a lively agitation among them. Finally they themselves decided to join Czechoslovakia. They discussed their political future, albeit hypothetically, for the first time at a Congress they held at Homestead, on July 28, 1918. If complete independence should not be practicable, the idea then was that the Ruthenes of Hungary should join their brethren in Galicia and the Bukovina; should this be impossible they would demand autonomy, though under what State they did not say. But, five months later, on December 19th, they held a second Congress at Scranton, Pennsylvania, where they resolved to join the Czechoslovak Republic on a federal basis, as a State enjoying a wide measure of self-government; and the wording of their resolution shows that it was framed on an English model which had little in common with the conditions prevailing in Austria and Hungary. It demanded also that all the “originally” Ruthene or Carpatho-Russian regions of Hungary should be included in the Ruthene State. The various Ruthene organizations then took a referendum by parishes, with the result that a big majority voted in favour of joining Czechoslovakia. Dr. Žatkovič sent me memoranda on the subject; and I, for my part, drew his attention both to the main problems—economic, education and financial—which the liberation of the country would raise, and to the lack of officials, teachers and even priests able to speak its tongue. I explained to him very thoroughly the political importance of the Rutheneland and the difficulties which might arise from the vicinity of Poland, of the Galician and Roumanian Ukrainians and of the Magyars. But he and other leading Ruthenes were convinced that, all things well considered, it would be best for them to join our State. How the question of Carpathian Ruthenia was dealt with in Paris, and how the Ruthenes themselves acted at home, are matters that come within the period of the Peace Conference. I need only say that three national Councils were set up—at Přešov, Užhorod and Hust—which amalgamated after a time and proclaimed the final decision to join the Czechoslovak Republic on May 8, 1919, as “Sub-Carpathian Russia.”
As regards the language question, I approved of introducing Little Russian into the schools and public offices; for even if Little Russian be regarded merely as a Russian dialect, I think it right, for pedagogical reasons, that it should be used. In this I adopted the view of the Great Russians themselves, as expressed by the Petrograd Academy of Science and by eminent Russian authorities on education. True, I insisted
