Page:Albert Beaumont - Heroic Story of the Czecho-Slovak Legions - 1919.djvu/3



MILAN, March 26.

Admiration was excited in Europe and America in the spring and summer of 1918 by the wonderful performance of the little army of 100,000 men forming the Czecho-Slovak legions in Siberia. It was a new army, hastily formed after many difficulties and long negotiations by the Provisional Government, of a young nation recognised only a few months before by the Great Powers. Its general direction was still uncertain, its equipment very inadequate, and the means of its maintenance in face of Bolshevik opposition very problematical. But the discipline of its soldiers, the rapid decision of its officers, the courage, cohesion, and patriotism of all, brought it into fame, as it were, in a single day, and attracted the attention of the whole civilised world.

On Sept. 9 Mr. Lloyd George, wiring to Professor Masaryk on behalf of the British War Cabinet, congratulated him on the striking successes of the Czecho-Slovak forces against the German and Austrian troops in Siberia, and said: “The story, of the adventures and triumphs of this small army is, indeed, one of the greatest epics in history.“ The elements out of which, after three long years of waiting and negotiations, this heroic army was formed, have been described to me in a graphic account by two of their number whom I have found here in Italy.

They belong to the Czecho-Slovak army, which is being trained with the aid and protection of the Italian Government in the numerous camps around Gallarate, not far from the lake of Como and Lago Maggiore. It is not one of the least surprises of the war to find an army of 40,000 Czecho-Slovaks on the plains of Lombardy. Fifteen or more busy camps have been formed, three or four miles apart, communicating either by railway or roads, with motor-cars travelling to and fro or motor-cycles scurrying from camp to camp. They wear Italian