2.1

NEW CZECHOSLOVAKIA AND HER HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Gustav Beuer

The Foundation of the Czechoslovak Republic

When in 1914, following blindly the lead of German imperialism, the Hapsburg Monarchy plunged into the First Great War, the masses of the Slav peoples of the Monarchy were against the war from its very beginning. They felt it was the war of their enemies; therefore, resistance arose very soon, particularly among the Czech soldiers in the Austrian armies. Entire regiments consisting of Czechs, surrendered, among them the famous Prague 28th Regiment which surrendered to the Russians on April 3rd, 1915. This spirit of resistance was classically expressed by the great Czech novelist, Jaroslav Hašek, in his famous Soldier Švejk.
Unfortunately, the Czech leaders of that time lagged behind this spirit of the popular masses and it was T. G. Masaryk, who later became the first President of the Czechoslovak Republic, himself, who, in his book The World Revolution, wrote that Czech policy at that time did not live up to its tasks. He was the first among the Czech leaders who came into the open with the idea of breaking away from the Hapsburg Monarchy and establishing an independent State of Czechs and Slovaks. In his writings he clearly pointed out that this not only was necessary in order to materialise the Czech’s and Slovak’s right for national independence, but that an independent Czechoslovak State would naturally assume the trik of forming a defensive wall against the German drive to the East.
As early as in January, 1915, in France and Great Britain a Committee of Action was founded, headed by T. G. Masaryk and Dr. E. Beneš, who later became the second President of the Czechoslovak Republic. Their close collaborator was the Slovak Milan Štefánik, who unfortunately very soon after the establishment of Czechoslovakia was killed in a flying accident in 1919.
In February, 1916, the Action Committee was transformed in the Czechoslovak National Council with Masaryk as Chairman and Dr. Beneš as Secretary.
The National Council set itself two main tasks, firstly, to establish Czechoslovak military units-legions in France, Russia and Italy; and, secondly, to induce the Allied Powers to give their consent to the establishment of an independent Czechoslovak State, and to recognise the National Council. Both of these aims were achieved. The legions built up on Russian territory soon took part in the war and particularly distinguished themselves in the battle of Zborov (July 3rd, 1917). During the summer of 1918 the National Council was recognised by the Allies as the representative of the future Czechoslovak Government.
These were undoubtedly great achievements. They could have been even greater had more been done to develop the revolutionary movement in the country itself. It is true there was formed in the country the so-called “Maffia,” a secret organisation, carrying out anti-war and anti-Austrian propaganda. But, in general, the popular masses did not get the lead they needed to express their dissatisfaction by great revolutionary actions. Nevertheless, more or less spontaneously, such activities developed on an ever-growing stale. As early as 1916 the first strikes broke out as a, protest against the war and against the desperate fond situation. When the Russian Revolution began, the movement grew in intensity. The crisis grew to such an extent that the Government was forced to convoke the Parliament on May 30th, 1917. On this occasion 222 Czech writers appealed to the Czech members of Parliament to stand for the national rights of the people. On the day the Parliament was reopened 20,000 workers struck in Prague. From there the strike movement began to spread all over the country. In the Parliament the Czech Deputies demanded the transformation of Austria-Hungary into “a Federation of free, autonomous states with equal rights.”

2.1

František Ferdinand d’Este
Jan Galandauer 

The fleet was moving slowly, about 20 km/h through the crowd of public. Two of the three waiting assassins let the cars pass. In the crucial moment they did not cast their bombs or fire their revolvers. The third one, Nadjelko Čabrinović, threw a bomb. The bomb hit the awning of the car, fell down to the road, and exploded under next car. The explosion was disruptive. About twenty bystanders were injured, and a tiny piece of schrapnel hit Sofie in the neck - the injury was not visible, only painful. In the car, under which the bomb exploded, Lt. Erich Merizzi was seriously injured. After receiving first aid he was transported to the hospital.

The cars left City Hall. Count Harrach stood on the step to the left of the car to protect Franz Ferdinand and Sofie with his own body. He could not know that the deadly attack will come from the right. 
The Lieutenant recounted what he saw: “During the second assassination I was in the car next to that of the Crown Prince and noticed that right next to the car a young man lifted his arm, and at 45 degrees from a distance of five or six steps, shot at the Crown Prince...”
The same situation was described during an interrogation by the man who shot the gun: “At first I wanted to throw a bomb that was on the left side of my belt. It would have been difficult to take it and throw it. That’s why I grabbed my revolver and raised it against the car without aiming. I shot two times, but I am not sure if there were two or three shots, because I was very excited...”
In addition to the unbelievable accident that stopped the Prince’s car exactly in front of Princip there is the same unbelievable, almost miraculous, accurancy of his shots. One pierced Sofie’s abdominal aorta the second one entered the Prince’s cervical vertebra. Both shots were absolutely fatal. Two shots, two lives. Gavrilo Princip was shooting in a state of such excitement that he was not able to aim at the person whom he wanted to kill, i.e., Franz Ferdinand. Instead at aiming at his head or upper body he shot downwards, to the car door. The bullet came through it and fatally injured the duchess. The recoil raised the barrel of the gun so that the second shot was aimed considerably higher than the first one and the car moved a little bit ahead. This is why the bullet hit Franz Ferdinand. Gavrilo Princip did not aim at the car at all. According to common sense he should not have been successful. A trained killer in the same situation would have aimed for the head and could probably not have shot two fatal shots in one moment. It was done by a dilletante shooting in a trance-like state of shock. An unbelievable accident won over logic and probability.
Count Harrach depicted the moments after the shots: “The car was reversing and from the mouth of Prince sprang a drizzle of blood. While I was pulling my handkerchief to wipe the blood off his mouth, the Duchess screamed: Jesus Christ! What happened to you? And she fell down with her face between Prince’s knees. I did not know she was hit and I thought that she just fainted. The Prince said: “Sofiechen! Don’t die! Stay for my children...
When the car arrived at Konak, the seat of the provincial government, Sofie was already dead. Franz Ferdinand passed away fifteen minutes later. The official version reads: “The Prince was in a state of deep unconscious, breathing weakly, his pupils reacted very poorly, the heartrate was low, the heartbeat was imperceptible, and a small trickle of blood was flowing from the throat wound. In five or six minutes he passed away.”

2.1

HISTORY OF CZECHOSLOVAKIA IN OUTLINE
J. V. Polišenský 

The Fight for National Freedom

The outbreak of the first World War in July 1914 was the result of the tension between Vienna and Belgrade. It is not uninteresting to mention that a year earlier T. G. Masaryk had gone to Belgrade, and returned with Serbian suggestions for the improving of relations between both the states. The government of Austria-Hungary let this occasion pass without notice. The immediate pretext for the declaration of war on Serbia was the assassination of the imperial successor to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Francis Ferdinand. In Bohemia he was known as an adherent of federalism, but at the same time as a supporter of the plans of the German Emperor, William II, and as a rigid autocrat and bigoted Catholic. So Czech public opinion, with its democratic, Slavonic and often anti-clerical tendencies, was in no way disturbed by the assassination. But the war against Serbia and Russia, two countries to which the sympathies of a very great part of the nation were bound, was regarded as an evil only a little lesser than civil war.
The very beginning of the last war-adventure of the Hapsburg monarchy was accompanied by the suppression of all political freedom. The Austro-Hungarian government embarked on a struggle, which from a preventive campaign in the Balkans turned to a world-war of two power-groups, without Parliament and without a free press. Czech politicians took, roughly, two standpoints in this situation. K. Kramář, the representative of Czech Liberalism and Neoslavism, was for the Czech nation’s remaining passive, reckoning that the Russian Army would in any case sooner or later occupy Bohemia and that they would probably put on the throne one of the Romanov dynasty.

2.1

THE GOOD SOLDIER ŠVEJK

Jaroslav Hašek

The Good Soldier Švejk Intervenes in the Great War

‘And so they’ve killed our Ferdinand,’ I said the charwoman to Mr Švejk, who had left military service years before, after having been finally certified by an army medical board as an imbecile, and now lived by selling dogs - ugly, mongrel monstrosities whose pedigrees he forged.
Apart from this occupation he suffered from rheumatism and was at this verv moment rubbing his knees with Elliman’s embrocation. ‘Which Ferdinand, Mrs Müller?’ he asked, going on with the massaging. ‘I know two Ferdinands. One is a messenger at Průša’s, the chemist’s, and once by mistake he drank a bottle of hair oil there. And the other is Ferdinand Kokoška who collects dog manure. Neither of them is any loss.’
‘Oh no, sir, it’s His Imperial Highness, the Archduke Ferdinand, from Konopiště, the fat churchy one.’
‘Jesus Maria!’ exclaimed Švejk. ‘What a grand job! And where did it happen to His Imperial Highness ?’
‘They bumped him off at Sarajevo, sir, with a revolver, you know. He drove there in a car with his Archduchess.’
‘Well, there you have it, Mrs Müller, in a car. Yes, of course, a gentleman like him can afford it, but he never imagines that a drive like that might finish up badly. And at Sarajevo into the bargain! That’s in Bosnia, Mrs Müller. I expect the Turks did it. You know, we never ought to have taken Bosnia and Herzegovina from them. I And so you see, Mrs Müller. His Imperial Highness now rests with the angels. Did he suffer long?’
‘His Imperial Highness was done for at once, sir. You know, a revolver isn’t just a toy. Not long ago there was a gentleman in Nusle, where I come from, who fooled about with a revolver too. And what happened? He shot his whole family and the porter too who came up to see who was doing the shooting there on the third floor.’
‘There are some revolvers, Mrs Müller, that won’t go off even if you bust yourself. There are lots of that type. But for His Imperial Highness I’m sure they must have bought something better. And I wouldn’t mind betting, Mrs Müller, that the chap who did it put on smart togs for the occasion. Potting at an Imperial Highness is no easy job, you know. It’s not like a poacher potting at a gamekeeper. The question is how you get at him. You can’t come near a fine gentleman like that if you’re dressed in rags. You’ve got to wear a topper, so the cops don’t nab you beforehand.’
‘They say there were a lot of them, sir.’
‘Well, of course, Mrs Müller,’ said Švejk, finishing massaging his knees. ‘If you wanted to kill His Imperial Highness or for that matter even His Imperial Majesty the Emperor, you’d certainly need advice. Several heads are wiser than one. One chap advises you this, another that, and then “the deed is crowned with success”, as our national anthem says. The main thing is to watch out for the moment when a gentleman like that rides past. Just like old Luccheni, if you remember, who stabbed our late lamented Elizabeth with a file. He just went for a stroll with her. Who’s going to trust anybody now? After that there’ll be no more strolls for empresses! And a lot of other persons’ll have it coming to them too, you know. You mark my words, Mrs Müller, it’ll be the turn of the Tsar and the Tsarina next and maybe, though God forbid, even of His Imperial Majesty the Emperor, now they’ve started with his uncle. He’s got a lot of enemies, the old gentleman has. Even more than Ferdinand. Not long ago a gentleman was telling us in the pub that a time would come when all these emperors would get done in one after the other, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men wouldn’t save them. After that he hadn’t any money to pay his bill and the landlord had to have him arrested. And he hit the landlord across the jaw once and the policeman twice. So after that they took him away in a drunks’ cart to sober him up again. Well, Mrs Müller, what a world we live in, to be sure! What a loss for Austria again! When I was in the army an infantryman once shot a captain. He loaded his rifle and went into his office. They told him he had no business there, but he went on insisting he must speak to the captain. The captain came out and at once gave him “confined to barracks!” But he took up his rifle and bang it went, plum through the captain’s heart. The bullet flew out of his back and damaged the office into the bargain. It smashed a bottle of ink which messed up the official documents.’
‘Oh, goodness, and what happened to that soldier?’ asked Mrs Müller later, while Švejk was dressing.
‘He hanged himself on his braces,’ said Švejk, cleaning his bowler. ‘And what’s more they weren’t even his. He’d borrowed them from the warder on the excuse that his trousers were falling down. Do you think he should have waited until they shot him? You know, Mrs Müller, in a situation like that anyone would be in a flap. They reduced the warder to the ranks because of it and gave him six months. But he didn’t Bit them out. He ran away to Switzerland and today he’s a preacher of some church or other. Today there are very few honest people about, Mrs Müller. I can imagine that His Imperial Highness, the Archduke Ferdinand, made a mistake in Sarajevo about that chap who shot him. He saw a gentleman and thought, “He must be a decent fellow who’s giving me a cheer.” And instead of that he gave him bang! bang! Did he give him one bang or several, Mrs Müller?’
‘The newspaper says, sir, that His Imperial Highness was riddled like a sieve. He emptied all his cartridges into him.’
‘Well, it goes jolly quickly, Mrs Müller, terribly quickly. I’d buy a Browning for a job like that. It looks like a toy, but in a couple of minutes you can shoot twenty archdukes with it, never mind whether they’re thin or fat. Although, between you and me, Mrs. Müller, a fat archduke’s a better mark than a thin one. You may remember the time they shot that king of theirs in Portugal ? He was a fat chap too. After all, you wouldn’t expect a king to be thin, would you? Well, now I’m going to the pub, The Chalice, and if anyone comes here for that miniature pinscher, which I took an advance on, tell them I’ve got him in my kennels in the country, that I’ve only just cropped his ears, and he mustn’t be moved until they heal up, otherwise they’ll catch cold. Would you please give the key to the house-porter.’
 There was only one guest sitting at The Chalice. It was the plainclothes police officer, Bretschneider, who worked for the Stale Security. The landlord, Palivec, was washing up the glasses and Bretschneider was vainly endeavouring to engage him in serious conversation.
Palivec was notorious for his foul mouth. Every second word of his was ‘arse’ or ‘shit’. But at the same time he was well read and told everyone to read what Victor Hugo wrote on this subject when he described the last answer Napoleon’s Old Guard gave to the British at the Battle of Waterloo.
‘Well, it’s a glorious summer!’ said Bretschneider, embarking on his serious conversation.
‘Shit on everything!’ answered Palivec, putting the glasses away into a cupboard.
‘It’s a fine thing they’ve done to us at Sarajevo,’ said Bretschneider with a faint hope.
‘Which Sarajevo?’ asked Palivec. ‘Do you mean the Ovine cellar at Nusle? They’re always fighting there, you know. Of course it’s Nusle.’
‘At Sarajevo in Bosnia, Mr Palivec. They’ve just shot His Imperial Highness, the Archduke Ferdinand, there. What do you say to that?’ ‘I don’t poke my nose into things like that. They can kiss my arse if I do!’ Palivec replied politely, lighting his pipe. ‘Nowadays, if anyone got mixed up in a business like that, he’d risk breaking his neck. I’m a tradesman and when anyone comes in here and orders a beer I fill up his glass. But Sarajevo, politics or the late lamented Archduke are nothing for people like us. They lead straight to Pankrác.
Bretschneider lapsed into silence and looked disappointedly round the empty pub.
‘Hallo, there used to be a picture of His Imperial Majesty hanging here once,’ he started up again after a while. ‘Just where the mirror hangs now.’
‘Yes, you’re right,’ Palivec replied. ‘It did hang there, but the flies used to shit on it, so I put it away in the attic. You know, somebody might be so free as to pass a remark about it and then there could be unpleasantness. I don’t want that, do I?’
‘In Sarajevo it must have been a pretty ugly business, Mr Palivec.’ This crafty direct question evoked an extremely cautious answer from Palivec: ‘At this time of the year it’s scorching hot in Bosnia and Herzegovina. When I served there, they had to put ice on our lieutenant’s head.’
‘Which regiment did you serve in, Mr Palivec?’
‘I can’t possibly remember anything so unimportant. Bloody nonsense of that sort never interested me and I’ve never bothered my head about it,’ answered Palivec. ‘Curiosity killed a cat.’
Bretschneider finally relapsed into silence. His gloomy face only lit up on the arrival of Švejk who came into the pub, ordered a dark black beer and remarked: ‘Today they’ll be in mourning in Vienna too.’
Bretschneider’s eyes gleamed with hope, and he said laconically: ‘On Konopiště there are ten black flags.’
‘There should be twelve,’ said Švejk, after he had taken a swig. ‘What makes you think twelve?’ asked Bretschneider.
‘To make it a round number. A dozen adds up better, and dozens always come cheaper,’ answered Švejk. 
There was a silence, which Švejk himself broke with a sigh: ‘And so he’s already lying with God and the angels. Glory be! He didn’t even live to be Emperor. When I was serving in the army a general once fell off his horse and killed himself without any fuss. They wanted to help him back onto his horse, to lift him up, but to their surprise he was completely dead. And he was going to be promoted Field Marshal. It happened at a review. These reviews never come to any good. In Sarajevo there was a review too. I remember once at a parade like that I had twenty buttons missing from my uniform and they cent me into solitary confinement for a fortnight, where I lay for two days trussed up like Lazarus. But in the army you must have discipline, otherwise why would anyone bother at all? Our Lieutenant Makovec always used to say: “There’s got to be discipline, you bloody fools, otherwise you’d be climbing about on the trees like monkeys, but the army’s going to make human beings of you, you god-forsaken idiots.” And isn’t that true? Just imagine a park, let’s say at Charles Square, and on every tree an undisciplined soldier! It’s enough to give you a nightmare!’
‘At Sarajevo,’ Bretschneider resumed, ‘it was the Serbs who did it.’ ‘You’re wrong there,’ replied Švejk. ‘It was the Turks, because of Bosnu and Herzegovina.’ And Švejk expounded his views on Austrian foreign policy in the Balkans. In 1912 the Turks lost the war with Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece. They had wanted Austria to help them, and when this didn’t happen, they shot Ferdinand.
‘Do you like the Turks?’ said Švejk, turning to Palivec. ‘Do you like those heathen dogs? You don’t, do you?’
‘One customer is as good as another,’ said Palivec, ‘never mind a Turk. For tradesmen like us politics doesn’t enter into it. Pay for your beer, sit down in my pub and jabber what you like. That’s my principle. It’s all the same to me whether our Ferdinand was done in by a Serb or Turk, Catholic or Moslem, anarchist or Young Czech.’
‘All right now, Mr Palivec,’ resumed Bretschneider, who was again beginning to despair of catching either of them out, ‘but all the same you’ll admit that it’s a great loss for Austria.’
Švejk replied for the landlord: ‘Yes, it’s a loss indeed, there’s no denying it. A shocking loss. You can’t replace Ferdinand by any twopenny-halfpenny idiot. Only he ought to have been still fatter.’
‘What do you meani?’ Bretschneider livened up.
‘What do I mean?’ Švejk answered happily. ‘Just this. If he’d been fatter then of course he’d certainly have had a stroke long ago, when he was chasing those old women at Konopiště when they were collecting firewood and picking mushrooms on his estate, and he wouldn’t have had to die such a shameful death. Just imagine, an uncle of His Imperial Majesty and shot! Why, it’s a scandal! The newspapers are full of it. Years ago in our Budějovice a cattle-dealer called Břetislav Ludvík was stabbed in the market place in a petty squabble. He had a son called Bohuslav, and wherever that lad came to cell his pigs, no one wanted to buy anything from him and everyone said: “That’s the son of that chap who was stabbed. He’s probably a first-class bastard tool” There was nothing for him to do but to jump into the Vltava from that bridge at Krumlov, and they had to drag him out, resurrect him, pump water out of him, and of course he had to die in the arms of the doctor just when he was giving him an injection.’
‘You do make strange comparisons, I must say,’ said Bretschneider significantly. ‘First you talk about Ferdinand and then about a cattle-dealer.’
‘Oh, no, I don’t,’ Švejk defended himself. ‘God forbid my wanting to compare anyone to anybody else. Mr Palivec knows me very well. I’ve never compared anyone to anybody else, have I? But I wouldn’t for the life of me want to be in the skin of that Archduke’s widow. What’s she going to do now? The children are orphans and the family estate at Konopiště has no master. Marry a new Archduke? What would she gel out of that? She’d only go with him to Sarajevo again and be widowed a second time. You know years ago there was a gamekeeper in Zliv near Hluboká. He had a very ugly name - Pinďour. Some poachers shot him, and he left a widow and two little babes. Within a year she married another gamekeeper, Pepík Šavel from Mydlovary. And they shot him too. And then she married a third time, again a gamekeeper, and said: “Third time lucky. If it doesn’t succeed this time, then I don’t know what I shall do.” Well, of course, they shot him too, and with all these gamekeepers she had six children altogether. She even went to the office of His Highness the Prince at Hluboká and complained that she’d had trouble with those gamekeepers. And so they recommended her a fellow called Jareš who was a water bailiff in the watch tower at Ražice. And, can you imagine it? He was drowned when they were fishing the lake out. And she had two children by him. And then she took a pig-gelder from Vodňany and one night he hit her over the head with his axe and went and gave himself up voluntarily. And when they hanged him afterwards at the district court at Písek he bit the priest’s nose and said he didn’t regret anything. And he also said something extremely pasty about His Imperial Majesty.’
‘And you don’t happen to know what he said?’ Bretschneider asked hopefully.
‘I can’t tell you, because no one dared repeal it. But I’m told that it was something so dreadful and horrible that one of the magistrates went mad, and they keep him to this very day in solitary confinement, so that it shan’t get out. It wasn’t the usual sort of insulting remark which people make about His Imperial Majesty when they’re tight.’
‘And what sort of insulting remark do people make about His Imperial Majesty when they’re tight?’ asked Bretschneider.
‘Now come, gentlemen, please change the subject,’ said Palivec. ‘You know, I don’t like it. Somebody might talk out of turn and we’d be sorry for it.’
‘What sort of insulting remarks do people make about His Imperial Majesty when they’re tight?’ Švejk repeated. ‘All kinds. Get drunk, have the Austrian national anthem played and you’ll see what you start saying! You’ll think up such a lot about His Imperial Majesty, that if only half of it were true it would be enough to disgrace him all his life. But the old gentleman really doesn’t deserve it. Just think! His son Rudolf  - lost in tender years, in full flower of his manhood. His wife Elizabeth - stabbed with a file. And then Jan Orth - also lost. His brother, the Emperor of Mexico - put up against a wall and shot in a fortress somewhere. And now again in his old age they’ve shot his uncle. A chap needs iron nerves for that. And then some drunken bastard starts to swear at him. If the balloon went up today I’d go as a volunteer and serve His Imperial Majesty to my last drop of blond.’
Švejk took a deep draught of beer and continued:
‘Do you really think His Imperial Majesty is going to put up with this sort of thing? If so, you don’t know him at all. There’ll have to be a war with the Turks. “You killed my uncle and so I’ll bash your jaw.” War is certain. Serbia and Russia will help us in it. There won’t half be a blond bath.’
Švejk looked beautiful in this prophetic moment. His simple face, smiling like a full moon, beamed with enthusiasm. Everything was so clear to him.
‘It may be,’ he said, continuing his account of Austria’s future, ‘that if we have war with the Turks the Germans’ll attack us, because the Germans and the Turks stick together. You can’t find bigger bastards anywhere. But we can ally ourselves with France which has had a down on Germany ever since 1871. And then the balloon’ll go up. There’ll be war. I won’t say any more.’
Bretschneider stood up and said solemnly:
‘You don’t need to. Just come along with me into the passage. I’ve got something to say to you there.’
Švejk followed the plain-clothes police officer into the passage where a little surprise awaited him. His drinking companion showed him his eaglet and announced that he was arresting him and would take him at once to police headquarters. Švejk tried to explain that the gentleman must be mistaken, that he was completely innocent and that he had not uttered a single word capable of offending anyone.
However, Bretschneider told him that he had in fact committed several criminal offences, including the crime of high treason.
Then they returned to the pub and Švejk said to Palivec:
‘I’ve had five beers, a couple of frankfurters and a roll. Now give me one more slivovice and I must go, because I’m under arrest.’
Bretschneider showed Palivec his eaglet, stared at him for a moment and then asked:
‘Are you married?’ ‘I am.’
‘And can Madam carry on the business for you during your absence?’
 ‘She can.’
‘Then it’s all right, Mr Palivec,’ said Bretschneider gaily. ‘Call your wife here, give the business over to her, and in the evening we’ll come for you.’
‘Take it easy,’ Švejk consoled him. ‘I’m only going there for high treason.’
‘But what am I going for?’ moaned Palivec. ‘After all, I’ve been so careful.’
Bretschneider smiled and said triumphantly:
‘Because you said the flies shitted on His Imperial Majesty. They’ll certainly knock His Imperial Majesty out of your head there.’
And so Švejk left The Chalice under the escort of the plain-clothes police officer. When they went out into the street his face lit up with its good-natured smile and he asked
‘Should I step down from the pavement?’ ‘What do you mean?’
‘I thought as I’m under arrest I’ve no right to walk on the pavement.’
When they passed through the door of police headquarters Švejk said
‘Well, the time passed very pleasantly for us there. Do you often go to The Chalice?’
And while they were escorting Švejk to the reception office Palivec at The Chalice handed over the running of the pub to his weeping wife, consoling her in his own inimitable way:
‘Don’t cry, don’t howl. What can they do to me because of some shit on a picture of His Imperial Majesty?’
And thus it was that the good soldier Švejk intervened in the great war in his own sweet, charming way. It will interest historians that he saw far into the future. If the situation subsequently developed otherwise than he had expounded it at The Chalice we must bear in mind that he had never had any preparatory training in diplomacy.