in the summer of 1917, I at once raised the question of the decree which had been prepared. The Poles had in the interim made considerable progress with the organization of their army. They had volunteers from America and elsewhere, as well as a certain number of prisoners of war from among the German troops. They had thus been able to publish their decree on the establishment of their army as early as May 28, 1917.
Not wishing to postpone the matter further, I urged that there should be an agreement as to the wording of the decree. Lieut.-Colonel Cros placed before me a wording analogous to that of the Polish decree. I asked for a short time to think matters over, as I was anxious to secure certain changes, which I began to discuss after having conferred with the National Council. The Ministry of War admitted that the conditions in our case were different from those of the Poles, and so after a few days the wording of the decree was agreed upon. Meanwhile Štefánik informed me that he was returning to Paris, and I therefore decided to postpone the publication of the decree which the Ministry of War itself now began to urge. I preferred, however, to wait until Štefánik had returned (he actually arrived on November 18, 1917), because I wanted him, as a soldier, to give his opinion of everything which the National Council had done as regards military affairs during his absence.
Štefánik approved of the text which had been agreed upon, but he took exception to one important detail. The first article of the decree declared that the French Government was constituting the Czechoslovak Army. I had accepted this formulation because the Poles had also accepted it, and then, too, after my return from Italy, I shrank from the prospect of attempting to struggle for fresh concessions after all the negotiations on the army statute, in which the French Government had really shown considerable indulgence towards me personally. Štefánik was of the opinion that it would nevertheless be possible to secure an alteration in the decree by which the constituting of the army would be attributed to the National Council and the Czechoslovak nation itself. The political significance of this formulation is obvious at the first glance, and Štefánik rightly attached great importance to it.
Štefánik’s negotiations on behalf of this new formulation
