about our cause – or at least not unfavourably. That helped us a great deal politically.’156 As to which nation the Jews belong, he asserts that they belong to their own nation, not to the Czech nation, which must be identified with the Czech Reformation. So Jews, by definition cannot be Czech nationalists themselves, ideologically, in their own skins. Likewise, he himself was sympathetic to the Jewish cause, although he was not part of it. Even on the Hilsner issue, he was not initially preoccupied with Hilsner’s guilt, which he early assumed had been dealt with by the court. Rather he was troubled by the blood libel, an ancient superstition, the absurdity and calumny of which he sought to expose. Nationalism, for him, was a concept that preoccupied him. Throughout his writing and career as a politician/statesman, he focused on this ism as a bulwark of democracy, which respects the innate sense of national feeling157. This, for him, demanded refinement, qualification, and even compromise. Self-identification is not only a matter of externally imposed fate, but also a matter of inner will and commitment, although the element of imposition from the outside is also crucial. Situations are experienced both from within, and also witnessed from the outside. The question of who we are does not permit of a single, unshifting response. We are not only concerned with the definition of a nation in itself, nor just with the attachment of the individual to that entity. But, by extension, we must go on to try to delineate the sensibility of the individual in both attaching himself to that sympathy and then attempting to put its aspirations into practice in the real world. The analysis must apply to individuals, to groups to societies, and to nations too. That is why we must proceed dialectically and cautiously, taking into account all the factors that touch on the matter. Such is the case with self-identification, and with any option of group loyalty.
156) Karel Čapek, President Masaryk Tells his Story. New York, 1971, pp. 187-190. 157) T.G. Masaryk, Das neue Europa. Berlin, 1991. Originally published in 1920 (written in 1918).
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