Orthodoxy as, for instance, when a number of officer-prisoners were solemnly converted at Murom. Some drew up incredible definitions of what a Czech soldier ought to be, and other puerilities of a like description.
Misunderstandings, too, arose between the Petrograd and the Kieff Czechs, and then misunderstandings at Kieff itself, where a singular “Czechoslovak Association” was set up which attacked the “League” and denounced everybody, especially me and my alleged Westernism. It addressed its complaints and denunciations, misstatements and lies, to the Russian military authorities and Departments of State. The better Russian soldiers, like Alexeieff, were disgusted by then, but they found a hearing in other quarters and even in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. I need not describe all the fantastic and impossible things that were done, and were brought to my notice by the Russian authorities themselves. The name of Slavdom was used to cover orgies of reaction and of political shortsightedness. The circumstance that our prisoners came to be more and more the decisive factor in our army and, finally, the Revolution, prevailed over these effects of a Russian education; for the corruptibility of Tsardom and its political illiteracy had spoiled not only Russian society but many of our own people as well.
When I reached Petrograd in May 1917, the antagonism between the progressive Czechs of the capital and the more Conservative Czechs of Kieff, and between the “League” and the “Association,” had been formally set aside. Like the members of the “League” and the great majority of our prisoners, our people in Petrograd had always recognized our Paris National Council. At any rate, our brigade had recognized it as the supreme political authority and had proclaimed me Dictator on March 20, 1917; and the “League” followed suit, on March 23, by recognizing me as the sole representative of the Czechoslovak nation. Finally, the third Congress of the “League,” held in Kieff at the beginning of May, adopted by a large majority the programme of the National Council which Štefánik expounded. The effect of the so-called Kieff Pact, or Protocol, which was signed by Štefánik, Dürich, Delegates of the “League” and the delegation of American Czechs, was to compose, at least outwardly, dissensions that had lasted since the beginning of the war; though, as I found, there remained quite enough personal bitterness and ill-humour.
In fairness to the politicians among the Czech and Slovak colony, it should be said that, at first, our prisoners, as well
