CZECHOSLOVAK INDEPENDENCE
title of Commissioner was selected to prevent an undesirable diplomatic precedent from arising.
The future commissioner was received by Mr. Wilson at the White House on September 9, 1918, and in discussing the then recent recognition of the Council as a de facto government. Mr. Wilson declared: “By your conduct throughout the war, especially by your armies, you have demonstrated that you insist upon complete independence. We have merely recognized an accomplished fact.”
Thus was again demonstrated the profound truth of a famous statement of Cavour: “Diplomacy cannot change the status of nations. It can merely legalize accomplished facts.” (Thayer’s Life of Cavour.)
When Austria-Hungary claimed acceptance of the fourteen points as a basis of peace negotiations, she was informed by the Department of State that, in so far as autonomy for the nationalities of Austria-Hungary was concerned, the fourteen points had undergone a modification, and that she must deal with the Czechoslovaks directly. On October 27, 1918, the Austro-Hungarian minister of foreign affairs, Count Andrassy, in reply to this attitude of President Wilson and his government, admitted the right of the Czecho-
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