received in January 1917 was constantly thrown in our teeth, since it seemed to confirm President Wilson’s view. We replied that the disavowal had obviously been extorted by pressure, and pointed to the subsequent declarations at home. Weight was added to this argument in December 1917 when the Germans raised the question of Czech loyalty in the Austrian Parliament. Their action served to prove that our people were really in revolt. Similarly, we were able to utilize on behalf of the Slovaks the manifesto at Liptovsky St. Nicholas on May 1, 1918, although the text which reached us in America was obviously incomplete or had been falsified by the Magyar censorship. To the objection that the Emperor Charles and his Government had made promises to the Austrian peoples, and to us Czechs in particular, our answer was that they were insincere and inspired by weakness. We showed that the Austrian Minister, Seidler, and the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister, Count Czernin (the latter at Brest-Litovsk), had stood out against President Wilson’s demand for the self-determination of peoples. In the autumn of 1917 the Emperor Charles had thought of being crowned King of Bohemia. The Lord-Lieutenant of Bohemia, Count Coudenhove, had supported the project but the Vienna Government had rejected it. Moreover, Czernin had sent a brusque reply to Wilson’s peace terms—a reply with which we dealt very sharply. But all our arguments would have served us little had not our political position been changed for the better by the recognition of our National Council in Allied countries, thanks to the formation of our Legions in three of them. And, in America, we were helped most of all by the way in which the march of our men through Siberia echoed round the world.
The “Anabasis.”
Of that march, the famous “Anabasis,” I need only to say enough to make it comprehensible and to complete my account of our work abroad.
I was in Japan at the time of the fateful incident at Tchelyabinsk. According to the report which reached me, a German prisoner wounded one of our men at Tchelyabinsk on April 14, 1918, and was killed on the spot. The local Bolshevists sided with the German and Magyar prisoners, and in the end our troops took possession of the town. The affair was a consequence of earlier differences that had arisen between the local Soviets, Moscow and our army, which was on its way
