worked out all sorts of schemes. Some of our own people and the Allies proposed that we should go to the Cossacks in the Caucasus, and over the Caucasus to the British army in Asia. But France was the magnetic pole to which the needle of our compass pointed.
There had been a possibility of our fighting on Roumanian soil against Austria and Germany alongside of the Roumanians and the Russians. Before our Corps was formed we had gone into this possibility carefully at Petrograd with the French Military Mission and the Roumanian Minister, Diamandy. With the Roumanians we were always in friendly touch. In the prisoners’ camps, our lads helped to enrol Roumanian volunteers for the Roumanian army. In Paris, too, it was desired that our army should go to the Roumanian front. Consequently, I negotiated with General Berthelot, the head of the French Military Mission in Roumania, where the Russians were under the command of General Shtcherbatcheff. Štefánik had informed me a year before of conditions in Roumania and the plight of the prisoners there, and from this information I concluded that, even in 1916, the Roumanians were in difficulties with their commissariat. Before making up my mind I had wished, however, to see things in Roumania for myself and therefore I had gone to Jassy at the end of October 1917, for Moldavia was not occupied by the enemy.
At Jassy I saw the Roumanian politicians and military leaders as well as the French Mission and the Russian Commander. I had interviews with the King and the Prime Minister, Bratianu. Take Jonescu I knew well, and he had been recommended to me by English friends, but I met for the first time the Ministers Duca and Marcescu. Among the foreign diplomatists, all of whom I visited, I remember particularly the Serbian Minister Marinkovitch and his military attaché, Hadžitch. With the Italian Minister, Baron Fasciotti, I had important talks upon a detailed plan for the organization of our Legion in Italy, continuing thus the negotiations I had begun with the Italian Ambassador in Petrograd. Nor should our fellow countryman, Vopička, who was the United States Minister, be forgotten. Among the Roumanian Generals whom I saw were Averescu and Grigorescu. At the front, where I went to observe the state of the army and its supplies, I watched the soldiers in action during an artillery duel. They made a good impression, and I noted especially how the victory of Marasesti had encouraged them and had strengthened their spirit of initiative and endurance.
