year, St

ríbrný began challenging Klofá

c for leadership of the party.

ríbrný‘s political career in the republic’s early years matched his promise.

He served as minister of postal and telegraph services in the ﬁrst coalition

government under Kramá

r(1918–1919), of railroads under Prime Minister

Vlastimil Tusár in 1919–1920, in various positions under Švehla (1922–1925),

and as minister of defense from 1925 to 1926.St

ríbrný helped found the

etka and remained a member until 1925.

Despite St

ríbrný’s continual

involvement in scandals and his resistance to Beneš’s program in foreign

aﬀairs, Masaryk remained cordial to him. In fact, in 1925, Švehla chose

ríbrný for minister of defense, a cabinet oﬃce Masaryk usually controlled;

certainly the president’s approval for such an appointment would have been

sought.

During his brief absences from government St

ríbrný consolidated

his position within his party, and began to dominate the National Socialists’

executive committee, packing it with loyalists who had joined the party in

droves after the war.

But the Castle was watching St

ríbrný carefully. In 1923, Edvard Beneš

had joined the National Socialists and quickly allied himself with Klofá

against St

ríbrný.

ríbrný had long personally disliked Beneš; he resented

Beneš’s treatment of the P

etka leaders in the early 1920s and disputed Beneš’s

position as Masaryk’s successor. Like Agrarian Prime Minister Antonin

Švehla, St

ríbrný thought the next president should be a Slovak, speciﬁ-

cally the Slovak Agrarian and then-Castle foe Milan Hodža. St

ríbrný began

trying to alter the National Socialists’ previously predictable pro-Castle

orientation.

But St

ríbrný’s power within his party was also shifting. His

ostentatious lifestyle, questionable personal aﬀairs, rightward political shift,

and “dictatorial tendencies” from his years as a pˇetkáˇr (P

etka leader) had cost

him support.

Spring 1926 saw the decisive break between St

ríbrný and the Castle. In

April of that year, Masaryk, Beneš, and St

ríbrný discussed the possibility of

an executive coup to repress Czech fascism and any nationalist responses

by the country’s minorities. St

ríbrný’s envisioned coup, a standard-issue

authoritarian putsch, diﬀered profoundly from the Castle’s more legalistic

suggestions. St

ríbrný intended to arrogate all power to the executive, allow-

ing Parliament to ﬂounder into irrelevance. He proposed to alter the elec-

toral code, suppressing the Communists, and quelling the minority parties

entirely.

This seems to have been the last time the Castle consulted St

ríbrný

on issues of governance. But the Castle’s obvious antipathy notwithstanding,

ríbrný and the Castle diﬀered more in degree than in kind. Masaryk

himself had lauded NLP leader Karel Engliš’s idea of restricting the electoral

rights of younger men and soldiers, who voted Communist in large numbers,

and completely denying the franchise to women, viewed as likely to support

Battles of the Legend Makers 115

clerical parties.

At this same time, St

ríbrný hosted a meeting of anti-

Castle right-wing politicians at his villa in Káraný; Kramar and Gajda were

among the participants.

In March 1926, Švehla’s governing coalition was replaced by an “experts’

cabinet.” Beneš had served before in Masaryk’s nonpartisan cabinets, but

this time, St

ríbrný’s loyalists on the National Socialist executive committee

insisted that Beneš resign, to prove his loyalty to the party. Instead, Beneš

left the National Socialists, supported by Masaryk, and retained his port-

folio as foreign minister.

ríbrný moved into open opposition against

the Castle, publishing a brochure, “Kdo je vinen [Who Is Guilty],” that

accused the Castle—particularly Beneš—of plotting against himself and

Gajda. Meanwhile, Klofá

c, Beneš, and other National Socialists loyal to the

Castle launched a counterattack, including publishing unveriﬁed accusations

in Lidové noviny that St

ríbrný suﬀered from syphilis.

By the fall of 1926,

Klofá

c had regained control of the executive committee and presidium.

At the party’s congress that September in Brno, the National Socialists

expelled St

ríbrný by a vote of 90 to 42.

His supporters also left the party,

and Beneš reentered it. Klofá

c defended St

ríbrný’s ouster and the National

Socialists’ support of the Castle by stating simply that only Masaryk and

Beneš could adequately lead and defend Czechoslovakia and avoid another

White Mountain, alluding to the 1620 battle in which Habsburg forces

defeated the Czechs.

As the party congress opened, National Labor Party leader and Castle

publisher Jaroslav Stránský waded into the ﬁght on Beneš’s side. Stránský

bore St

ríbrný a grudge held over from the NLP’s 1925 electoral defeat. In

an April 1925 letter to Zamini Third Section chief Jan Hájek—a letter

Stránský could safely assume Beneš would see—Stránský complained that

Beneš’s own party was supporting a reform that would doom the NLP’s

chances. The only imaginable reason for this, Stránský wrote, was St

ríbrný.

Stránský revenged himself just days before the September party congress with

a Lidové noviny story accusing St

ríbrný, the heroic “man of October,” of

collaborating with Austrian oﬃcials. Stránský claimed to have documents

proving that St

ríbrný and another National Socialist deputy had gone in

1914 to the Austrian military governor in Prague, Count Franz von Thun,

oﬀering obedience in exchange for exclusion from the draft and permission

to publish their party newspaper,

Ceské slovo. The documents, transcripts of

telephone messages to and from Vienna about their visit and what they had

promised, seemed quite damning. Stránský’s article was clearly intended not

just to persuade the National Socialists still supporting St

ríbrný of his lack

of character, but also to tarnish St

ríbrný’s political legitimacy and burnish

that of the Castle. A few months later, St

ríbrný sued for libel, insisting on a

correction and the restitution of his good name.