CHAPTER IX
THE RISE OF THE CZECHOSLOVAK REPUBLIC
THERE is much truth in the saying that States are preserved by the same political forces as those which engendered them. For this reason I shall sum up the story of our work abroad in a systematic account of its political and juridical significance, so as to show how our Republic arose and how we attained independence.
Generally speaking, our independence is a fruit of the fall of Austria-Hungary and of the world conflagration. In vanquishing Germany and Austria, the Allies won our freedom and made it possible. At the Peace Conferences the victors established a new order in Western and Central Europe. We took part in these conferences from beginning to end and signed the Treaties, since the Allies, recognizing and accepting our programme of liberation, had admitted us during the war into the areopagus of belligerent nations in whose hands the decision lay. And our former enemies presently recognized our independence in their turn by signing and by giving constitutional ratification to the Peace Treaties.
Yet it was only by our resistance to Austria-Hungary and by our revolt against her that we earned our independence. As President Poincaré tersely said, we won it by fighting in France, Italy and Russia. The peculiarity of our revolt lay in its not being carried through by force of arms on our own soil, but abroad, on foreign soil. As a people we were bound to take part in the war. Otherwise independence would not have been attained-assuredly not in the degree in which we attained it. Herein lie the meaning and the political value of our Legions in Russia, France and Italy. They secured for us the goodwill and the help of the Western Powers, while the march through Siberia gained us the liking of the Allied public at large and the respect even of our enemies.
Together with the Legions, those of our soldiers who helped to break up the Austrian Army by active and passive resistance lent essential aid to the cause, especially those who, in resisting, forfeited their lives. Every execution of such men dug deeper the grave of the authorities in Vienna and Budapest, for it proved that our people was locked in a life and death struggle with them. And every such execution we brought to public
