ship. There were also people “on the make.” In many a Paris pothouse and elsewhere positions and offices in the future Czech Kingdom were distributed, from the kingship down to the lowest ranks of the official hierarchy. But these things were negligible. On every hand our people rallied to me. Subscriptions came from Canada and South Africa as soon as it was known that I was organizing our colonies, and many touching gifts from simple Czech mothers and grandmothers, accompanied by charming notes on which tears of hope and love were scarcely dry. In money our colonies were not rich. Subscriptions came slowly at first, even from America, though later on larger amounts flowed in.
Numerically, our American and Russian colonies were the most important. The American Czechs could finance us, and in Russia an army could be formed out of our prisoners of war. Yet it was in Russia that we met with the greatest difficulties. As regards America, it was fortunate that Mr. Voska had brought news of me from Prague at the beginning of the war; and, in the autumn of 1915, Vojta Beneš (brother of Dr. Beneš) got away with fresh and fuller tidings. In all the branches of our American colony he organized collections, united the various parties and groups, and urged upon them the need for financial effort.
More serious in Russia than elsewhere was the political strife both between Czech Conservatives and Czech Radicals, and between Kieff and Petrograd. Some of our earlier emigrants to Russia held the political views that had been current when they left home, but the majority had come under the Conservative influence of their surroundings and of the Russian Government and were, in truth, very reactionary. They were entirely dependent upon the goodwill of Russian officials. With the progressive and radical educated class in Russia—Liberals and Socialists of all sorts—our people were hardly in touch at all, and were therefore almost unknown to that influential section of Russian society. Not until the Conservatives had been driven into the background by the Revolution of 1917 was it possible to unite the colony. After the arrival of Dürich in the summer of 1916 (the Czech Member of Parliament whom I have already mentioned as having been selected by Dr. Kramář for work in Russia) its dissensions had been especially acute, for Dürich joined the Conservatives and got caught in the toils of the reactionary pro-German Russian Government.
This Dürich affair, to which the Horký affair was presently
