PREFATORY NOTE
English language sources concerning Czechs and Slovaks in the United States are rather meager. As to the Slovaks there is no book of importance. The only book relating to Czechs is Thomas Capek’s The Czechs (Bohemians) in America (Houghton-Mifflin Co., 1920).
With the exception of a chapter in Capek’s volume, the war activities of Czechoslovaks in America have not been described at all in English, and this little work is the first attempt at such treatment. It is mainly based upon the Diary of the Slav Press Bureau and other original documents in the author’s possession, and in certain respects is supplemented by his own personal knowledge of Czechoslovak war work in this country. This personal knowledge grows out of the writer’s close affiliation with the movement from its inception.
The outbreak of hostilities found the author a practicing lawyer in northeastern Iowa; he is one of the signers of the Czechoslovak demand for independence issued in Paris on November 15, 1915. Thereafter, successively, he was one of the vice-presidents of the Bohemian National Alliance, director of the Slav Press Bureau in New York, director of the American office of the Czechoslovak National Council in Washington, secretary to President Masaryk as a result of the latter’s request cabled from Tokio, delegate of the Czechoslovak National Council in the United States following recognition of this Council as a de facto government by the Allied Powers, Czechoslovak Commissioner to the United States, and minister of the Czechoslovak Republic to Japan.
As indicated in the text, this work does not pretend
