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Updated: September 10, 2025
For the moment German trust in success had to repose upon the secondary efforts of her Austrian ally on the Piave, although no German troops could now be spared to give much substance to the expectation. That front had been quiescent since the winter, but a good deal had been done to strengthen it, and the Italians were doubtless well advised to stand behind their lines rather than risk an offensive until Austria was practically hors de combat. Austria herself had little stomach for the fight. Her domestic situation was deplorable; parliamentary government had been suspended; and nearly half the population of the Empire was in veiled or open revolt. Hundreds of thousands of Czecho-Slovaks and Jugo-Slavs had joined the enemy, and some were stiffening the Piave front. But German demands were inexorable, and it was hoped that German tactics would supply the place of German troops. There were two battles in the offensive which began on 15 June, one in the mountains, the object of which was to turn the whole Italian front on the Piave, and the other a frontal attack across that river between the Montello, the pivot of the mountain and river fronts, and the sea. The first was the more promising, but achieved the less success. That front was partly held by French and British troops, and the insignificant advance which the Austrians made on the 15th was stopped on the following day. The attack on the Piave was at first more fortunate; a good deal of the Montello was taken, a serious impression was made on the Italian right wing at San Don
The Czecho-Slovaks are only waiting for a favorable opportunity to strike the death-blow at the Dual Monarchy. Austria-Hungary declared war not only on her enemies outside her frontiers, but also on her internal enemies, on her own Slav and Latin subjects. From the very first day of war terrorism reigned supreme in Bohemia, where the Austrian Government behaved as in an enemy country.
The enmity of the German elements is more menacing, and it is not to be denied that the new State holds a million or so people who, by the accident of habitat, have to be called Czecho-Slovaks, though they are no more Czecho-Slovaks than Lot and his wife. I met among others Dr. Still, it has its advantages.
He was well aware that a federalistic and just Austria would have to grant independence to the Czecho-Slovaks. But later on he gave up his illusions about the possibility of a just Austria, when he saw that she abandoned the Slavs entirely to German-Magyar hegemony, and declared that Bohemia existed before Austria and would also exist after her.
The Czecho-Slovaks will under all circumstances defend their rights." In conjunction with this declaration we may quote two other Czech Socialists showing the opinion of the Czechs on the Russian Revolution.
When the Russian offensive of July, 1917, started, Herr Hummer, member of the Austrian Reichsrat, addressed the following interpellation to the Austrian Minister for Home Defence: "Is the Austrian Minister for Home Defence aware that in one of the early engagements of the new Russian offensive, the 19th Austrian Infantry Division, which consists almost entirely of Czecho-Slovaks and other Slavs, openly sided with the enemies of Austria by refusing to fight against the Russians and by surrendering as soon as an opportunity offered itself?"
On the whole, the Czecho-Slovaks, who are an advanced nation, fully conscious of their national aspirations, remained unaffected by the misleading Bolshevist theories. The Czechs abstained throughout from interfering with Russian affairs, yet they did not wish to leave Russia as long as there was any chance for them to assist her.
These three men, unanimously recognised by the two million Czecho-Slovaks in the Allied countries as their leaders, were finally, in the summer of 1918, recognised also by the Allies as the de facto provisional government of the Czecho-Slovak State, with all rights and powers of a real government.
The first victories gained by the Czecho-Slovaks over the Bolsheviks were at Penza and Samara. Penza was captured by them after three days' fighting at the end of May. Later the Czecho-Slovaks also took Sysran on the Volga, Kazan with its large arsenal, Simbirsk and Yekaterinburg, connecting Tcheliabinsk with Petrograd, and occupied practically the whole Volga region.
Even without the loss of Cracow, that of the rest of Galicia was serious enough; her oil-wells were the main sources of the German supply of petroleum, and her Slav population, once assured of the solidity of Russian success, would throw off its allegiance to the Hapsburgs and entice the Czecho-Slovaks on its borders to do the same. These prospects were not visionary in September 1914.
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