Page:America in the Struggle for Czechoslovak Independence (1926).pdf/63

RV 59 principles enumerated in the resolution should be made the basis of discussion in a congress of neutral nations. One of the principles so specified was the liberation of oppressed nationalities.

Hearings were had before the committee on February 24–25, 1916, at Washington, and the Bohemian National Alliance was there represented by a delegation of three of its officials, one of whom obtained the floor and presented the Czech claims in a short address prepared by himself, but which, though it was left in its original form, was the subject of much careful deliberation on the part of the officials of the Alliance before the delegation left for Washington and was, therefore, thoroughly representative of the attitude of Czech leaders in America.

The address, as well as the interesting exchange of views between the speaker and members of the committee, appears in the printed proceedings of the latter, and the exposé itself was published in pamphlet form by the Bohemian National Alliance of America under the title Bohemia’s Claim to Independence. The speaker found it possible to plant himself on precedents from American his tory. Paraphrasing the peroration from a famous oration of Daniel Webster welcoming Kossuth, this exposition of the Czech cause ends with the