"After a long consideration we decided not to use Lada’s illustrations. For one, Hašek had never seen and therefore had neither authorized them. And two, they significantly differ from the one picture which Hašek did see and which adorned the cover of the serial booklets, the format of Švejk’s originally published edition. 

"The main reason however was that Švejk is a very complex character, but Lada’s illustrations shift the character of Josef Švejk onto a plane of a clown or even a buffoon. (That certainly did not bother the communist rulers who, if Hašek were still alive, would have sent him and his Švejk to the uranium mines for reeducation.).

"Hašek's book is a masterpiece of satire, not comedy. We decided that Jaroslav Hašek would address readers of English alone, using only his text (albeit merely in our as-faithful-as-possible translation.)"

From the original comments published in
Slovo Volume 1, Number 2 Winter 2000

P.S.: Twenty three years after publishing Book One as an EVY file and distributing it on two 3¹/₂ inch diskettes we inquired with the copyright owner, the great-grandson of Josef Lada, about the availability of license to use the cover art of the original, first and seriliazed Czech edition for the frontispiece of our Centennial Edition:

"Of course, I cannot and am not obliged to inform you about the conditions and agreements in the license agreements. So once again, I am not giving you permission to use the illustration - Josef Lada."

In our opinion, this only accentuates the tentions, and indeed incompatibility between Hašek's and Lada's point of view.