establishment of our army in Italy. This scheme was being carried out between the end of January and the middle of February under the auspices of General Spingardi, who was evidently acting in agreement with certain authorities at the Consulta and other opponents of our movement. Hlaváček, who was in charge of our Press Bureau at Rome, reported on January 27th that Spingardi had told him to arrange for the National Council to begin organizing military labour detachments for the second line, as the Government had issued an order that all prisoners were to be used for work of urgent necessity, and as within two months he would clearly be obliged to employ all the Czechoslovak prisoners for this purpose, it would therefore be better if these prisoners were properly organized, and could thus assist the Italian Army as free helpers. Hlaváček pointed out that this proposal concealed a threat. If immediate action were not taken to form Czechoslovak labour detachments, our prisoners would be sent with the rest to engage in the usual work.
Hlaváček considered that there was a real danger, and therefore asked us to lose no time in sending our national badges for the uniforms of our prisoners, which would designate them as Czechoslovak troops. After a conversation with Štefánik and Brancaccio in Paris I came to the conclusion that the whole thing was a mere manœuvre designed to frustrate the establishment of our army. It would have been a compromise which in any case would have delayed the fulfilment of our plans. Accordingly I decided, after consultation with Štefánik, not to send the badges, but to postpone the formation of the labour detachments, and to accelerate Štefánik’s visit to Rome. We had hoped that he would be able to leave towards the end of January, but his departure was delayed until the middle of February. On February 12th a new letter arrived from Hlavatek informing me that two days previously he had been summoned to Spingardi, who had told him that the Supreme Command required about 5,000 of our troops for work in the war zone, not later than February 20th. If they were not organized by that time, they would proceed there as prisoners. Hlaváček added that he had intervened with the Ministry of War for the purpose of postponing matters, and that he had received a promise to this effect on February 11th. On the next day, however, Spingardi had again sent for him, and told him that he had new instructions
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