Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [149]
Beneš presented Czechoslovakia’s claims to the Supreme Council on February 5, the day after Venizelos presented Greek claims and the day before Feisal came to speak for Arab independence. He had an easier task than either, because Czechoslovakia had already been recognized by the powers, and most of the territory it wanted—the Austrian provinces of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, and the Hungarian province of Slovakia— was already in its possession. Much of this was due to Beneš himself and the help he got from France.
When he arrived in Paris in 1915, Beneš was an obscure sociology professor from Prague representing something called the Czechoslovak National Council. Four years later he was foreign minister of a new state. Not a romantic figure like Venizelos or Feisal or a great soldier like PiƗsudski, Beneš was short, ordinary-looking and pedantic, a dull writer and an uninspiring speaker. (The French thought this should appeal to the Anglo-Saxons.) He had no apparent hobbies or vices, and few close friends. His relations with Masaryk, to whom he was devoted, were always curiously formal. But Beneš was enormously energetic and efficient. In Paris during the war he cultivated everyone, from Foreign Ministry officials to leading intellectuals, who might help the Czech cause. Where Beneš gained French attention, his charming, handsome colleague the Slovak Milan Štefánik won hearts. Štefánik, already well known before the war in Paris as an astronomer, made a huge impression when he took out French citizenship and become an ace in the French air force.5
As the nationalities of the collapsing Austria-Hungary scrambled to catch the eye of the powers, Beneš worked even harder. He assured the French that his country, unlike its neighbors, was ready for the fight against Bolshevism: “The Czechs alone can stop the movement.” To the British he explained that his goal was “to form a State that would be thoroughly loyal . . . especially to England and which would form a barrier between Germany and the East.” Beneš had a significant bargaining chip: the Czech forces that had come out of prisoner-of-war camps to fight on the Allied side. “I want all your soldiers in France,” Clemenceau told Beneš in June 1918, during the last great German attack. “You can count on me,” Beneš replied, “I will go with you all the way.”
In June the French foreign minister formally recognized the Czechoslovak National Council as the future government of an independent Czechoslovakia and put pressure on France’s allies to do the same. The French also took the lead, then and later, in recognizing Czechoslovakia’s borders, even the tricky ones. Beneš, and it was a measure of his achievement, was invited to sit in at the Supreme War Council to discuss the armistice with Austria-Hungary. Neither the Yugoslavs nor the Poles were invited to join him. By the time the Peace Conference opened, Beneš had established Czechoslovakia on the winning side, its past as part of Austria-Hungary to be mentioned only in passing and with regret. Unlike the Yugoslavs and the Poles, the Czechs had the advantage of speaking with one voice. Between Beneš and Masaryk there was an extraordinary collaboration, which endured until Masaryk’s death. 6
If Beneš was the workhorse, Masaryk was the man who gave Czechoslovakia life. He had the materials to hand: a people with its own Slavic language and literature, and many memories: of the fourteenth century, when the rich and powerful kingdom of Bohemia had reached north almost to the Baltic; of the few golden years when Prague was the capital of the Holy Roman Empire; and then the sadder story from 1526 on as, one by one, the last vestiges of independence were extinguished by the Habsburgs. But this history did not include the Slovaks, who may have spoken a similar