have thought that they needed some credentials from the Czech nation itself if they were to possess authority in Russia. Nor did it occur to them that the Russian Government was not entitled to decide who was to represent our nation. As Russian subjects, they could only represent those members of our colonies who were likewise Russian subjects. They did not want a big army—not more than a division at most—and it was only to come into action after the occupation of Slovakia, which was to form part of the future Czech State. The Kieff Czechs feared that the Austrians would execute Czech soldiers who might be taken prisoners. This they hoped to obviate by an occupation of Slovakia, a proclamation of Czech independence, and the deposition of the Hapsburg dynasty. In addition, Russia was in some way to guarantee the future of the Czechs—perhaps, like that of the Poles, by a manifesto of the Commander-in-Chief! Should the Austrians nevertheless execute Czech prisoners, reprisals were to be taken upon Austrian prisoners.
Neither the Russian Departments of State nor Russian military men heeded witlessness of this sort, and Maklakoff, the Minister of the Interior, rejected the Kieff scheme categorically in May 1915. It was, indeed, an idle project, for it actually announced that, in the Czech army, officers would not be accepted, even if they were Czechs. Notions like these were hotly discussed in our colony; and not a few officers who joined the Družina and, afterwards, the Czech brigade, were very badly treated by these civilian wiseacres. The effort to create an ideally Slav, democratic and brotherly army, degenerated into fruitless hair-splitting about the “ideal qualities” of the Czech soldier—and, truth to tell, well-meant nonsense of the same kind cropped up even in the New Družina and among our prisoners of war.
The second Congress of Czechoslovak Societies, which met at Kieff from April 25 to May 1, 1916, resolved, in accordance with the plan we had worked out in Paris and had sent to Russia, to form an army out of our brigade and to set about getting our prisoners released. But in June 1916, the “League” (now established at Kieff) presented to Russian Headquarters a fresh scheme for a Czech army. General Alexeieff recommended the General Staff to work it out—which the General Staff did, after its own fashion-but still Headquarters would not sanction it. The Russian Foreign Office also raised objections, and General Alexeieff, hearing from General Červinka accounts of indiscipline in the brigade and of the complaints
