Cornwall M. The Undermining of Austria-Hungary: The Battle for Hearts and Minds

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204 The Undermining of Austria-Hungary

to desertions on a larger scale'.

120

From this evidence alone it is clear that the

new type of front propaganda which Italy launched from late April had an

immediate potential to shock the Austrian commanders to an extent lacking in

previous efforts. Admittedly, many of the claims made in the manifestos were

stretching the truth, both about Italy's commitment to the nationalities and

about the degree of unrest in Austria-Hungary. The Padua Commission's mani-

festos would

build on both of these main themes with a far larger amount of

information, but also by providing material which was based more precisely on

fact than on rumour. To some extent, this naturally reflected the reality of the

deteriorating situation in the Monarchy which the Commission could exploit.

One of the strengths of the new propaganda issued from Padua would be to

utilize accurate news items from the Empire which the Habsburg authorities

were trying to conceal from the soldiers. In particular, the latter would be

constantly reminded that nationalist agitation in the Monarchy was keeping

pace with the efforts of the e

migre

s and the Allies: there was little point in

continuing to fight if compatriots on both sides of the front were united and no

longer believed in the Empire's viability.

The Commission's

main source of information about events in Austria-Hun-

gary was to be an Italian Press Bureau ± Agenzia Italiana della Stampa ± which

was set up in early May in Berne in Switzerland. Subject to Gallenga's ministry,

and financed by it, the bureau was to be directed by Borgese who in the previous

months had headed Gallenga's news and information office as well as playing a

major role in the success of the Rome Congress. It had been one of Borgese's

recommendations after his important mission to southern Slav e

migre

sin

Switzerland in July 1917, that Italy should establish a press bureau there in

order to be better informed about the Yugoslav question. Ten months later the

purpose of the bureau was defined more widely and practically, since it formed

a key element in Italy's propaganda offensive. It had a dual task: of maintaining

regular contact with Slav e

migre

s in Switzerland, while at the same time feeding

to Padua and Rome intelligence from these contacts and information which

had been extracted from Austro-Hungarian newspapers. Indeed, Borgese's bur-

eau utilized some

of the channels and personnel which formed part of March-

etti's Intelligence network. One of those who joined the bureau, Luigi Granello,

had long been an agent of Marchetti and from late 1917 had been working

under cover from the press office of the Italian legation in Berne. He, like most

of Borgese's recruits to the new bureau, for example the socialist MP Francesco

Arca

, were adherents of nationality politics, for the bureau was to carry out

work in line with Borgese's thinking about Italy's wartime and postwar mission,

and therefore at odds with the views of Sonnino or the Consulta's own official

representatives in Switzerland.

121

In late May, Seton-Watson visited Switzer-

land on

a mission from Crewe House to help coordinate the work of enemy

propaganda and Allied Intelligence agencies. He was impressed by Borgese's

Italy's Campaign against Austria-Hungary 205

bureau which he found employing `expert readers for the press of each sub-

ject race

of Austria-Hungary', sending daily bulletins to Ojetti in Padua and

Gallenga in Rome.

122

In the months ahead it was to become the most

important information centre for the Padua Commission, supplying them

also with long weekly digests of the enemy press which could not be speedily

secured except via the route of neutral Switzerland.

Austrian military

Intelligence knew something about Borgese's bureau. By

July it was reliably informed by the Austrian consul in Lugano that Gallenga

had sent Borgese, `a famous Goethe specialist' and Corriere correspondent, to

Berne where he had rented an office at 28, Obere Dufonstraûe and recruited a

large number of helpers including Granello, Filippo Sacchi and Ernesto Vercesi.

However, although an Austrian agent code-named `Milan' was in touch with

Granello, Austrian sources were only partially correct about the bureau's precise

purpose, assuming that its task was simply to intensify the amount of Italian

propaganda in Switzerland.

123

Evidence for this was the fact that since Borgese's

appearance `the Italians have begun to carry out a very busy agitation among

the Slav nationalities of Austria-Hungary' resident in Switzerland.

124

Borgese was indeed in constant contact with the e

migre

bureaux, most

notably the Serbian press bureau of Boz

idar Markovic

and the Czechoslovak

press bureau in Geneva. And in late May Seton-Watson, as part of his co-

ordinating mission,

introduced him to the chief British propagandists in the

country, Deneke and Edwards. These were all gatherers of Intelligence as well as

being agitators and propagandists against Austria-Hungary. For example, the

Czechoslovak press bureau run by S

tefan Osusky

acted as a link between the

Czechoslovak National Council in Paris and the underground Mafie organiza-

tion in

Bohemia, smuggling instructions to the latter while accumulating

information about conditions in the Monarchy for the use of the Czech move-

ment abroad

or Allied Intelligence. The staff were also involved in translating

articles from the Austrian press though, as the Austrian censor position on the

Swiss border observed in an extensive report about Czech agitators in Switzer-

land, `what

kind of articles they are and why they are translated is not clear:

probably it's for use as political propaganda'.

125

This was indeed the case. The

Czech e

migre

s' diligent research and Intelligence sources were now at the

disposal of Borgese's new bureau which could communicate timely informa-

tion to

Padua for use as propaganda against the enemy.

Besides the

bureau, Ojetti would rely for raw news material on Allied military

Intelligence, particularly the Italian network. Already on 20 April he noted with

satisfaction that Marchetti and Finzi `were in agreement on everything', hold-

ing `clear

and Italian political views'; in the following months he would regu-

larly attend

the Intelligence heads' weekly Saturday meetings at Abano.

126

When it came to actually composing the Commission's leaflets, much would

be carried out by the Italians themselves, and all manifestos had to have Italian

206 The Undermining of Austria-Hungary

translations so that Ojetti could preserve (as directed by Orlando) the `necessary

political control'. It was partly to act as translators that delegates from the

oppressed nationalities were assigned to the Commission. But their participa-

tion, symbolic

in itself of Italy's commitment to their cause, was all the more

vital since it was thought that they would inject the correct tone and choose

the most pertinent themes for the manifestos. As Steed had emphasized on 30

March, `only representatives of the oppressed races were fully qualified to speak

to their co-nationals on the burning subjects of the time'.

127

Both they and

Ojetti wrote manifestos, for translation into or out of the Italian language. Both

also sought to establish better contact in the war zone with volunteers and

prisoners of the subject races. If for the e

migre

councils this was a natural

obsession, in Ojetti's case such links were yet another source of propaganda

material. He also viewed them as part of that overall coordination of `nation-

ality politics'

at the front with which Orlando had personally entrusted him.

By 8

May the main national delegates had arrived in Padua. Most seem to

have been chosen by their e

migre

compatriots for their breadth of experience or

their knowledge of the Italian Front; some had a striking independence of

character. However, the first to appear was an Italian, Benedetto de Luca, who

was to represent Romanian interests. Although he had been a `Romanian'

delegate to the Rome Congress and was a former correspondent of the Corriere

della Sera in Bucharest, De Luca's appointment was fully indicative of the

Illustration 6.1 The Padua Commission in June 1918. From left: (D'Arturo), Ojetti, Lasic

Cotrus, Kujundz

, Jambris

ak, (Bissolati), Zamorski, De Luca, Rybka, (Allamandola: Bisso-

lati's secretary), (unknown), Szuber (Szuber, Walka o PrzegaweÎ DuchowaÎ , Warsaw, 1933)

Italy's Campaign against Austria-Hungary 207

disorganized Romanian e

migre

community. Ojetti was effectively able to pick

his own Romanian delegates for the Commission, gradually supplanting De

Luca with Cotrus, a Transylvanian volunteer-prisoner, and thereby keeping a

firm grip on Romanian propaganda.

128

Polish propaganda was to be far more autonomous, in the hands of Jan

Zamorski (and his assistant Antoni Szuber). Before the war Zamorski had been

a teacher in Tarnopol, a rural agitator in Galicia, and an MP for the Polish

People's Party in the Reichsrat in Vienna. In November 1914 he had been

temporarily arrested by the Austrian authorities on a charge of treason. He

had been called up a year later and then traumatically captured on the Italian

Front and placed in a prison camp. Easily recognisable from his bald head and

`thick, brown, very neglected beard', he was, according to Italian military

Intelligence, `a vigorous champion of Polish independence'. Indeed, he had

made the leading speech for the Poles at the Rome Congress and it was a sign of

his alleged notoriety that he was allowed to undersign personally many of

Padua's Polish manifestos.

129

A substantially quieter individual was the `Czechoslovak' delegate, Josef

Rybka. Steed had clearly envisaged Frantis

ek Hlava

ek as the natural Czech

representative because of his long experience in Italy, but Hlava

ek's tense

relationship with S

tefa

nik prevented it. Instead it was Rybka, a former teacher

from Louny west of Prague, who was extracted from an Italian prison camp and

sent to Padua. Although he seems to have come to the fore through agitating

for the Czech cause in the camps, Rybka was older and less vociferous than

others on the Commission and also seems to have had far less contact with his

national council than, for example, the Yugoslav delegates. The Czech leaders

seem to have left him to his own devices, while knowing that their cause was

being propagated vigorously anyway by their newly established Legion on the

Italian Front.

130

It was to be the Yugoslav delegates with whom Ojetti would work most

carefully, since their cause was the most sensitive in the propaganda offensive

and Ojetti was himself also personally committed to Italo-Yugoslav fraternity.

The three delegates seem to have been deliberately chosen by Trumbic

in order

to represent the broad Yugoslav wartime experience. Dr Milivoj Jambris

ak was a

Croat dentist from Zagreb who had been taken prisoner on the Eastern Front

and then `with humour and Olympian coolness' had helped to organize Yugo-

slav volunteers

in Odessa.

131

On the strength of this he had, in December 1916,

been co-opted on to the Yugoslav Committee, and by 1918 was its represent-

ative in

France among the volunteers arriving from America and among Yugo-

slav prisoners

in the French prison camps.

132

His comrade on the Commission

was Bogoljub Kujundz

, a Serb from Livno in western Bosnia who, like Jam-

bris

ak,

had been captured by the Russians and would similarly prove to be a

cool-headed and loyal ambassador for Trumbic

, convinced in his own words

208 The Undermining of Austria-Hungary

that there could no peace `as long as the monster exists which is called Aus-

tria'.

133

In June they were joined by a Slovene, Dr Stojan Lasic

, who appears to

have been an American volunteer discovered by Jambris

ak, and who continued

to wear a distinctive military uniform until the latter persuaded Trumbic

that

he was suitable for permanent membership of the Commission.

134

The `three

satellites', as Finzi mockingly termed them,

135

reported regularly to Trumbic

and it was perhaps as much due to this discipline as to the sensitivity of their

cause that their activity soon became the most publicized of the national

delegates in the war zone.

On 18

April Ojetti had immediately taken control of the Commission. He

recruited as an assistant Giuseppe Donati, a journalist and close friend of

Salvemini, and secured Umberto Zanotti-Bianco, who was recovering from a

war-wound in Rome, as his personal liaison with Gallenga and other ministries

in the capital. Together with Donati, whom he rapidly grew to admire, Ojetti

simply ignored Baker and Gruss and associated instead with the national del-

egates, meeting

them every evening for a business discussion, but also taking

their meals together at which they exchanged their wealth of ideas and wartime

experiences.

Some time

after arriving in Padua, Jambris

ak set down on paper the aims of

the Commission as he understood them from Ojetti:

The purpose

of the work is to carry out propaganda among Austrian sol-

diers (of

the oppressed races), to encourage them to be friendly to Italy and

also to weaken their military constitution . . . The work is planned in two

directions: first at the front itself, to get in touch with Austrian patrols, to

swamp them with manifestos and agitate among them in a pacifist and

nationalist direction, and to spread hatred and mistrust of the Austrian

military authorities. For that purpose we will throw leaflets into the Austrian

trenches with the aid of special apparatuses. In the second direction, to pay

attention to the rear of the Austrian front, especially the Istrian and Dalma-

tian coast.

136

For Ojetti in the early weeks there were two major tasks to solve: the printing

and the distribution of propaganda. At first he thought of having the material

printed in Rome, but finally resolved upon using the Istituto Veneto d'Arti

Grafiche which had been transferred after Caporetto from Venice to Reggio

Emilia. The army bought it for the Commission, and Ojetti, who was particu-

larly concerned

not to copy the typographical mistakes of earlier leaflets, set

about ensuring that the press secured from Turin the exact printing types for all

languages of the Monarchy.

137

Distribution was to be a longer-lasting head-

ache. It

was expected that much material would simply be sent to the Intelli-

gence offices

and distributed by propaganda patrols such as Pivko's. Although

Italy's Campaign against Austria-Hungary 209

the patrols might use rockets, Badoglio and the Intelligence heads agreed that

the Naud grenades recommended by Steed were inadequate for the range

required on many sectors of the Italian Front.

Yet it

was air which was to be the vital medium for propagation. Ojetti, as

mentioned, wished not only to swamp the enemy war zone with manifestos,

but to distribute tons of material over the Istrian and Dalmatian coast and if

possible to target particular towns with specific messages. As was the case in

Austria when the Austrian propagandists hoped for support from their airmen,

so in Italy in mid-1918 the idea of scattering propaganda was met with resist-

ance by

some of the military authorities. After some frustrating weeks, Ojetti

finally had to use Orlando's influence in order to persuade the CS to designate

one Caproni per army for propaganda purposes. Even then a range of obstacles

persisted. It was not long before some Italians began to object to the Yugoslav

material which they were supposed to distribute. In particular, although Ojetti

thought he had arranged with the naval authorities to use their seaplanes to

spread material over the Dalmatian coast, on 11 June he was told at Abano that

Admiral Thaon di Revel ± a supporter of Sonnino ± refused to do so since the

leaflets bore the names of Trumbic

and Trinajstic

, `well known adversaries of

Italy'.

138

It was one struggle which Ojetti would never fully master. Some

consolation came from the fact that the 87th squadron, created in February

to carry out bombing raids deep in the Austrian hinterland, agreed to take

material on two major propaganda raids over Ljubljana and Zagreb. As we will

see, these expeditions in June had a notable impact upon the `enemy' popula-

tion and

caused a stir in the Austrian press.

Despite these

problems of distribution, the front propaganda campaign of the

Padua Commission was destined to be the most extensive and sophisticated of

its kind during the whole war. From 15 May until early November 1918, the

printing works at Reggio Emilia issued 643 brightly coloured manifestos, total-

ling about

60 million copies, and 80 newssheets, totalling almost two million

copies.

139

This was about three times the amount of propaganda which the

British were distributing on the Western Front over the same period.

140

Almost

all of Padua's leaflets were numbered consecutively (see Appendix), the final

manifesto being number 492,

141

and most were directed specifically at one

nationality in the enemy forces. Of this material it is possible to calculate that

the amount in Slav or Romance languages accounted for 80 per cent (48 million

copies) of the total, while the Commission, initially reluctant to appeal to

German-Austrian or Magyar soldiers, gradually increased its output in those

languages during the summer, ending with a total of 46 German texts (four-

and-a-half million copies) and 112 Hungarian texts (nine-and-a-half million).

In contrast, Yugoslav material, for example, numbered 136 texts (over 13 mil-

lion copies)

and 20 editions of the single-sheet newspaper Jugoslavia: about 30

per cent of Padua's total propaganda.

142

210 The Undermining of Austria-Hungary

In terms of material, the Commission from the start envisaged a weekly news-

paper as

one of its main types of propaganda, both for use over the enemy

lines and among prisoners in the Italian camps. It would, as Ojetti told Kuj-

undz

on his arrival, be `purely journalistic, a short and popular exposition

of current affairs . . . [which] would only tell the truth and not be propa-

ganda for

its own sake'.

143

In fact, of course, `The Truth', as Ojetti at first

intended to call the paper, could be elastically interpreted. The newssheets

which finally emerged, written in four languages under the titles Jugoslavia,

eskoslovenska

Samostatnost, Polak and Neamul Roma

nesc,

differed little from the

ordinary manifestos except in the amount of information that they contained;

they tended to be a mixture of imaginative writing by the national delegates

and short items of news from the enemy press. However, the chief emphasis

was certainly on providing supposedly impartial information of interest to a

particular nationality. The idea for this may have partly derived from the kind

of newssheets which were being used in Austria's own campaign against Italy,

but it also indicates the Italians' correct perception that the enemy authorities

were desperately trying to isolate their troops from poisonous information;

after all, the CS after Caporetto was trying to do exactly the same thing.

Alongside the newssheets, ordinary manifestos could be blunter, more emo-

tional and

would presumably have a greater appeal among the less educated.

And as a third type of propaganda, Ojetti was keen to go further in this

emotional direction, using national flags, symbols, anniversaries or religious

imagery in order to arouse the soldiers' curiosity. For example, pictures of

the Black Madonna of Czestochowa would be sent to Poles, leaflets about

the anniversary of Jan Hus's death to Czechs, and each leaflet might be

headed with appropriate national pictorial symbols.

144

The material would

therefore supply topical items of news, but would usually accompany them

with images or ideas which played on deep-seated national or personal senti-

ments.

In the

short period before Austria launched its offensive on 15 June 1918, the

Commission produced and distributed about 13 million copies of 84 different

leaflets. Much of the material contrasted news about the Allies' strength with

the Central Powers' desperate position. In particular, while Germany was fail-

ing to

break through on the Western Front, the United States was galvanizing

itself for action. Padua was especially quick to publicize President Wilson's

speech in New York on 19 May in which he had underlined America's deter-

mination to

fight with all its resources towards victory.

145

But the new ingredient,

when compared to the former propaganda of Italian military Intelligence, was

that Italy was now shown to be clearly committed to the nationality principle

and this fact mirrored precisely the national aspirations in the Monarchy itself:

the manifestos aimed to give as much attention as possible to the `reality' of

national polarization within Austria-Hungary.

Italy's Campaign against Austria-Hungary 211

In the material directed at `Yugoslav' soldiers and civilians, most was in Serbo-

Croat in the predominant s

tokavian dialect and in the Latin alphabet. Only in

July would Cyrillic lettering (with which Serbs were most familiar) creep into the

manifestos,

146

and leaflets in Slovene were not issued until Lasic

had arrived at

Padua. It was therefore the Croats who were targeted at first in an effort to dispel

their fears about Italy. It was also undoubtedly the case that Jambris

ak and his

colleagues wished to emphasize uniformity in the propaganda, minimizing any

differences which existed among the Yugoslav peoples. For example, he was

against distributing religious imagery, for in contrast to its use with the Poles

or Czechs, he felt `it would have a damaging effect on our nation'.

147

Nor would

any propaganda be aimed for the present at Moslems from Bosnia since they

were viewed as unyielding or indifferent. As the Bosnian Serb Kujundz

told an

inquisitive Granville Baker: `although there are a few exceptions, they generally

lack a national consciousness and are like religious fanatics with a liking for

Turkey'. Only when there were more Moslems in Italian captivity might they be

trained to act as Yugoslav pioneers in Bosnia.

148

Indeed, Jambris

ak and Kujundz

faced a fundamental dilemma. They were

proclaiming a Yugoslav message to soldiers or civilians who rarely shared such

an all-embracing ideal in 1918. But this could not stop the propagandists

implying that the ideas of their manifestos were equally attractive or applicable

to all the southern Slavs ± Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. For example, they would

often refer to legendary figures such as Matija Gubec or Bishop Strossmayer,

who came from totally different periods of the southern Slav historical experi-

ence, but

were grouped together as examples of heroes in the common fight for

freedom. One of the first Yugoslav leaflets had a specifically Croat historic

theme.

149

It told of a celebration organized in Rome on 30 April to commem-

orate the

`martyrdom' in 1681 of the Croatian rebels Zrinjski and Frankopan:

`two of the most outstanding representatives of our fight for justice and free-

dom' who

had `died because they loved too much those whom Austria hated so

terribly'. Although the leaflet suggested that such a commemoration could not

occur in Austria, the reality was that Zagreb on the same day had been decked

in black and witnessed large demonstrations. The Rome events described in the

leaflet therefore had a potential resonance among Croats, and all the more so

because on 11 May a radical Zagreb newspaper proceeded to report them in full

together with an uncensored version of the speech which Ante Trumbic

had

delivered.

150

It was a notable example of how some of Italy's radical propaganda

could mirror precisely the mentality of radical agitators in Austria-Hungary.

The crucial

element in the Rome commemoration (and the leaflet) was, of

course, that Italians had hosted it. From the start, Padua's Yugoslav material

emphasized that Italy was fighting for the Yugoslav cause. Evidence for this was

the Rome Congress; the presence in Italy of Yugoslav Committee delegates who

were working with Italians in Rome and at the CS; and the supposedly good

212 The Undermining of Austria-Hungary

treatment which Italy was meting out to Yugoslav prisoners. It only then

seemed a slight exaggeration to suggest that `all of Italy's land, sea and air

forms of communication are at our disposal'!

151

Trumbic

himself, who in May

was visiting the Serbian High Command on the Salonika Front, could be quoted

to sum up the new spirited mood:

The future

of a great Yugoslav state is much more certain now than ten

months ago [the time of the Corfu Declaration]. For this revolution for the

better one must thank especially the attitude of Italy. As evidence of that, it

is enough to mention that when I was in Rome I was received in all circles

not as an ordinary Yugoslav delegate but as the representative of a friendly

country, indeed an independent country. I am convinced that the Italian

people really are amicably disposed towards the Yugoslavs and that that

friendship will grow ever deeper and more affectionate. Italy's greatest polit-

ical thinkers

completely understand the need for friendship between us and

the Italians. They are sure that free and united Yugoslavs will be the stron-

gest defence

against Germany breaking through to the Adriatic sea.

152

Such benevolence by Italy could be directly contrasted in the manifestos with

the attitude of the Habsburg authorities. It was at this very time that they were

beginning to debate the future of their southern Slav lands, faced as they were

with a home-grown Yugoslav movement, the so-called `declaration move-

ment'. This

had originated in Slovene regions in August 1917 and was slowly

spreading southwards under the leadership of Monsignor Anton Koros

ec.

Padua duly secured some news about the growing polarization in the Monarchy

over this issue. On 3 May 1918, the Austrian Prime Minister assured German-

Austrian MPs that if there was any southern Slav unity under the Habsburg

sceptre it would never include Slovene territory since to do so would separate

Austria from the Adriatic. On 25 May the Emperor himself went further by

telling a German deputation from the Slovene lands that he opposed a united

Slovenia under any circumstances. Padua commented: `The German-Magyar

government gives the Germans the right to oppress the Slovene fatherland'.

154

Further proof that this was true was supplied in one of Padua's first manifes-

tos in

Slovene which quoted at length an article from the radical Ljubljana daily

Slovenec. The article refuted German claims that the Slovene peasantry would

have a miserable existence in any Yugoslav state. On the contrary, while at

present it was Germans who dominated the Slovene economy and educational

system, in Yugoslavia the ordinary Slovene would gain security: `every Slovene

peasant would be protected by law and would not be subject to the monstrous

orders which the foreigner imposes on him simply to exploit him'.

155

Alongside

this manifesto of ideas, Padua was also able to give a few hints of the declaration

movement on the ground: how a mass of Slovene parishes were adhering to the

153

Italy's Campaign against Austria-Hungary 213

Yugoslav cause, how food riots had taken place in late April in Ljubljana, and

how there were mass rallies at which oaths for unity and independence were

being sworn.

156

If the news which Padua secured on this subject was still rather

sketchy, it was generally accurate and was a useful foil to negative items about

German-Magyar oppression. The extent of the latter was often exaggerated and

described in colourful, if not violent, language:

When twenty-four

thousand Magyars have been sent to Zagreb, Sus

ak,

Karlovac, Rijeka and other towns of Croatia, when these murderers kill our

fathers and brothers, and rape our daughters and wives ± at this time you

ought to support those who bring you freedom and unity. What are you

still waiting for? Are we going to be servants of a foreign country for ever?

Doesn't the blood stir in your veins? Have you lost your sight and are blind?

Can't you hear the groans of your fathers as they are hung, the scream of

your weak ones and the howl of your slaughtered and violated mothers and

brides? Hear them once and avenge them.

157

Padua's first manifestos in the Czech, Polish and Romanian languages fol-

lowed the

same pattern as the Yugoslav. They emphasized on the one hand the

national polarization in the Monarchy, and on the other the extent to which

the Allies, particularly Italy, were demonstrably committed to the nationality

principle. Evidence for these themes was especially plentiful for Czech propa-

ganda. The

Czech material, although always labelled as `Czecoslovacco', con-

tained nothing

in the Slovak language: it was written in Czech by Rybka, with

Czech news and sentiments, and thereby the fiction was propagated (far more

than in the Yugoslav case) that there existed one Czechoslovak nationality.

In the first edition of Padua's Czech newspaper, C

eskoslovenska

Samostatnost

(deliberately given the same name as the official organ of the National Council

in Paris), Czechs were `reminded' of how they had all taken a moral stance

against the Habsburgs from the beginning of the war. After a long period of

passive resistance in the Czech towns and countryside, the people from mid-

1917 had

begun to speak out: witness the speeches in the Reichsrat on 30 May

1917, the Epiphany Declaration of 6 January 1918, and more recently the

response made by Czech MPs to Count Czernin's untactful attacks on Masaryk

and the `treacherous' Czech nation.

158

Padua in this period certainly had much

material to hand because of contemporary dramatic events in Prague, not least,

as we will see, the demonstrations in mid-May on the 50th anniversary of the

founding of the Czech National Theatre. The Czechs, like the Slovenes, could

also be given ample `proof' of the economic realities at home where the state con-

tinued to

make requisitions while their families were starving.

159

In this environ-

ment of

German oppression, the manifestos proclaimed that the Czechs at

home were now determined to create their own independent Czechoslovak