Page:Albert Beaumont - Heroic Story of the Czecho-Slovak Legions - 1919.djvu/40

 We got a fine big brick building, one of the largest at Tjumen, as our headquarters, and here we organised a big club and started a national Czecho-Slovak organisation. We contributed 10 per cent of our pay every month for propaganda among our men, and corresponded with Petrograd, Moscow, and Kieff. We learned at that time that the first national Czecho-Slovak organisations had been formed, at Petrograd, with, M. Čermák at its head, and General Červinka at Kieff. We followed the example. The Russian Czech, Pavlů, an editor at Petrograd, was our principal leader and organiser. He founded a weekly CzechoSlovak paper at Petrograd for all Czecho-Slovak prisoners, and we got it regularly. In this way we learned that many other local organisations had been formed, and that there was a general yearning in all our prisoner's camps to find a bond of union.

We seriously worked for our “national organisation,“ which had been started in Petrograd, Moscow, and Kieff, and which all our officers and men gradually joined. We had the great pleasure of having with us Dr. Straka, our great legal authority, who became a member of our first provisional Government in Russia. Dr. Straka prepared lectures on future Czecho-Slovak law, and on our national politics. He composed a pamphlet of 160 pages to be sent for propaganda purposes to all the Czecho-Slovak prisoners’ camps. We wrote out the copies by hand, every officer volunteering to make a copy. The pamphlet agitated for revolution against Austria and the breaking up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Our subscription to the Czecho-Slovak Government Fund amounted to 2,000 roubles per month. Lieutenant Z., who had been employed at the Town Hall, in Prague, wrote Russian well, and composed short articles to explain our aspirations for independence to the Russians. We copied his articles, and circulated them among the Russian families. He also contributed paragraphs to the local paper in Tjumen to explain the object for which we Czecho-Slovaks were agitating.

The number of our “prisoners“ who had voluntarily surrendered in most cases had greatly increased. We were already more than 100,000 at the beginning of 1916. A part of the 28th Regiment of Prague was reconstituted by Austria. They also surrendered on the Dukla Pass on April 3, 1915. The 36th Regiment of Mladá Boleslav surrendered likewise in May, 1915. Austria then struck them out of the list of regiments. At the end of 1915, our volunteers fighting with the Russian Army amounted to about one regiment. At Easter, in 1916, they already formed a brigade. It was time, therefore, to constitute our Provisional Government, and continue enrolling volunteers authority.