of France and thus also of their own country. It was a manifesto of victory, the terms of which would be handed by Allied Commanders-in-Chief perhaps to-day, perhaps to-morrow, or the day after, to the defeated Kaiser. “Three centuries of your servitude are revenged,” concluded General Gouraud.
I replied to him with emotion as I looked through the windows at the gloom of the devastated fields, and reflected what hecatombs had been sacrificed, and how strange is the logic of events. The anniversary of Bílá Hora!
Shortly afterwards we rode out with a number of officers to see the troops. I came across our regiments a few kilometres behind the main front where they were drawn up in a rectangular formation. In a few words I conveyed to them greetings from Geneva, and informed them of what we had discussed and decided there. I also gave them a short account of the Armistice negotiations at Versailles, and told them that the old regime had already been overthrown in Prague and that we were free. “In accordance with an Allied resolution,” I concluded, “you are going back to your own country to be prepared, if necessary, to continue the military operations there.”
We had hoped that on November 8th we would proclaim the provisional Government at the front, but we already had achieved far more than this: a Government, the overthrow of the old regime at home, the downfall of the Empire and the dynasty, the approaching capitulation of Germany, the prospect of a return at an early date.
We completed the inspection of the brigade, during which General Gouraud decorated a number of our officers and men who had distinguished themselves in the recent fighting.
(c) Co-operation of the Provisional Government with Prague. November 14th, 1918, at Prague
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After the events of October 28th at Prague I considered that our most urgent need was to establish permanent contact and an absolutely unified course of action with our people there. About November 5th and the following days rumours began to reach Paris, mostly from Vienna, that the National Committee was acting in a manner which suggested that it was opposed to us. There can be no doubt that the events in Poland, and
