that outstanding Allied Commanders, even Foch, shared it. Pacifist tendencies showed themselves in England by the action of Lord Lansdowne and others; and the speech in which Lloyd George outlined his peace terms, on January 5, 1918, will be remembered. He, too, had taken part, albeit very prudently, in Prince Sixtus of Parma’s secret negotiations with Austria; and in the spring of 1917 I heard in well-informed quarters in London that he was thinking of peace and was prepared to make notable concessions to Germany. How keenly I watched the manoeuvres of Prince Sixtus may be seen by the following telegram which I sent from London on April 20, 1917, to our people in Paris: “Dear friends, be on your guard. Serious negotiations are alleged again to be going on for a separate peace with Austria. For this reason the Head of the Government has returned. Everybody seems to have had enough of the war. We are to get an autonomous administration, etc., in a slightly diminished Austria.”
Still more important was President Wilson’s message to the United States Senate on January 8, 1918, in which he laid down his well-known Fourteen Points. They were rejected by Count Hertling, on behalf of Germany, and by Count Czernin, on behalf of Austria, in a fashion that proved Berlin and Vienna to have been smitten with lasting blindness. I shall have more to say on the subject of Wilson’s message.
Meanwhile, in June 1917, the Socialist International had held a Conference in Stockholm at which the Czech Social Democratic parties were represented by Habrman, Němec and Šmeral. Dr. Šmeral stuck to his pro-Austrian standpoint but confessed that 95 per cent. of our working-class, and of the Czech people as a whole, were on my side, not on his—an admission which we published everywhere with excellent effect. Moreover, the demand—publicly put forward by all three Czech Social Democrats—for an independent Czech State within a federated Austria-Hungary, was meant to counter the Austrian Social Democratic idea of restricting the autonomy of the Hapsburg peoples to educational matters. This Czech Social Democratic demand was the first authorized voice from within Bohemia to be raised abroad. Professor Maxa, whom I sent from Russia to Stockholm, told our members of Parliament there how well our cause was going in Russia and in Europe. Habrman was then preparing to stay abroad for good; but, as it seemed to me that he would do better work at home, I sent him word to go back and to insist that no
