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Caught in Austria by World War I, he unwillingly served in the Austro-Hungarian infantry, was nearly sentenced to death for "political unreliability." When the Old Man became the head of the state, Jan's spirit of adventure had to be channeled into more representative endeavors. He worked in the Prague Foreign Office, as chargé d'affaires in Washington, as Dr. Benes' private secretary, in the Czech legation in London. From 1925 until he resigned in protest against the Munich deal, he was Czechoslovak envoy to the Court of St. James's. In a dinner speech after his resignation Jan Masaryk said, in spite of everything: "I want nothing better for the world than that all countries should have the same qualities as these islands of England."
For this western orientation he had already been prepared by his father. T.G.M., in a life work of comparative sociology, had done more than anyone else to convince the Czech people that their future was not tied to the blood brethren in the East but to the West's bright horizons. Though Old Masaryk was the first European statesman to realize that Russian Bolshevism was here to stay, and must be reckoned with as a force in firm control of a mighty world power, he never fell for Pan-Slavism, unceasingly taught his people to consider themselves a part of the democratic, Christian, western world.
Thomas G. Masaryk's faithful aide, never-tiring Dr. Eduard Benes, was the second-greatest intellectual influence on Jan's life—the father's pupil teaching the father's son. As Thomas Masaryk's Foreign Minister, and later when he became President himself, Dr. Benes encouraged Jan's wider western orientation; personally Benes was inclined to put all Czech eggs into the French basket.
Accordingly, Dr. Benes' despair over the French betrayal at Munich was bottomless. What Jan Masaryk, at home in the Anglo-Saxon world, rightly thought a mistake, French-oriented Dr. Benes considered a crime. He was shocked to the roots of his being. It will take much, perhaps more than the West ever can offer, to satisfy Dr. Benes that the Czechs can again rely on Western guarantees.
From Munich to Moscow. Once the Nazi pressure is removed from the center, energy will radiate from the East and the West—from Moscow and from Washington. Czechoslovakia's response may commit the Continent.
Summarizing, in February 1939, what had been done to his country, scholarly Diplomat Benes found for the western democracies the tough descriptive term "decadence." A few weeks later, Hitler slept in the castle of Prague. When post-Munich Czechoslovakia was carved to pieces, Soviet Russia recognized "independent" Slovakia. But at that moment, the "decadent" democracies began to wake up from pacifist follies and appeasement nightmares. Their encouragement put life into the Czechoslovak Government in Exile.