the Austrians and Magyars in Serbia served the Southern Slav cause. Polish propaganda, too, was effective. The Poles had long been known abroad and their aspirations were everywhere recognized.
Of us, on the contrary, the French knew little, hardly more than we could tell them with our feeble means; and in Paris we were especially compromised by the conduct of the Mayor of Prague, Dr. Groš. The Vienna Parliament was not in session. Consequently, no Czech voice could be heard there. Yet this was not altogether a misfortune, either for us abroad or for the development of things at home.
The Austrian, Hungarian and German press kept up a conspiracy of silence about us, and in the Paris “Temps” a statement unfavourable to us had already appeared. No wonder that friends like Professor Denis in Paris and Seton-Watson in London grew nervous. They urged me continually to come to Paris and London. Therefore I hastened thither as soon as Beneš, by a lucky chance—if chance it was—turned up in Geneva. In Switzerland the work was already organized, and to some extent in Paris. Denis’s French review, “La Nation Tchèque,” had been appearing since May 1; Dr. Sychrava’s Czech paper came out on August 22, it having been much harder to establish than the French review, for we had no Czech contributors. All of us had our hands full of other work, my funds were still meagre, and money was beginning to play a more and more important part. The failure of our people at Prague to find roundabout means of sending us money showed that they were not thinking of political propaganda of the kind that was necessary; hitherto, indeed, we had not undertaken it. Yet we lacked neither gladness in our work nor hope of victory. If we were few, all the more reason for intense and thoughtful effort.
Professor Denis.
Something should be said of Professor Denis and of the part he took in our campaign of liberation. The authority he had won among us by his historical work proved useful from the outset in our Paris colony, though it was beyond his power to settle the dissensions among its members He was new to such things and they took him unawares. In French political quarters he was looked upon merely as a professor and man of letters, and he had not a few opponents even among people of his own kind—including the comparatively small circle of
