Despite this attempt at suppression the text of the document reached
the outside world through the Czecho-Slovak National Council. It is as
follows:
In the fourth year of this terrible war, which has already cost
the nations numberless sacrifices in blood and treasure, the first
peace efforts have been inaugurated. We, the Czech members of the
Austrian Reichsrat, which, through the verdicts of incompetent
military tribunals, has been deprived of a number of its Slav
Deputies and Czech Deputies to the dissolved and as yet unsummoned
Diet of the Kingdom of Bohemia, and to the equally unsummoned
Diets of Moravia and Silesia, recognize the declarations of the
Czech Deputies in the Reichsrat, and deem it our duty emphatically
to declare, in the name of the Czech Nation and of its oppressed
and forcibly silenced Slovak branch of Hungary, our attitude
toward the reconstruction of international relations.
When the Czech Deputies of our regenerated nation expressed
themselves during the Franco-Prussian war on the international
European problems they solemnly declared in their memorandum
of Dec. 8, 1870, that "all nations, great or small, have an
equal right to self-determination, and their complete equality
should always be respected. Only from the recognition of the
equality of all nations and from mutual respect of the right
of self-determination can come true equality and fraternity, a
general peace and true humanity."
[Illustration: SHADED AREA SHOWS THE PROJECTED STATE OF JUGOSLAVIA,
INCLUDING SERBIA, MONTENEGRO, AND SLAVIC PORTIONS OF AUSTRIA-HUNGARY]
We, the Deputies of the Czech Nation, true even today to these
principles of our ancestors, have, therefore, greeted with joy the
fact that all States based upon democratic principles, whether
they are belligerent or neutral, now accept with us the right of
nations to free self-determination as a guarantee of a general and
lasting peace.
Also the new Russia accepted the principle of self-determination
of nations during its attempts for a general peace as a
fundamental condition of peace. The nations were freely to
determine their fate and decide whether they want to live in an
independent State of their own or whether they choose to form one
State in common with other nations.