Word: masaryk
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...house was too much for him ("the house was full of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Dostoevski"). His preference for America was motivated by more than the Continental legends of the Wild West and his father's limited U.S. experience: Jan's mother, Brooklyn-born Charlotte Garrigue (Thomas Masaryk had respectfully added her name to his), had brought an American atmosphere right into the Masaryk home. "Mother always had confidence in me," remembers Jan, "and I did everything in my power to destroy that confidence, but it wasn't any good...
...made a living as an ironworker and works manager in the Crane Co. (as a movie pianist on the side). "The only thing I know about diplomacy," says Minister Masaryk, "I learned in the iron foundry of the Crane Co. There were Slovaks, Swedes, Poles, Norwegians-absolutely everyone. I bought a blackboard and four times a week I taught them to read and to write. That was the strongest influence of my Europeanism...
...affaires in Washington, as Dr. Benes' private secretary, in the Czech legation in London. From 1925 until he resigned in protest against the Munich deal, he was Czechoslovak envoy to the Court of St. James's. In a dinner speech after his resignation Jan Masaryk said, in spite of everything: "I want nothing better for the world than that all countries should have the same qualities as these islands of England...
...already been prepared by his father. T.G.M., in a life work of comparative sociology, had done more than anyone else to convince the Czech people that their future was not tied to the blood brethren in the East but to the West's bright horizons. Though Old Masaryk was the first European statesman to realize that Russian Bolshevism was here to stay, and must be reckoned with as a force in firm control of a mighty world power, he never fell for Pan-Slavism, unceasingly taught his people to consider themselves a part of the democratic, Christian, western world...
Thomas G. Masaryk's faithful aide, never-tiring Dr. Eduard Benes, was the second-greatest intellectual influence on Jan's life-the father's pupil teaching the father's son. As Thomas Masaryk's Foreign Minister, and later when he became President himself, Dr. Benes encouraged Jan's wider western orientation; personally Benes was inclined to put all Czech eggs into the French basket...