nouncement in favour of our liberation was not—as we might have expected—attributable to Russian initiative or co-operation (for Isvolsky merely signed it) but to the understanding and the help of the Western Allies, and especially of France. The quality of Tsarist care for the Slavs is, moreover, most strikingly illustrated in the history of our army.
Our Army in Russia.
Like all the others, our colony in Russia declared itself for the freedom and independence of our people on the outbreak of war, and it took steps to form an army of Russian Czechs and Slovaks. These manifestations were spontaneous, and a logical consequence of our national programme. After the Paris colony, which was the first to take action, the Czechs of Moscow laid before the Government a scheme for a Czechoslovak Legion on August 4, 1914, a day before the Austrian declaration of war against Russia. At the end of August, organization began; and by the end of October, the Družina, as our legion in Russia was called, left for the front.
Permission to form this legion, as a part of the Russian army, was given to the Russian Czechs as Russian subjects. But when the prisoners of war began to volunteer for service in it, political inequality became apparent between the Russian subjects belonging to it and our own men. Many of the Russian officers were against the non-Russians; though, after the official difficulties had been overcome and recruiting among “trustworthy prisoners” was sanctioned, the non-Russians soon formed a majority. At Tarnopol, when the prisoners entered the Družina at the beginning of 1915, the name “New Družina” was used, but it was not applied to those who joined it later. The Government demanded that the prisoners should apply for Russian nationality and that at least a third of the officers should be Russians. It wanted to make of our people a reliable Russian army. Moreover, the military authorities, and particularly the General Staff, assigned to it from the first a political rather than a military task. When Austria should be occupied, the Družina was to be a corps of propagandists who were to facilitate the occupation by winning the goodwill of the inhabitants. Its non-military character was officially accentuated by demanding of it a discipline less stringent than that required of the rest of the army; it was supposed only to need just enough discipline to enable it to reach, in tolerably good order, the sphere of its
