Stepping onto the world stage just after World War I as the Age of Empires was fading, John O. Crane realized that understanding the complex new age of emerging democracies demanded rigorous “modern intellectual training.” His insight prompted Crane—together with his father, the diplomat and philanthropist Charles R. Crane and journalist Walter Rogers—to create the Institute for Current World Affairs to train an outstanding group of regional specialists who would spread out around the world and inform America’s leaders and public. ICWA has operated continuously since 1925.
John Crane (1899-1982) became the institute’s first fellow, in newly independent Czechoslovakia. Like his father, he was an ardent champion of Czechoslovakian independence and a friend of the country’s first president, Tomas Masaryk. When he arrived in Prague after graduating from Harvard University in 1921, his older brother, Richard Crane, was already there as the first US ambassador to the new country. John Crane would become Masaryk’s personal secretary; they maintained a lifelong friendship, reinforced by family ties: Crane’s sister Frances married Masaryk’s son and future foreign minister, Jan Masaryk, in 1924.
Crane went on to write about Central Europe in numerous articles and his first book The Little Entente (1931), in addition to teaching at the University of Chicago. Together with his wife, Sylvia Crane, he also wrote the monograph Czechoslovakia: Anvil of the Cold War (1990), which covers the country’s independence struggle and development through the post-World War II period.
(Photo courtesy Woods Hole Historical Museum)
“Don’t steal and don’t be afraid” was Tomas Masaryk’s political motto while establishing an independent democracy in the center of Europe from the ashes of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Overwhelmingly elected three times, the philosophy professor served as president until the end of 1935, leaving behind the strongest democracy in Central Europe. One of the first world leaders to sound the alarm over Adolf Hitler’s rise in Germany, he died in 1937, shortly before the Nazi occupation of his country.
The following excerpts are from an account Crane wrote in 1922 about an official tour of the countryside with President Masaryk less than three years after the establishment of Czechoslovakia. The account was later included in Crane’s institute reports (his fellowship spanned 1925-1937).
PRAGUE (September 1922) — We left the Palace in Prague shortly after 8:30 A.M. this morning (Sept. 23rd) by motor. After we got outside of the city, which was done without particular ceremony, the drizzling rain began to let up. We made our way rapidly through Bohemia’s richest agricultural section where the soil has the blackness of Illinois soil…
… At every village through which we passed, people were lined up on each side of the road to greet the President. At the smaller places the ceremony was brief and simple. The President would get out of his car, shake hands with one or two of the officials, small girls in bright Czech costumes would throw flowers in his path, and people would cry “Zder” and “Slava.” If the village were large enough to have a band, the national anthem would be played. This was the type of ceremony performed countless times at the smaller places. Everywhere flags were flying and in spite of the weather, crowds flocked to see the beloved chief executive.
I have read accounts of Washington’s triumphant trips during his presidency and even before. The events of these two days could not have been unlike those in America a hundred and thirty years ago. And I suppose it was a foregone conclusion that in the cases of both Masaryk and Washington that they should be the Fathers of their country. Both men fought the enemies of their people with great skill and sterling success, and both men lived to see the impossible achieved.
… I might add in conclusion that I was struck by the number of times that Mr. Masaryk resorted to humor to relieve the fatiguing formality of the minor prophets, as it were. At one town (I believe that it was Kutná Hora), the chief alderman said that if there were any hard feelings remaining from the old days when the President was seriously and severely opposed to the policy of the local politicians under the Austrian regime, they should be scratched out. In reply, the President said in his naive manner, that he had put nothing down in a book so that there was no scratching out necessary. This natural remark lent color to an otherwise tedious situation.
Top photo: Masaryk speaking to Czechoslovak military volunteers in Stamford, United States (Wikimedia Commons)
