prevailed the longest. Advantage was taken of them in Russia also when, for political reasons, circles which were hostile to us desired to frustrate our purposes.
But there were obstacles on our side which proved difficult to cope with. Our prisoners had been still armed when they reached the Allied countries, and for that reason they had been treated as enemies. It was only in course of time that discrimination was shown towards them. In this respect matters were no better in France than in Russia or Serbia. And it was when they had been embittered by all these disappointments that we began our propagandist activity among them to show that the Allies really wanted to liberate us, and that we must therefore keep with them, even to the extent of being prepared for service at the front, a proceeding in which our prisoners would incur the risk of death on the gallows. Many of them found it difficult to understand at first, while in the case of others we met with direct opposition. It must be remembered that they were still under the control of Austro-Hungarian officers who terrorized them, or else they were exposed to the influence of their own fellow-countrymen who were either sceptics or opportunists. The obstacles which all these circumstances caused us were formidable. In fact, our movement among the prisoners of war produced results which were often miracles of patience and industry. Under the most difficult conditions in all the Allied countries we had to bring about a diametrical change in the official attitude towards our prisoners, and in the prison camps themselves we often had to win our people over with the utmost exertion, man by man. There were camps where the conditions were quite different, and where we found spontaneous enthusiasm, wholesale volunteering for active service. In these cases, however, disappointment and distress of a different character made themselves felt, for the men’s initial enthusiasm was gradually crushed by their endless waiting to be released from the camp and drafted into the projected army.
The procedure was everywhere the same. We first asked for permission to send our publications to the camps, and to grant our people various privileges, such as clean linen, writing material, newspapers, books, etc. We then applied for our people to be separated from the prisoners of other nationalities, and placed under the charge of Czechoslovak officers. It was more difficult to arrange for the Slovaks to be placed with the
