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During the period of propaganda, Professor Masaryk early derived an advantage from the fact that Czechoslovak troops were constantly deserting from the Austro-Hungarian armies in which they unwillingly served. Most of the deserters escaped to Russia. There they were permitted to form a military unit which acknowledged the supremacy of Masaryk. He proceeded through trusty agents to organize in Russia a Czechoslovak army long before there could exist a Czechoslovak state. Meanwhile, at Paris, on Feb. 3, 1916, M. Aristide Briand, then Prime Minister, consented to receive officially the "Lonely Slovak." A strange meeting. The professor who should have cringed humbly for favors describes his actions thus: "I spoke tersely, almost epigrammatically, but Briand has a good French brain and grasped the heart of the matter at once. Above all, he accepted our policy."
This "policy" was the dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian state, not its mere overthrow, which had previously been the goal of the Allies. Professor Masaryk may fairly boast (as indeed he does) that his propaganda had now enlarged the military War aims of the Allies into a "political program" of liberating the Austro-Hungarian subject peoples. He next sought definitely to mobilize the Czechoslovak army in Russia to fight with the Allies. Strange events intervened. Conditions incidental to the rise of the Soviet State made it necessary that the 92,000 Czechoslovak troops in Russia should return home by marching romantically East, not West. This so fired the imagination of U. S. Secretary of Interior Franklin K. Lane that he wrote:". . . Isn't this a great world? And its biggest romance is not even the fact that Woodrow Wilson rules it, but the march of the Czechoslovaks across 5,000 miles of Russian Asia. . . ." Prime Minister David Lloyd George, then at the height of his power, agreed that this was, "indeed, one of the greatest epics of history." When the Army reached Vladivostok, Allied transports were waiting, but it had already been delayed so long that the General Staff did not reach Prague until June 17, 1920 and the troops not until Nov. 30. Meanwhile, of course, the War had ended and Czechoslovakia had long since obtained final recognition by the Allies and the U. S. in 1918.
Most moving of all passages in the present work is President Masaryk's description of his sensations after this final recognition had been attained:
"I doubt whether I slept well for five consecutive nights during the whole four years. My brain was ever working like a watch, considering, comparing, reckoning, estimating, judging. . . . [But now] in my mind, stillness reigned. . . . I said to myself, again and again, now unconsciously, now consciously, and aloud. '. . . So we are free, shall be free. We have an independent Republic! A fairy-tale . . . that we are really f-r-e-e and have our own Re-pub-lic!' "