Page:Czechoslovak stories.pdf/58

philosophical studies at Vienna. He traveled in Germany and Russia and upon his return was named a member of the faculty of the University of Prague in 1882, attaining the rank of a full professorship in 1896. In 1902 and again in 1907 he visited the United States of America from which country he chose his bride, Miss Alice Garrigue of Boston. He took an active part in politics as early as 1891 from which time he was a representative, at intervals, of his country at the Vienna parliament. When Austria-Hungary declared war in July 1914, Prof. Masaryk raised his voice against the ultimatum delivered to Serbia. Because it was everywhere known that Prof. Masaryk had already exposed forgeries on the part of Austrian government agents in previous attempts to foment trouble with the Balkan Slav states, and because Masaryk was the acknowledged leader of his people, he was immediately a man marked for imprisonment and even execution by the Hapsburg government. However, the story of Prof. Masaryk’s escape to Switzerland and then his journey to the courts and leading ministries of England, France, Russia, and the United States to present the case for independence of the Czechoslovaks and the record of how the tens of thousands of his soldier countrymen conducted a campaign of separatism from Austria-Hungary though far distant from their homeland, as was their leader also, is now a matter of history. It suffices that all maps of Europe will now bear the name of the free and independent government of