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.`vehla appears to have attended only aboutone-third of the parliamentary sessions occurring under his watch as primeminister.41The Castle and the P%1Å‚tka distrusted one another.Each accused theother of undemocratic tendencies, and both were right.In 1925, Masaryk The Castle 65characterized the party leaders this way: The parliaments are not yet repre-sentatives of the nation, the people, the masses, but of parties and basically ofcliques, of influential and strong I don t say: leading! individuals. 42 Asa counterpoise to a Parliament obsessed with dividing the spoils of poweraccording to party affiliation and maintaining utmost control over theirfiefdoms, the Castle leaders proposed beneficent rule by an enlightened, permanently revolutionary elite bent on transforming both governmentand population according to its vision.43 In 1925, the Austrian ambassadorsent back a report to Vienna that read, Masaryk is.no friend of thepresent governing system; more and more he views the governing P%1Å‚tka asan unsuitable instrument of state-machinery. 44One contentious issue between the Castle and the P%1Å‚tka was the presiden-tial appointment of cabinets of civil servants.When parliamentary coalitionswere weak, or when they broke down completely, Masaryk s usual responsewas to create a technicians cabinet or cabinet of experts, of nonpartisanacademics.This form of governance reached back to Czech politics underAustria.45 Several times during the early 1920s Masaryk appointed suchcabinets, usually under the leadership of Jan erný, the minister-president ofMoravia.The P%1Å‚tka resisted expert cabinets not for any lack of competencebut for their reliance on the president and Benea, who was frequently theonly experienced politician within them.46 The P%1Å‚tka allowed them onlyreluctantly, hoping first to find parliamentary solutions, which grated onMasaryk.Another sticking point was the foreign minister himself.Benea was oneof the P%1Å‚tka s most purposeful opponents during his brief tenure as primeminister from 1921 to 1922; the P%1Å‚tka leaders returned the open opposi-tion, nearly paralyzing the government.Unlike Masaryk, Benea never reallylearned to work with the P%1Å‚tka.47 Additionally, P%1Å‚tka leaders were displeasedby Masaryk s unconditional support of Benea.KramáY particularly resentedthe changes wrought by Masaryk to the presidential articles in the constitu-tion, paving the way for Benea to succeed his mentor.Senators were requiredto be forty-five years old; the president, however, had only to be thirty-five.This stipulation ensured that Benea, thirty-four years old in 1918, would beeligible for the presidency whenever Masaryk decided to resign.48 KramáYand other P%1Å‚tka leaders had suspicions about Benea s foreign policy.Finally,Benea was simply a safer target than the country s beloved father-president.Masaryk was protected by his august age, personal charisma, service to thenation, and even legislation: paragraph 11 of the 1923 Law in Defense of theRepublic threatened citizens with imprisonment for insulting the president,exposing him to public ridicule, or publicly incriminating him.49All this said, quite often the Castle and the P%1Å‚tka (and the P%1Å‚tka s suc-cessors, such as the `estka [the Six] and the Osmi%0Å„ka [the Eight]) held 66 Battle for the Castletheir collective noses and worked together, even while attempting to lesseneach other s influence and power.Generally, the Castle s relationship toParliament and the P%1Å‚tka can be characterized as a combination of coop-eration and mutual challenge.They struggled throughout the 1920s over themakeup of government cabinets, the passage of important legislation, andthe participation of the country s national minorities in the government.But there was considerable common ground.Masaryk, while frustrated athaving his will thwarted, trusted `vehla, the leading P%1Å‚tka member, and waswilling to delegate domestic questions to him.After 1928, `vehla s successorsseemed willing to defer to Masaryk: for example, before the 1929 elections,Masaryk essentially dictated to Agrarian Prime Minister Udr~al the makeupof the new ruling coalition, and got his wish, as well as the ability to selectand dismiss cabinet ministers until 1932.50 With the onset of the GreatDepression, which devastated the Czechoslovak economy as it did the rest ofEurope, as well as the increasing threat to Czechoslovakia from abroad, theCastle-P%1Å‚tka conflict virtually ceased.51The Castle thus operated against a relatively predictable parliamentarybackdrop, tightly controlled by the ruling parties.The parties refusal tobrook genuine debate or opposition on the floor of Parliament allowed theCastle to position itself as the country s only loyal opposition.Both sidesclaimed to be truer to an ideal democratic practice.`vehla, for example,once chided Castle ally Karel apek for being one of those intellectuals whopreach freedom and democracy, and who at the same time would want to getrid of parties.Removing the parties would mean dictatorship; democracyis based on the parties
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