Good morning.
TALKS WITH T.G. MASARYK
Subtitles from Register
Good morning, Mr. President.
Morning is long gone.
- Tea ? - Thank you.
Are you worried ?
I didn't know you liked this kind of music.
Me neither.
Yes. I am worried. About Olga.
- That actress ? - She's not "that actress"...
I am sorry. What's wrong with her ?
She and Dr. Steinbach, whom you know, made a trip to Zbraslav.
- They were driving too fast. - And she was driving...
Yes, she was, apparently overestimating her abilities.
Is she hurt ?
No concussion, but the wound on her head took really long to stitch.
Unfortunately, I have to leave today.
- Of course. - I am sorry.
Although Dr. Steinbach is with her now and apparently also some other man...
But, I have to go.
How did you like the film yesterday ?
Metropolis ! Remarkable !
Artificial people, robots... You like that, don't you ?
Yes, I like that. I like the topic of a man vs his creation.
A man's creation revolt.
Like Adam and Eve against God in paradise ?
Yes. Like that.
Čapek, do you make up your plays or are they based on truth ?
- You like that revolt, don't you ? - It depends.
I find revolt important.
You can't stop people discovering things.
But we can't foresee where it will lead.
Like Adam and Eve couldn't.
I apologise, but I'll have to go soon.
- What time does the train depart ? - 12:21.
I really need to discuss some points of our book.
You are not yet happy with the text.
I do value the comments of your family and friends,
but we must finalize the whole process, provide the final version.
Have you read the papers ? I didn't manage.
- You mean politics ? - No, I don't.
Yes, I did.
I took some notes.
A man appeared in the court in Martin.
His young wife cheated on him. He killed her with an axe.
At the court he said he'd do it again. He was sentenced to death.
Have you loved someone so much that you could kill ?
I don't know.
The papers publish the lists of people
who will be pardoned at the occasion of the Republic's anniversary.
- How many ? - 20, 30 names a day.
Altogether many.
What would you do if that murderer asked you for the pardon ?
I have no idea.
Try to imagine.
It's hard. I don't know !
Anything else in the papers ?
Your statues unveiled everywhere.
Rolínek's one in Kunštát is 15 m tall.
- I shall grant him that pardon. - The French paper is even poetic:
The age of this President Liberator is like a beautiful evening...
It takes me longer to decide than him to kill, but I know I'll do it.
At night I had an idea in connection with the anniversary.
We need 50 years of undisturbed growth
to get where we wish to be already today,
then we won't have to be afraid of anything and anybody.
With our geographical position, it won't be easy.
I promised that the new division of Central Europe will bring peace.
That all the hatred, reinforced by the war, will disappear.
But instead, it became even deeper.
Germans, Austrians, Hungarians and even Poles
hate us more than before 1918.
The Great Powers wanted cooperation. But instead, all those small states
introduced protectionist policies and grew more chauvinistic.
We have cut the bonds with the Austrian monarchy,
but haven't established any new economic order in Central Europe.
- Are you afraid of Germans, Čapek ? - Aren't you ?
Germans have a slogan: We don't fear anyone except God.
- Exactly. - But I like it.
It's good to have a self-confident and strong neighbour.
If they are strong, we must be strong too.
In such a partnership of strength it's easier to communicate.
With an insecure and unclear weakling, you won't go far.
My grandchildren, Olga's sons, left it here.
I suspected it was yours.
I know the German issue is the key one for the Republic.
As a state, we don't really have any other issue.
But you can never rebuild Germans into Czechs.
You can rebuild them into Czechoslovaks.
Let them speak their own language and add the freedom.
If the freedom is better than what they have, you win.
I don't want to fight with them or anyone else about a nationality.
What I offer is freedom and social justice.
And what if they wouldn't care for it ?
It's me who decides here, Čapek. It doesn't depend on them !
You know me. I am not just an idealist. I know politics.
When the southern states wanted to break away,
Washington didn't let them and it ended as the Civil war.
If our Germans would want to break away we wouldn't let them either.
We won't let them destroy our homeland.
But until then,
we have to do our best to make them feel at home here.
- And if they wouldn't want ? - Then a war will be the only solution.
That's the problem. Wells once told me in London:
- You can't cast them out. - That's true.
Germans will never accept their defeat, or the existence of our republic.
They still have many young men excited by weapons.
It is the most militant nation in Europe.
- We have defeated them in the war. - That's what they don't respect.
They say: you Czechs haven't fought a single fight with us.
You've never defeated us and have no right control us after the war.
Victory, defeat...
I want to suggest something to you, Mr. President.
We are at the end of the book, after a year of work,
and I consider it to be your book as much as mine.
So I suggest to divide the fee fifty-fifty.
My God, Čapek. You wrote it, I just supplied the material.
But nobody has ever got such a material.
Fifty-fifty ? Agreed ? Otherwise this job won't bring me any satisfaction.
I never push on you. But I do now.
Promise me you'll think it over.
-Have the book cost you a lot of work ? - Yes, but I am used to work.
Work brings both victories and failures.
- You should be able to take both. - Sure.
Then this one is a failure.
Well...
- The book won't be published. - I beg your pardon ?
I didn't know how to tell you,
but I decided already yesterday.
It can't be published.
Alice, my daughter insists on it, Jan and many other think the same.
- They say it is inappropriate. - Inappropriate ? How ?
Mostly because of the chapter about love and marriage.
It's not right for a president to speak about women.
About love between a man and a woman.
But you are a human, not a monster.
I do not agree with them. I think the opposite.
You wrote much less, than what I told you and what I think...
Anyhow, it mustn't be published.
It's a lost deal.
How many times did you have to rewrite it ? Ten ? Hundred ?
You wanted to make a name on it.
With all due respect, Mr. President, that book was your idea.
I don't think I deserve to be treated like this.
And we can also always cancel that chapter.
Oh, cancel... the chapter.
Let's go for a walk.
I like the grassfield in autumn.
Everybody thinks it's dying, but it's full of life.
As a boy I fed a goat henbane.
- It died. - Henbane is poisonous.
As an educated city man you know that, but I was just a village rascal.
Each flower is different, but they all need loving care, just like people.
- I never had time for such things. - Sorry, Mr. President.
Centaurium erythraea, a very rare herb.
Easily overlooked and great for your gallbladder.
Capek...
- You have a better sight... - It's your son.
Our Jan... the London ambassador.
He stayed long at the bonfire yesterday.
Probably has some sweetheart in the village.
Jan is not sure about your book, but it's Alice who dislikes it most.
She is very strict. After me.
A firstborn, she always wanted to be like me.
Look at this !
Can you tell which one is mine ?
This one ?
Wrong ! It's hers.
- I mistook it in the morning too. - How did you find out ?
How ?
You see ? That's how I found out.
She couldn't take the fact she'd never be a professor of philosophy.
Wearing her heart on her sleeve. Charlie brought her up that way.
They both thought it would do.
She made it hard for herself.
If she was to write, then about nothing less important than God.
But after ten sentences she had nothing more to say.
She asked me: How is it possible, dad ?
After all, I am yours and mom's daughter.
Finally she gave up and started to worry about her looks... Her !
She was ashamed to wear glasses
but couldn't recognize people on the street.
I used to tell her, sweetheart, beauty is an inner light.
But she is a woman. She didn't believe me.
With her mom we though: She'd get married and all would change.
She never has.
I taught her to value her freedom. For her, men ceased to exist.
She doesn't mean it like that, Čapek.
She's terrible. Isn't she ?
- Tell me ! - Yes, she is terrible.
We, Masaryks, are terrible.
It's not easy for me with her either, believe me !
She wants to be my conscience.
I oppose: You don't have to safeguard my legacy, my dear.
- I am still alive ! - But I am alive too, Mr. President.
What if the book is better than she can understand ?
What are you scribbling there ?
As I said, it's all over.
- Are you working on a new book ? - Detective stories.
Maybe not really detective...
An offender is not important here.
What is important are the people and their hidden beliefs.
- Do you enjoy writing ? - I learnt to enjoy it.
Others are in pain when writing. It hurts me too sometimes.
But I don't mind.
If you want to be a writer, you have to write more than you live.
Like let's say at a hot summer day, people are sunbathing at a lake
and me, sitting at home with my feet in a washtub,
writing a story about people sunbathing at a lake.
Not many people have dreamt up so many beautiful lives as I have.
But once in a blue moon a miracle happens.
You feel something has got inside you.
It's like a vertigo.
A feeling that I don't control it. That something is writing through me.
I've never enjoyed writing.
When I needed to say something I sat down and wrote.
But I always wanted to get over it as soon as possible.
Nobody would ever dare to say my books are poor though.
Only Suicide was good.
I think it's a masterpiece.
Timeless.
Have you ever wanted to take your own life ?
I don't think so... No.
Didn't you want to die when you were young ?
When I was young, I felt older than ever.
I think a young man is dull.
Unable to imagine, that one day he will be dead.
Always waiting for something.
- For the world to change by itself. - Haven't you even try to imagine ?
What would it be like ? By your own hand...
- Yes, I have. - You see ?
Let's say, because of a woman ?
Four years ago, when my mother was dying...
A student of mine shot himself in mouth.
His name was Flesch. He left me some money.
- I talked about him before. - Yes.
I saw his body at pathology.
No blood on his face, nothing to be seen.
But his expression...
I expected the horror of someone
who lost faith and fell into desperation.
But he was smiling.
When he was taking his own life, without God, he was smiling.
- Do you understand that ? - I think I do.
- Smile ! - Pardon me ?
Smile !
No !
Nobody can smile like he did at that moment.
- What are you thinking about ? - Do you really want to know ?
First: Borový is planning the campaign.
Second: the ads for the papers are ready.
And third: our book is a gift to the Republic's decennary.
That's what I am thinking about.
You were sick when you were young. You told me about it but I forgot.
Scarlet fever ate my spine away. My back is made of stone.
My father, a doctor, told me I would die soon.
I had a girlfriend I loved. I didn't marry her, not to destroy her life.
After two years doctors told me I shall live.
Your girlfriend must have been happy.
She got married in the meantime. I think she is happy...
Suicide ?
I couldn't think of it now.
If only because of my mother...
The pain taught me to live for work. We must live whatever happens.
It also taught me
that what matters is what you do for the others.
- That's a clever opinion. - It's true.
You live among the characters you made up yourself. Not real people.
I think you are real enough.
No. You made me up too.
How old were you, Čapek, when you left home ?
Eleven. When I was sent to a high school in Hradec.
I was 14.
I found out I could earn my living and stopped snooping on the rich.
- But you graduated in philosophy ! - Really just graduated...
You never wanted to make money with it ?
I did but I didn't get habilitation. I couldn't teach.
What time is it, Čapek ?
Five to eleven.
You are a philosopher like me. And I am a journalist like you.
I always preferred writing newspaper articles to preparing my lectures.
I like to encounter new things
and discuss them with all people at once.
Newspapers is the best way how to share things quickly.
I am not sure.
People want a journalist to write things long known.
Only few people want to learn about new things.
The rest prefer to just reconfirm old things.
Radiojournal station broadcasting continues
with the news of Czechoslovak press agency.
Ministry of justice prepared
a concept of amnesty at the occasion of the Republic's decennary...
Ten years. Time flies.
- How are you going to celebrate ? - I don't celebrate 28 October.
We founded the Republic two weeks earlier abroad,
when the Great Powers approved our temporary government.
That was important ! Not what the crowds in Prague were doing.
Beneš and me will also meet at Lány two weeks earlier.
At a small dinner party.
That's all.
Capek, may I ask you ?
I'll never be able to explain this to all those Prague "October men".
Rašín was the worst, thinking the Republic existed only thanks to him.
Thanks to the first Republic's act he had compiled
and the brass band he had sent to the streets for people to stay calm.
Without our resistance abroad, he'd be sent back to prison the same day.
Švehla was the only real man among them.
But he had a terrible life style: sleeping at day, working at night.
And all the booze and cigars.
He also paid for it soon enough.
Rasin: the dictator.
He didn't like people.
If he wasn't assassinated,
he'd become a friend of Mussolini and Czech fascists.
And Stribrny: womanizer and drunkard,
totally unable to control himself.
Soukup: a decent man,
but he'd bore you to death in 5 minutes.
And srobar, for Slovaks ! In 1918, they had no politics of their own yet.
They always just sent someone to Prague to speak for all of them at once !
Terrible.
And what did you do in 1918, Čapek ?
I was in Narodni listy.
I knew Benes already before the war. He was my teacher at the university.
Beneš was our core person abroad. I was the brains, Beneš was the sward.
Nobody at German's side had worked so hard during the war as he had.
- Have you ever distrusted him ? - You know I doubt everything.
Of course I have. We don't live in paradise. We live on Earth.
But I knew Benes as a man,
who became one with the fate of this country.
Still it's unbelievable.
In 1915, before Benes joined you in dismantling Austria
I was going to Spain. He found out somehow and asked me
to take some documents with me. Maybe they were for you.
Many people were delivering messages back and forth.
Two of you had achieved so much. With Štefánik and few others.
I can't think of another place where the few like you accomplished so much.
You see and maybe we could do even more.
- Do you think so ? - You always can do more.
Capek !
I'll tell you something I haven't said to anyone else.
When I can't sleep at night and my eyes get too tired to read,
I often think about one thing.
I never regret anything,
but maybe back in 1917 in Russia I made a mistake.
I had 20 thousand fully armed men, which was quite a lot for that time.
Maybe I should have rather moved against Moscow or St Petersburg.
Those days I believed we shouldn't meddle in Russian affairs at any price.
But if I'd had meddled, Russia might be different today.
As a democrat you didn't have a choice.
Yes I did.
I didn't return from America as a democrat back in 1918,
or even as a democratic president.
I had no idea I was going to be elected.
When I got the telegram, I was stunned.
I was returning as a dictator.
Nobody, including me, thought the monarchy would capitulate so soon.
We were sure French will have to move all the way to Berlin
to pay Germans back for the defeat at Sedan.
We agreed I'd move with them in the head of the legions.
Berlin then Dresden and Prague.
I wanted to win our Prague back from Germans.
Sorry to interrupt you but it's going to rain. A storm is coming.
Oh, Capek. Let's go then.
Someone passed away.
- Do you know why I left Catholics ? - No, I don't know.
Their religion never changes.
While Protestantism is a continuous reform.
- Catholic God doesn't change. - Exactly ! And that's wrong.
When the whole world and universe is on move, the God should move too.
It's logical. God can't separate himself from his own creation.
Be careful not to reform that God of yours to death !
Finally you'll find out there is no God anymore.
That can happen.
- Aren't you a bit of disbeliever ? - No, I am not.
Conscience or God, it's the same thing.
11:20. Time flies.
Isn't it strange ? Two Czechs like us, here, in an almost strange land
just 10 years after the war... and it feels we've ever been here.
My father would never believe it would be all ours one day.
Be careful, Čapek. I am no Czech. I'm Slovak.
You know, a Moravian Slovak ! A Czechoslovak really !
You're right. I meant the Czechoslovak nation. All the people.
Like the American nation consists of all the people of America.
We Czechs in Prague think that as the state was formed mainly there,
it will be always like that. It will somehow belong to us.
I think you are the main winner of the war.
It was you who said to the Allies:
"A chain of new democratic states will emerge in Central Europe,
better ones than the old empires. And that's the sense of the war."
- That's true. - It's great.
Except Czechoslovakia, no other democracies were founded, though.
But such tendency was established.
You also tasked the Great Powers
to watch Germany not to become too strong again after the war.
- True. - They didn't listen.
But that's the deal. What do you expect ?
If a small nation and state wants to win, it has to bet a lot.
- Germans are not weak anymore. - They're still manageable.
Your prediction of global revolution of heads and hearts hasn't come true.
- Except for maybe here. - 1918 brought a new space.
It would have been cowardly not to use the chance back then.
But your calculation had too many variables, I think.
Too many strange wills hard to influence altogether.
All my life I've influenced people in the same way.
I offer them my thoughts. Explain where they come from. And discuss them.
Before the war, not many discussed with you here.
- What if it happens again ? - Don't panic !
When the war started, it was much harder than today, in 1928.
You're right. You wanted us to be something like another Switzerland.
A great idea, but it hasn't happened yet.
But it's also in progress ! Who are the Swiss ?
Germans, French and Italians, living outside their motherlands.
They are doing better in Switzerland than they would with their own nations.
And the Germans here would eventually feel exactly the same.
I wish you were right. It's a beautiful music of the future.
But I am talking about future.
- Capek ! - Thank you very much. Nice.
I like this.
- What ? - To have more options.
I like to find myself on the crossroads suddenly not knowing which way to go.
When the brains starts to fall short. Because it encounters the unknown.
It's almost a sort of anxiety.
A light blue pain.
- And what can you do about it ? - Sorry ?
That anxiety, the pain.
To get rid of it and to find the way ?
By feeling pain, yours or someone else's, you're already doing something.
Maybe more than someone comfortably snuggled down in a bed.
So the pain doesn't disappear ?
Sometimes it doesn't.
A pain is senseless. It should disappear.
- Take your shoes off, Čapek. - Pardon me ?
We'll walk barefoot.
The grass is wet, it will be pleasant.
Very pleasant...
Well...
What was the family name of your girlfriend Olga again ?
Scheinpflugová...
Do you love her ?
I had loved Charlie for 45 years. You didn't know her.
I think I understand how much she had meant for you.
Nobody can understand that. I didn't either before.
That a man and a woman can share everything.
Talk about everything, do everything.
Think as one, not two people.
My parents weren't like that.
My mom was much better and stronger than my dad.
He was no match for her. He was just a coachman.
She, as a servant, stood much higher.
When he asked authorities to let me study in Brno,
he squeezed his hat.
I stood next to him watching his palms sweating and I hated him for that.
He cursed at the rich at home
but took his hat off to them.
I said I'd never be like that.
A lonely man can't be strong. Many people thing they'd manage.
But I know what I am talking about.
Solitude is crazy.
When you're lonely, you can't tell whether you haven't got crazy yet.
All the hermits searching God in desert eventually got crazy in their solitude.
Charlie was different.
She was very balanced.
I've never met a person like her before, moreover a woman.
I was sure to end up as a bachelor, absorbed by science and books.
Charlie calmed me down.
She gave me balance.
With her, I could keep my freedom.
For the first time, I met a woman, who treated me as equal.
We have it in our book. Or rather... we had.
You can't put it in any book.
I saved her friend from drowning, almost drowning myself.
Guess what she told me, when I was revived.
"Don't think I shall admire you.
Every decent man would do the same."
Did I tell you
what were her last words before passing away ?
No, I haven't told anyone.
Ever.
She said:
"You've never surrendered. Good."
And then: "You'll never be alone.
I'll always be...
I'll always be with you."
That's beautiful.
Mr. President,
let's publish it.
- And what ? - Our book.
Oh, Capek...
- Why didn't you go to see Olga ? - I told you ! I was going very soon !
Why didn't' t you go immediately ? I would, if I were you.
You must worry her love for you is crumbling, son !
If you don't go now, you can publish 50 books
and she'll still find another man, even with the wound on her head.
Capek, wait !
Capek !
Come on.
You decide, just like that, there'll be no book, wasting a year of my work.
You don't care about the other person's feelings, worries,
people are looking forward to the book. It will be a shame.
Tell me more about your Olga.
Olga...
- Olga is complicated. - I thought you liked it.
Oh, come on.
She gets marriage proposals, doesn't she ?
Yes...
Time to time.
Some Frenchman wanted to marry her, she wanted too.
So I wished her luck. But she swallowed some pills.
Since then we are just good friends.
I am not a theatre expert like you. Actors have always scared me.
If an actor was good, I believed him in his role.
But it was a shock to find out
that as a human being he was completely different.
I hated the idea, you couldn't tell who is who, if an actor was good.
What was a poem and what was life.
If an actor is good the truth is on the stage, I'd say.
Is Olga a good actress ?
How did you meet her ?
When did you realize, it was the woman of your life ?
That came later.
I first met her after a show, waiting in front of the theatre.
She wore that paper dress. Remember ? They were in fashion after the war.
She was 17.
I said to her: "I need your voice, young lady."
Her voice ?
I wanted to hear how my Mimi would sound in The Bandit.
And ? Would you like to marry her ?
First I wanted, then I didn't and now I don't know what I want.
I don't know.
- Capek ! - Now Dr. Steinbach is with her.
He takes care of her, when she needs help.
And I am here with you to hear you don't need my help.
You'll go now to see her and settle things in Prague.
So you won't let me publish that book ?
No.
You always blame me of asking you too ordinary questions.
And don't you agree ?
Okay then.
How about your mother ?
How did you feel, when people told you
she didn't have you with your father ? With the coachman ?
My mother... I loved her.
How did you feel when papers wrote you were a bastard ?
What did you think of her ?
Be careful, Capek !
As I said, I was ashamed of my dad for his humility.
But my mother was a different story.
What did you think of her ?
Dear friend,
I've noticed long ago how much you'd like to be my son.
- I beg your pardon ? - But I've got one already.
All the servility of yours from the beginning...
"Please, Mr. President, change my questions as you wish !"
Mr. Capek lets Mr. Masaryk ask his own questions !
I wanted to serve you, that's true... But you liked it !
"Please, Mr. President, find a task for me, something I could do for you !"
A real man knows what his task is !
I wished to be useful for the Republic. I just asked you how to do it !
You didn't want to serve the state, you wanted to serve me !
And you liked it. I am sorry for you. You are so lonely.
- Pardon me ? - You are alone.
Unlike you, I have a family.
But they have no time for you. And either do you for them !
You even left your beloved Charlie ! At the beginning of the war !
When you went to the exile to build this state.
You left your wife and children here ! And off you went.
I had two important things in life:
my family and my work.
When I had to chose one, it took me this to decide...
I owe them for that till today.
Mainly to my dear late Charlotte.
Also to Eliska, she pays for it till today.
I destroyed her somehow.
She's only known duty in her life, no joy.
And it's my fault.
And I owe to our late Herbert too.
And Jan, who tries to find himself all his life.
I wish he did one day.
And to the youngest, Olga, who joined me to the exile
and almost got crazy
from the amount of work she had to do for me.
And now, you too, Čapek.
Can't you forgive me at least ?
- Did you fight as a boy ? - No, I didn't.
I did. In a bunch or alone, it didn't matter.
Alone against everybody.
People in the crowd will never know how great it is to get a thrashing.
Alone. When you are right.
Not everybody can take what you can.
People have no idea what they can take.
But when you bend them, you find out they can take really a lot.
I didn't know this before even about myself.
Read.
Come on !
"Thank you for your long letter. I feel you really love me.
We should respect my family, because of my position.
But we must and shall find the way, how to live together, Ola.
Once you are here we both shall calm down."
There is another woman, Čapek. Not only yours...
Have you read Goethe ?
When he was very old, like me today,
he met a girl...
Ulrike von Levetzow.
She was 17.
Her name is Oldra.
Almost like your actress.
Ulrike is German for Oldra.
I know only one Oldra...
I am writing a book with her too.
What about ?
About love.
About what I've been through. Different from yours.
It's a novel. I always wanted to write a novel. Since I was 16.
- With a lesson. - Novels are not written for lessons.
Really ? And what for ?
For beauty, for love, for a beauty of hope.
I've never read books to find beauty.
I studied novels to learn from them.
About the people living in certain place and time.
I see. So now you're writing a novel... with Oldra.
- You want to read a piece ? - No, maybe when it's ready.
Thank you.
How old is she ?
Same age as our Jan, I suppose. Or you.
I know, she could be my daughter.
After Charlotte passed away,
it took me long to realize there were other women.
Something started to change already during the war.
Štefánik had an educated and beautiful girlfriend in Paris,
an Italian marquise.
Things happened...
Milan had disliked me since, even politically.
I've known Oldra for a long time,
but she came into my life only this summer.
What Alice and the others mind about in your book
is not you or some chapter,
but the fact, that on the background of all my words about love is her.
They call her "a merry lady"... try to banish her from here and Lány.
But Oldra is still coming !
- When ? - Tomorrow.
Are you also reading together ?
Our aim is to work on the novel
about me and all I've been through.
I suppose you are the main hero.
Oldra will combine Havlicek, Comenius and St Paul.
And hopefully me too.
It sounds monumental.
I only hope there will be space in it for some truth about you too.
Čapek, do you see those birds ?
- Yes. - Are they pigeons ?
Magpies, I'd say.
Are you sure ?
Pigeon flies differently.
- Did you look carefully ? - I did. Magpies.
Okay. Now you said what the truth is.
You named its both main features. The truth is what we can believe,
what we first observed or experienced and later verified.
What we got from our eyes to our heads and finally to our hearts.
That's what the truth is.
- You are writing detective stories. - Yes.
What is the truth about a crime ?
When someone kills or just cheats ?
What is the truth about that act ?
Is it the general opinion of the people around ?
Even the most horrible crime doesn't say the truth about its offender.
Only the way he or she goes about the crime brings the truth.
What conclusion a person draws from the crime. That's the truth.
Complex questions can be answered only by the whole human life.
The truth exists. But it's different from what people mostly imagine.
I tell you an example.
Our Alice and the crowds of people seeing me as a Daddy.
They all think I have never told a lie in my life.
And isn't it the truth ?
You know, what Alice often says ?
"You've always been an incarnation of truth and conscience.
And now you're secretly meeting a strange woman in a hotel."
I can't explain it. I don't even know whether it's worth explaining.
I was brought up with the idea,
that physical love was something unclean, not to be seen by others,
done in secret, with the only aim to conceive.
Charlie thought the same way
and we had lived like that for 45 years in mutual love.
With Oldra I have understood the core of physical love.
Passion can't be low. Passion is natural.
Only abuse of the nature can be low.
It's like if you'd apologize
for sleeping, eating or walking.
A sin comes from the soul, not from the body.
Body is clean. Natural.
Take a marriage. Hypocrites profess the legal formality of the marriage.
But that's not what it is about between a man and a woman.
The key is to stay together, come rain or shine. With a paper or without.
I am not surprised Alice doesn't like your opinion.
But I agree with you.
You also live with Olga neither in a celibate nor a marriage, don't you ?
One could say about many people that they have no soul.
You've always got a soul,
but discovered the body only at the end. Sorry.
What for ?
Look, maybe I got crazy
but being with this woman
is more true for me than anything else.
It's difficult to put this truth into words.
You can rather feel it, live it. You're deserving it.
Who knows what the truth about two of us will be in a couple of years ?
Mr. President,
we have to publish that book.
Please. Let me have my way.
O.K. Let it be your way.
Your way.
Why do I believe in democracy ?
I believe in democracy...
Because I believe in people.
In their value.
In their immortal soul.
I believe in democracy as I am a believer.
Democracy means to connect with people because you like them.
Two eternities meet in democracy: love to the Creator and love to a man.
The Republic will be as good as the majority of people in it.
It's important for people to care about what's happening around them.
And when they dislike something, not just to complain,
but start to act.
Talking is not the same as acting.
People have never understood me.
But when I brought them the Republic from the USA, everybody said:
Look ! Our Daddy.
They meant well.
But it wasn't the truth. What kind of Daddy am I ?
How shall you title the book, Capek ?
Capek's interview with...
With the Daddy.
- I must go now. - Of course.
Good luck.
- Good luck to you too. - Thank you.
Could you please play that record once more ?
The one you played before ?
Oh, I didn't know you liked that kind of music.
Neither did I.
The first part of the Talks with T. G. Masaryk,
The Age of Youth was published at Christmas 1928.
Karel Capek completed the whole book in 1935.
The book Oldra Sedlmayerova was writing with the president Masaryk
has never come into being.
TALKS WITH T.G. MASARYK
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