The Slovakophile Relationship of T. G. Masaryk and Karel Kálal prior to 1914

Abstract

When World War I broke out in 1914, few contemporary political observers could have predicted that by the war’s end the Czechs of Austria and the Slovaks of Hungary would find themselves in an independent Czechoslovak state. Yet in 1914 two Czechs — a schoolteacher publicist and a professor-politician — did foresee the possibility of such an eventuality. Shortly after mobilisation was declared, Karel Kálal told his wife that an independent Czech state with Slovakia would result from the war, and in October in the editorial offices of the Prague newspaper Čas he outlined the southern border of Slovakia, including Bratislava as the capital.¹ Also in October, T. G. Masaryk confided to Robert W. Seton-Watson in Rotterdam his plan to restore the historical Bohemian Kingdom, to which would be added the Slovak districts of Hungary.²