"Of that country [Czechoslovakia], Capek writes: "It[s] was a creed of democracy and freedom . . . in the spirit of the republican and civilian west . . . [and against] the simplified war ideology . . . absolutism and militarism . . ." The pre-war optimism that Capek loved was embodied for him by Tomáš Masaryk, the philosopher who founded the First Republic and was its first president. Masaryk and Capek epitomised what the latter called "pen-and-spirit-minded people" — a phrase on which Capek's view of his role in life turned."