II.[1]
As long as the Russians remained in Galicia and Count Thun was acting as governor in Prague, the persecution did not venture to make any steady advance, as it were. Now and then it seized hold of some old huxter-woman, of whom it had been ascertained that she had told people how close the Russians already were, and that they would be "here" within a fortnight,—she had been told so by some tramp or other,—the old woman received, I believe, 14 months. Or, an official person, a constable or a police-agent was walking along the street and in the second storey of a house heard somebody scraping away at his violin practice,—practice indeed? That is the Russian hymn,—and nothing was of any avail, the pupil-teacher could explain this and that, and call upon the whole of heaven as a witness, the official person said Russian hymn,—and the pupil-teacher received 8 months. But the persecution was still, so to speak, only dallying,—as if a hungry tiger were catching flies. It gave a grab with its paw only occasionally if some large object came into its vicinity; the news could then be read in the papers that this or that well-known person "had moved" to Vienna. But an oppressive uncertainty had already settled upon the land of Bohemia.
After the break-through at Gorlice, all was changed. They began to coax Prince Thun into believing that he was seriously ill; his sight was weak, they said, and was being impaired by his official duties at so responsible a spot. The Prince denied this energetically but vainly. He did actually fall ill and retired.
On May 21st, 1915, Dr. Kramář was arrested. He "moved" to Vienna.
A day or so after that I was travelling to Prague for the Whitsuntide holidays. In the train I met Deputy Choc. We still knew nothing about it. We talked of this and that, until suddenly it occurred to Choc that Hofrat So-and-so was travelling in the same carriage with us, and that he would go to him and discover the latest news. He soon came back; he had promised to say nothing, but he would tell me,—they had arrested Kramář. Said I, that is impossible.—Yes, the Hofrat declares it is so.—We were silent for a while. Then I pointed out to him that this would be a harakiri of Austrian policy in Bohemia; that everyone knew how consistent an advocate of that policy Dr. Kramář had been in the last fifteen years; that no Viennese Government could be so short-sighted as to do anything of the kind; that Dr. Kramář was persona gratissima in all Viennese circles,—Choc only shrugged his shoulders; the Hofrat had declared it was so.
From the train the field of Lipan could be seen. The sky above it had reddened, and into this blood-like expanse towered up mournfully the black hill with the gloomy monument to Prokop the Great. We looked at it. "Well then, we shall all have our turn" I remarked to Choc.
"We shall, never mind".
In the meanwhile, the Hofrat's secret was known to the whole of Prague. And in a considerably enlarged edition. Altogether, nowhere had so many legends come into existence as at Prague in those two years. On the very same evening I heard it definitely asserted that the whole of the National Council had been removed in chains to Vienna, that old Dr. Mattuš had protested, but in vain, that Prince Thun had been arrested, that the Czech University had been suspended for some protest or other,—the people were not satisfied with reality and so they invented fables.
The arrest of Dr. Kramář, however, was the only certainty which I took back with me to Vienna.
Now, the nature of man is such that he does not fathom the ways and methods of Fate, he does not know that one of its apparent oversights may in time produce the most desirable results, he ceases to believe in it and wants to correct its mistakes. So it was that immediately upon my return I proceeded to a certain highly placed personage to explain to him what I had explained in the train to Choc, and asked him to intervene. The highly-placed personage was able to do so, that much I knew.
I arrived. His Excellency was engaged, he was not there. His secretary received me. He shook hands, smiled, asked me how I was,—I plunged in medias res. Such and such a thing had happened. An error, a mistake, a blunder, a misfortune. The secretary at once assumed an appearance of very serious gloom, and his voice changed from that of an amiable friend and assumed a dry official tone. "There you are, as long as Thun was governor, he kept Kramář safe, and Kramář, supposing himself God's equal, thought that nothing could ever happen to him, that nobody would dare to interfere with him. But Thun went, the correspondence of Kramář was seized, and the result is that he is locked up in the military prison."
I pointed out the results that this action would have in Bohemia,—the secretary turned red and remarked: "The nation will calm down and come to reason. Those who led it, have led it astray. Politicians, authors,—yes, you are all guilty. Look here, I have a dog; when I come home, he is lying on the carpet sleeping happily in the sun. I begin to pity him; why, poor old fellow, you are so neglected, nobody troubles about you,—and he then begins to growl and to pity himself, as if he really were most badly off. The Czech nation is not badly off,—on the contrary, but you, authors, politicians and—"
"Wait a moment, doctor, just a brief comment upon this canine idyl of yours. The dog,—that tallies. But the room and the carpet do not tally, and as for the sun, we have never been in it at all. However, that's all, I will not go to his Excellency. Good-day."
This canine idyl had thoroughly warmed me up. And it opened out extremely distant perspectives to me; I now saw clearly all that had happened, was happening and would happen…
The reports about Dr. Kramář grew more and more copious. It was said that he was being cross-examined by Dr. Preminger,—who was Dr. Preminger? A man from Czernowitz. The Imperial Counsellor Penížek assured everybody convincingly whom he met: "Dr. Kramář can think himself lucky to have fallen into the hands of a Jew from Bukowina whose heart is in the right place." Good. There was even a rumour that the case would not be tried at all. Then it was asserted that there would be a trial, and that it would last several days. Lieut. Preminger was said to be on his way to Prague and was cross-examining somebody somewhere. Stuergkh was said to have been conferring in the matter. A deputation of Young Czech delegates had been received in audience by the General Staff. Everything, it was said, would turn out well.
Both Czech Ministers were retaining a firm hold upon their posts, a fact which also aroused a certain amount of confidence. Could they have remained, if there had been anything serious against Kramář? Certainly not,—for with the person of Dr. Kramář the whole nation would be affected. And if there were nothing? They would be still less able to remain. At any rate, that was how the people judged it, but the Ministers themselves found a different solution,—they remained. They did this, it was said, to avert still worse matters which were preparing, and some of which might prove fatal. And these too, they averted, so it was said. It will be the task of history to decide which would have been better and more honourable. Today we can assert with the determinists that what happened had to happen, and we can add that it is a good thing it happened as it did, otherwise things would not be as they are today.
That was a beautiful spring. Day by day the sky was a clear blue, the air was fresh, the birds sang, the armies of the Central Powers advanced victorioust further and further through Russian-Poland, fortress upon fortress fell, every report announced swarms of prisoners, captured cannon, machine-guns, motor-cars, provision stores, clothes, boots,—there was joy on all sides, for the newspaper strategists announced that the war would soon come to a victorious end and peace was upon the horizon;—only above the lands of the Bohemian crown hung a black cloud, and the atmosphere beneath it was sultry, we breathed heavily, very heavily.
- ↑ Man is a reed shaken by the wind! I vowed to myself and also declared that, after the deletion to which my first chapter fell a prey, I would not continue with "The Jail",—and behold, as soon as I recieved the news that fresh and capable persons had entered the Prague censorship, I am writing again after all. Truly, a reed shaken by the wind!