from Vladivostok on December 9, 1919, the General Staff reached Prague on June 17, 1920, and the evacuation was completed on November 80, 1920—we have to thank the friendliness of the Allies who lent us ships, and Dr. Beneš to whom belongs the credit for the successful conduct of the negotiations.
My plan had been to get the army to France in 1918 and to bring it into action there in 1919. It never reached France, but we had an army and it made itself felt. That was the main thing. The Anabasis proves that I was right to insist upon having a large army. Small non-military or political units, such as our people in Russia and the Russian Government itself desired, would have been swamped in Russia and would have been dissolved in Bolshevist acid. Historians and politicians may be left to speculate upon what would have happened had we succeeded in getting the army to France on the eve of peace. Much virtue in “if.” In any case I should have managed to turn it politically to good account.
A Summary.
What I have said hitherto of the formation of our army abroad, and of its political and international significance, may be condensed as follows:—
When the war began, a spontaneous anti-Austrian movement to join the Allied armies arose in all the Czech colonies abroad. Czechs who had been naturalized in belligerent countries were naturally liable to military service; the others joined as volunteers.
At first, France accepted our men only as recruits for the Foreign Legion. This they disliked. They wished either to gain admission to the regular army or to form an independent unit. But the number of Czechs in France was small and, at the outset, negligible. Not until volunteers reached France from Russia and America could a separate Czech division be created. Yet France was the first country to see what our Legions meant and to foster their formation both on her own soil and in Russia. As the French had to deal with a large number of volunteers from Alsace and Lorraine, they showed more enterprise in our case as well.
In Russia conditions were different. Our colonies there were larger and a separate unit was therefore conceivable. Thus arose the “Družina,” albeit as part of the Russian army. The idea of forming an independent Czech force only took
