mander-in-Chief and those about him, gave an uncanny picture of the political ingenuousness of the Russian leaders and of their ignorance of other things besides Slav questions.
Though Supilo was right, I did not agree with the agitation by which he set Petrograd not only against himself but against the Croats, while intensifying the antagonism between them and Serbia. He did not realize the difficulty of the position in which defeat had placed Russia, nor did he see that necessity had driven her and her Allies to make the Treaty with Italy. It had also to be remembered that the dynasty and the foreign policy of Serbia were Conservative and Tsarophil. Pashitch, the Prime Minister, wished to go to Petrograd himself after the conclusion of the Treaty of London, but Sazonof thought it neither opportune nor necessary. In the whole Slav policy of Tsardom nothing was realized save that St. Petersburg became Petrograd.
As regards us Czechs, Petrograd feared our Liberalism and our Catholicism. In the Russian Foreign Office, where there was many a decent, honest man, I learned that they did not take us seriously until Paris and London began to recognize us. Briand’s reception of me, in January 1916, which, as I have said, impressed the Russian diplomatists abroad, had also its effect at Petrograd, where my opposition to the German Berlin-Baghdad scheme attracted attention. But Petrograd was displeased at my acceptance of a Professorship in London. It was taken as showing the intention of England to gain control of our movement; and the story passed round that I was working in London to secure an English Prince as our future King. At any rate, London and Paris caused Tsarist Russia to pay heed to our revolutionary movement, and Bohemia came to be thought important as a barrier against German pressure on the Balkans and on the East generally. In the autumn of 1916 these considerations inspired the policy that ended in the creation of Dürich’s pro-Russian “National Council.”
Yet, as I have said, official Russia had received our National and Slav programme very early in the day. I sent it repeatedly and I presume that the Russian Ambassadors in London and Paris had reported upon it. But, beyond insignificant correspondence, neither of them, nor the Ambassador in Rome, received political instructions about it. No single act of the Tsar’s Government can be compared with Briand’s intervention on our behalf, or with the Allies’ mention of us in the definition of their war aims to President Wilson. The first Allied pro-
