Our nation longs with all the democracies of the world for a
general and lasting peace. But our nation is fully aware that
no peace can be permanent except a peace which will abolish old
injustice, brutal force, and the predominance of arms, as well
as the predominance of States and nations over other nations,
and which will assure a free development to all nations, great
or small, and which will liberate especially those nations which
still are suffering under foreign domination. That is why it
is necessary that this right of free national development and
to self-determination of nations, great or small, to whatever
State they may belong, should become the foundation of future
international right, a guarantee of peace, and of a friendly
co-operation of nations, as well as a great ideal which will
liberate humanity from the terrible horrors of a world war.
We, deputies of the Czech nation, declare that a peace which would
not bring our nation full liberty could not be and would not mean
a peace to us, but only a beginning of a new, desperate, and
continuous struggle for our political independence, in which our
nation would strain to the utmost its material and moral forces.
And in that uncompromising struggle it would never relax until
its aim had been achieved. Our nation asks for independence on
the ground of its historic rights, and is imbued with the fervent
desire to contribute toward the new development of humanity on the
basis of liberty and fraternity in a free competition with other
free nations which our nation hopes to accomplish in a sovereign,
equal, democratic, and socially just State of its own, built upon
the equality of all its citizens within the historic boundaries of
the Bohemian lands and of Slovakia, guaranteeing full and equal
national rights to all minorities.
Guided by these principles, we solemnly protest against the
rejection of the right of self-determination at the peace
negotiations, and demand that, in the sense of this right, all
nations, including, therefore, also the Czecho-Slovaks, be
guaranteed participation and full freedom of defending their
rights at the Peace Conference.