New Series Vol. 2 N° 1 by the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences KOSMAS CZECHOSLOVAK AND CENTRAL EUROPEAN JOURNAL KOSMAS ISSN 1056-005X ©2019 by the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) Kosmas: Czechoslovak and Central European Journal (Formerly Kosmas: Journal of Czechoslovak and Central European Studies, Vols. 1-7, 1982-1988, and Czechoslovak and Central European Journal, Vols. 8-11, (1989-1993). Kosmas is a peer reviewed, multidisciplinary journal that focuses on Czech, Slovak and Central European Studies. It publishes scholarly articles, memoirs, research materials, and belles-lettres (including translations and original works), dealing with the region and its inhabitants, including their communities abroad. It is published twice a year by the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU). Editor: Hugh L. Agnew (The George Washington University) Associate Editors: Mary Hrabík Šámal (Oakland University) Thomas A. Fudge (University of New England, Australia) The editors assume no responsibility for statements of fact or opinion made by contributors. Manuscript submissions and correspondence concerning editorial matters should be sent via email to the editor, Hugh L. Agnew. The email address is [email protected]. Please ensure that you reference “Kosmas” in the subject line of your email. If postal correspondence proves necessary, the postal address of the editor is Hugh L. Agnew, History Department, The George Washington University, 801 22nd St. NW, Washington, DC, 20052 USA. Books for review, book reviews, and all correspondence relating to book reviews should be sent to the associate editor responsible for book reviews, Mary Hrabík Šámal, at the email address [email protected]. If postal correspondence proves necessary, send communications to her at 2130 Babcock, Troy, MI, 48084 USA. For information about ordering current and future issues of Kosmas, please consult the SVU website at: https://kosmas.svu2000.org. ii CONTENTS Preface: The Rebirth of Europe, an International Conference Celebrating the Centenary of the End of World War I and the Beginning of the Paris Peace Conference By Frank Safertal v From the Editor By Hugh L. Agnew vi ARTICLES Welcoming Remarks By Ambassador Piotr Wilczek 1 World War I Treaties: Joys and Tears By Kenneth Janda 4 Independent but Not Alone: The Long Intellectual Journey from Nationhood to Integration By John Palka 19 Romania in the First World War and Beyond By Dennis Deletant 32 The United States and Romania in 1918: President Wilson’s Strategic Vision and American Support for the Rebirth of Europe By Ambassador George Cristian Maior 40 Odrakouštět se? Czechoslovakia, 1918-1938, and the Habsburg Legacy By Hugh LeCaine Agnew 48 Milan R. Štefánik: His Under-Appreciated Contributions to Czecho-Slovak Independence By Kevin J. McNamara 59 The Influence of Congressman Adolph J. Sabath on Woodrow Wilson’s Creation of a New Europe By Miloslav Rechcigl, Jr. 65 Pillars for Peace: Charles J. Vopička and The Konopiště Spy: Two Men who Influenced the Rebirth of Europe By Anna Cooková. 73 iii iv KOSMAS: Czechoslovak and Central European Journal The World of Two Legations: Establishing Czechoslovak-U.S. Diplomatic Relations and the Role of Institutional Experience By Milada Polišenská 84 T. G. Masaryk and the Pittsburgh Declaration By Gregory C. Ference 103 The Pittsburgh Agreement and its Role in the Political Life of Interwar Slovakia By Matej Hanula 114 Slovakia and the Making of Czechoslovakia: Controversies and Legacies By Carol Skalnik Leff 128 Slovakia: One Hundred Years, Six Regime Changes and the Transition to Individual Sovereignty By Zuzana Palovic and Gabriela Bereghazyova 143 Contributors 154 Advice to Prospective Authors 158 Preface: The Rebirth of Europe, an International Conference Celebrating the Centenary of the End of World War I and the Beginning of the Paris Peace Conference Frank Safertal The idea of celebrating the rebirth of Europe in 1918-1919 came from the members of the Wilsonian Club in Washington DC during our 2017 Wilsonian Lecture. Members and friends of the Wilsonian Club felt that we need to celebrate the role of President Woodrow Wilson in the “six months that changed the world,” a Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan called it in her popular study.1 During the autumn of 1918, the Central Powers began to collapse. The German government tried to obtain, unsuccessfully, a peace settlement based on the conditions contained in Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, and maintained it was on this basis that they surrendered. Following negotiations, the Allied powers and Germany signed an armistice, which came into effect on 11 November 1918, signaling the end of “the war to end all wars.” For the following six months, the Paris Peace Conference was the world’s most important business. It was also a most important time for the new national states that President Wilson outlined in his Fourteen Points and later proclamations. Had the Central Powers won the war, Europe and the world would definitely look different today. To celebrate the centenary of the end of the war and beginning of the peace negotiations, the conference “The Rebirth of Europe” was organized by a number of associations and individuals such as the Wilsonian Club and the Washington, DC chapter of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences, which provided a substantial financial grant. The Polish American Congress and other organizations supported the conference with speakers and refreshments. We are grateful for the support and participation of the Embassies of Poland, Romania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. We are especially grateful to the Embassy of Slovakia which allowed us to use their magnificent facility for the conference. We were able to assemble papers and contributions from nineteen leading international historians and keynote addresses from four senior diplomats, here in Washington DC. Most of those presentations are available, thanks to Professor Hugh Agnew, who collected and edited the conference papers for publication in Kosmas. We trust that you will enjoy the papers and presentations of the conference. Thank you for your participation and contributions. Frank Safertal, President Wilsonian Club, Washington DC 1 Margaret MacMillan, Paris, 1919: Six Months that Changed the World (New York: Random House, 2001). v From the Editor Hugh L. Agnew This volume of Kosmas contains most of the presentations given at a conference held in Washington, DC in June, 2018, to celebrate the centenary of the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Paris Peace Conference a few months later, a conference that would re-shape the map Central and Eastern Europe. Co-sponsoring the conference were the embassies of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Romania, each of them countries whose fates were deeply marked by the events commemorated by it. We are grateful that their excellencies Ambassadors Piotr Wilczek of Poland and George Cristian Maior agreed to include their presentations in this volume. We are also very pleased that so many of the other presenters submitted written versions of their remarks so that you, the reader, can get quite an accurate grasp of the subject matter of the conversations that took place there. The contributions fell naturally into several parts. To begin with, Kenneth Janda and John Palka took rather sweeping and general approaches to the issues that the centenary of 1918 evokes: Professor Janda with his detailed study of the various peace treaties subsumed under the general rubric of “The Peace of Paris,” and Professor Palka with his reflections on the long journey from the rise of national consciousness and identity, to the striving for a national state, to the desire for wider integration of that polity into the family of European nations. Other papers focused on issues concerning specific states in the region and their experiences during the First World War. The contributions of Professor Dennis Deletant and Ambassador George Cristian Maior discuss Romania’s experiences during the war, and its place and contribution to Woodrow Wilson’s vision of a postwar Europe, respectively. My own contribution kicks off a section dealing with Czechoslovakia by considering what the new state inherited from the Austro-Hungarian Empire of which it had been a part for so long. There follow several papers looking at aspects of the emergence of that new state, bringing to light the contributions of specific individuals in the common cause. Kevin McNamara highlights the specific, but not always recognized, contributions of the Slovak member of the exile triumvirate that came to steer the activities of the Czechoslovak National Council, Milan R. Štefánik. The work of Masaryk, Beneš, and Štefánik would not have been successful without winning the support of the important political leaders among the Allied and Associated Powers, a task in which they had influential allies in political circles in France, Britain, and the USA. Miloslav Rechcigl provides an account of the efforts of US Congressman Adolph J. Sabath, whose support for Bohemian, later Czechoslovak, independence was crucial to the movement’s success in the United States. His contribution is complemented by Anna Cooková’s discussion of the contributions of Charles J. Vopička and an unnamed acquaintance from his home village in Bohemia to the successful accomplishment of Czechoslovak independence. This section is rounded off by Milada Polišenská’s thorough exploration of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Czechoslovakia and the United States and the activities of the first representatives from each to the vi From the Editor vii other in the first years of Czechoslovakia’s independent existence. The remaining papers explore various aspects of Slovakia’s experience, starting with the efforts of Slovak-Americans to gain an explicit commitment to their autonomy in a new common state with the Czechs through the Pittsburgh Agreement, discussed in Gregory Ference’s contribution. The role played by the Pittsburgh Agreement in politics in the interwar years in Czechoslovakia is thoroughly analyzed by Matej Hanula’s article.