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impossible when the Bolsheviks, who at first granted the Czecho-Slovak Army free passage to Vladivostok, attempted to destroy it with the help of German and Magyar ex-prisoners. The Czecho-Slovaks defeated the Bolsheviks, with the result that now they are holding over 2,000 miles on the trans-Siberian railway. Their action induced Great Britain, France, Japan and America to intervene in Russia, and there is little doubt that their action, if carried out successfully, will bring about the salvation and restoration of Russia, and will shatter the German plans of Eastern penetration.
In the meantime France authorised the formation of an autonomous Czecho-Slovak Army on the Western Front in December, 1917, and Italy followed her example four months later, so that to-day Czecho-Slovak troops are fighting on all the battle-fields for the Allied cause, on whose victory alone the liberation of their country depends.
The future Czecho-Slovak State.
The international position of the Czecho-Slovak State will be of great importance. As we have already pointed out elsewhere, the Czecho-Slovaks are the most democratic, the most advanced and the most anti-German of all the Slavs. Bohemia will be a rich and self-supporting country of at least some 12 million inhabitants. In the North she will border on a united Poland with whom she may conclude a close alliance, assuring her an
