VII
OUR REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT AMONG THE TROOPS AND PRISONERS OF WAR
(a) Beginnings of the Military Activity of the National Council. Our Military Work in Russia and France
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The important decisions arrived at by the National Council during Masaryk’s presence in Paris in February 1916 were concerned also with military matters.
At the outbreak of the war our colonies had everywhere begun to fulfil their military duties. Our colony in France, for example, had immediately arranged for several hundreds of our people to enter the Foreign Legion. In England the colony, directed by Sykora and Kopecký, proceeded in a similar manner, and the scope of its work there extended to our volunteer movement in Canada. The most important military movement, however, from a political point of view, at that time was the formation of our brigade in Russia. Altogether, what we accomplished in Russia in a military respect is of quite special significance, and I shall therefore refer in greater detail to these matters in my chapter on Russia. For the time being, I will mention only the essential facts. Our military activity in Italy, where there was no colony in the strict sense of the word, and where the National Council immediately took charge of things, will be dealt with specially in the chapter on Italy.
All this initiative, and all revolutionary work which the colonies spontaneously began, met with the warm approval and recognition of our political leaders at home and abroad. The “Maffia” had attended closely to it, and when Masaryk started his work abroad, he supported all such tendencies among our colonists. Before the organization of political headquarters in the National Council, his movement enhanced the good repute, and also the legal security, of our colonies in the Allied countries. At first it had no direct political consequences in Western Europe.
