agreement on the subject of the prisoners as far as Serbia was concerned. My relations with General Rašić were nothing short of fraternal. He was a sincere friend to us, and promoted our cause among the French at headquarters. The progress of the work connected with our army in France led me to ask him whether the Serbian Government could not send us all our prisoners who were still on the Balkan Front, and also let us have all the Czechs and Slovaks who were serving in the Serbian Army. In particular, as I was afraid that we should not have enough capable officers in France, I asked him to induce the Serbian Government to release those of our officers who were serving with the Serbian Army.
The negotiations which these demands involved were protracted, and the plan was actually carried out just a year after the initial intervention. On October 31, 1917, when I again visited General Rašić, I received a notification that the Serbian Army had issued an order for our officers and men to be transported from the Balkan Front to our army in France.
This was the general framework of all my personal activities from the autumn of 1916, and also of those carried out under my management by the office of the National Council in matters relating to propaganda, prisoners of war, and political plans. This activity of ours, its character and its methods, became stabilized. Various persons engaged in it now had their definite function and degrees of authority. The organization was on a firm basis, communication with all our centres was more or less established, and the whole of our work proceeded on normal lines.
Such were the circumstances accompanying the approach of important events in international politics in which we also began to take our share, and in which the Czechoslovak movement became an important factor.
