Lions or foxes

heroes or lackeys?

Harald G. Skilling

pp. 3-22

in: Harald G. Skilling (ed), Czechoslovakia 1918–88, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1991

Abstract

Some will recognize the metaphor in the title as that of Machiavelli who argued that the prince should learn from the lion and the fox and combine the virtues of both to survive.¹ Others will recall that Tomáš G. Masaryk, in his controversial book, Česká otázka (The Czech Question), written in 1895, used the same figures of speech in condemning "the mendicancy and weakness of will of our public life" and the "intriguery" of contemporary politicians. "Because they do not know how to be lions, they become foxes; because they do not know how to be heroes, they become lackeys and promote themselves by lackey-like cunning." The "oppressed, small and weak" nation, however, was not forced to rely on "Machiavellianism and lackeyism", according to Masaryk, but could attain its aims honourably through "work" and 'struggle". The rules for this struggle could be found in the parable of Jesus: "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be ye therefore as wary as serpents and artless as doves." We Slavs must "take care that the serpent in us does not strangle the dove."²