By revealing what the Emperor Charles and Czernin had done and by convicting the Austrians of double-dealing, he furthered our cause and facilitated the anti-Austrian work which I took in hand as soon as I reached America. There, despite Clemenceau’s disclosures, strong pro-Austrian tendencies still prevailed in the official world and among the general public, and they gave us not a little to do. Nevertheless our propaganda went well throughout the United States. The argument that our State had never lost its historical rights and had as good a claim as Hungary to existence was politically effective. On this point we could invoke President Wilson’s book, “The State,” in our support. Further demonstrations of the electoral privileges of the nobility, of the anti-democratic institutions of Austria-Hungary, and of the fact that the Germans and the Magyars, a minority, oppressed the majority of the Hapsburg peoples, never failed to make a deep impression. Not less telling were the reports of Austrian and Magyar cruelties against our own and other peoples. We took full advantage, too, of the openings given by German and Magyar falsehoods. For instance, a Magyar propagandist declared in a pacifist meeting that the Hungarian Parliament had protested in 1870 against the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. I caught him out by proving that it was the Bohemian Diet which had protested, while the Hungarian Parliament, under the leadership of Andrássy, had kept Austria-Hungary neutral and had helped Prussia. I showed, too, that the same Andrássy had then gone hand in hand with Bismarck and that the Magyars had, in reality, laid the foundations of the Triple Alliance and of its policy. I was often obliged to use this argument against Magyar propaganda which, like the Austrian, cast all the blame for the war upon Germany. Our demonstrations that Austria-Hungary was very largely responsible for the war were very effective, and our hands were strengthened by the participation of all the other Austro-Hungarian peoples—except the Magyars and the Germans—in our work. We stood up for them, and they for us.
We sought, above all, to impart to the Americans some knowledge of our political history and of our civilization. They had heard of the Czechs, and of the former Kingdom of Bohemia, but found it hard to understand that the Slovaks were comprised in our race. We had also to convince the Americans that we meant to be free and were fighting for freedom. Again and again we were told that the Czech leaders at home were not in opposition to Austria, and the disavowal which we had
