Independence Day

This square you are looking at watched Habsburg rule crumble. October 28, 1918. Early morning. At 6 AM that day, Czech politicians met in an apartment nearby. By 10 AM, they had seized the grain depot to stop food shipments to Austrian troops. World War I was ending. Austria Hungary was collapsing. News arrived that the empire accepted U.S. President Wilson's terms. These streets filled with people. By evening, the National Committee issued its first law: "The independent Czechoslovak state has come into being." No violence. No resistance. Czech officials simply took over. The Slovaks joined two days later. After nearly 400 years under Habsburg rule, Czechoslovakia existed. Here is what almost nobody knows: Tomáš Masaryk, the man who spent years lobbying for this moment, was not even here. He was still in Washington. The father of Czechoslovakia missed his nation's birth. He had issued the declaration of independence 10 days earlier in Paris, but when crowds filled this square on October 28, he was an ocean away. He would not arrive until December.