course of formation, the National Council as a Government, our share in the Peace Conference, and the establishment of our State. At that time, too, I was already convinced that even before the war was over the moment would come when we should be obliged to form a real national army abroad.
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In accordance with what had been arranged between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and ourselves, this agreement was to become a binding diplomatic document, signed by the head of the French Government on the one hand, and by the authorized representative of the National Council on the other. The actual signatures were to be affixed after the wording of the decree had been settled, and after my return from Italy. As we shall see, the signing did not actually take place until February 7, 1918, partly because the negotiations as to the wording of the decree were protracted, partly through the change of Government and the entry of Clemenceau as the new Prime Minister and Minister of War.
At all events, on February 7, 1918, this agreement was signed by Prime Minister Clemenceau on behalf of the French Government, and by me on behalf of the National Council, as the statute for the organization of the Czechoslovak Army in France. The wording differed only slightly from that which had been accepted on August 4, 1917, in the negotiations at the Quai d’Orsay, and during my subsequent conversations with the Ministry of War in the course of January 1918.
The satisfaction which I felt at the success thus attained was expressed immediately after the conclusion of the negotiations, which were carried on parallel with the negotiations concerning the dispatch of Franklin-Bouillon’s mission to the United States, in the reports which I sent to our fellow-countrymen in Russia and America. I at once communicated the results of the negotiations to Masaryk in Russia by a brief telegram which was sent on August 4, 1917.
The French Government realized the importance of the agreement thus arrived at, and at once began to put it into effect. As early as August 8th the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a telegram to Petrograd informing its Embassy there that the French Government had reached an agreement with the Czechoslovak National Council on all matters concerning the organization of the Czechoslovak National Army.
