Page:Albert Beaumont - Heroic Story of the Czecho-Slovak Legions - 1919.djvu/30



MILAN, March 27.

The two officers who give me this account arrived at Kieff with an interval of three months between them. Their story from that moment onwards represents that of a hundred thousand Czecho-Slovaks, all treated similarly by the Russians, and eventually sent to the numerous camps spread over the vast Russian empire. Thousands upon thousands of their compatriots had surrendered in similar ways. Some belonged to Czech regiments, others had fought as individuals or small units in Austrian regiments. The former usually found an earlier opportunity for “going over“ to the Russians. Others followed later, after numerous adventures, as was the case of Captain “S.“, and the rest continued to serve until the outbreak of the Russian revolution. Those who, to their great disappointment, never had the chance to surrender, do not, of course, enter into this story. But there were not many left, and during the last year of the war there was bitter feeling among the Government elements and the Germans in Vienna when it was known that by that time the Czecho-Slovaks had surrendered en masse, and that few Czech troops remained in the Austro-Hungarian army.

Meanwhile, the Czecho-Slovaks in Russia agitated with the Russians and among themselves. They formed patriotic associations, which nearly all the prisoners joined, and it was these patriotic associations of prisoners, organised, on the one hand, by constant correspondence with Petrograd, Moscow, and Kieff, and, on the other hand, by visits of able leaders, and finally of Dr. Masaryk himself, that supplied the elements out of which the Czecho-Slovak legions were formed and suddenly came into fame. The two officers have given me in detail the evolution of their national army in Russia and Siberia, and I shall give the story of each in turn.