circles in Italy to try to translate it into concrete action. My negotiations in September and October 1917 at Rome on the subject of our army, and the journalistic campaign started by me and systematically kept up by our Bureau in Rome, formed a suitable basis for developing this new line of policy. In the course of December, with the help of the Italian circles, which I have indicated, our prisoners of war, and the possibilities of our army, were written about and discussed as an almost general topic. When, on December 19th, our army decree was published in France, this campaign reached a decisive point. The manifestations in the Italian Parliament on behalf of our French army on December 20, 1917 (intended partly also as a demonstration against Sonnino), formed the most typical indication of how affairs were shaping.
Our movement was closely associated with the development of the new conditions in Italy after Caporetta. We must not, however, blind ourselves to the real meaning of these events. As far as the Italians were concerned, our cause occupied only a secondary position. Those who realized the importance of an agreement between Italy and the Jugoslavs in its bearings upon the results of the war and the policy of Italy after the war, began to pay attention to our movement so that they could take advantage of it for furthering their political aims as regards the Jugoslavs. To support the Czechoslovaks meant favouring the destruction of the Habsburg Empire and advocating this integral solution of what was for Italy the most important problem of the war. It meant also accepting, in consequence of this, the principles of the Corfu Pact for the unification of the Jugoslavs, and this, in its turn, demanded an agreement with the Jugoslavs themselves. It would have been too difficult a matter to demand outright a solution of the Jugoslav problem as early as December 1917. But to ask the Government for something on our behalf could not result in any opposition, for at least it did not involve any embarrassment to Italy. Such was the argument of those who were associated with this new policy, and such was the basis of their course of action.
Thus, at the beginning of January 1918, more decisive stress was being laid at Rome on our problem, and there was even a suggestion that it might be possible to arrive at Italo-Jugoslav negotiations by way of our National Council. We were to act as intermediaries in the manner which Štefánik
