5. We could give many proofs of the great service the Czecho-Slovaks rendered the Allies by their surrenders. But for our purpose it will be sufficient to quote only some more admissions of the Germans and Magyars themselves.
Count Tisza admitted that Czech troops could not be relied upon, and Count Windischgrätz stated that the chief of staff dare not use them except when mixed with Magyars and Germans.
Deputy Urmanczy declared in the Budapest Parliament on September 5, 1916, that during the first encounters with Rumania, a Czech regiment retired without the slightest resistance, provided themselves with provisions, entered a train and disappeared. The men went over to Rumania. He blamed the Czechs for the Austrian reverse in Transylvania.
On June 22, 1917, when the case of deputy Klofáč was discussed by the Immunity Committee of the Reichsrat, General von Georgi, Austrian Minister for Home Defence, according to the Czech organ Pozor of June 24, described
"... the conditions prevailing in the army, especially the behaviour of certain Czech regiments, and brought forward all the material which had been collected against the Czechs since the outbreak of the war, and which had been used against them. He referred to the 28th and 36th Regiments as well as to eight other Czech regiments which had voluntarily surrendered to the Russians. He mentioned also that Czech officers, not only those in reserve but also those on active service, including some of the highest ranks of the staff, surrendered to the enemy; in one instance fourteen officers with a staff officer thus surrendered. Czech soldiers in the Russian and French armies, as well as in other enemy armies, are fighting for the Entente and constitute legions and battalions of their own. The total number of Czechs in the enemy armies exceeds 60,000. In the prisoners' camps in the enemy countries, non-German prisoners were invited to join the enemy's ranks. Czech legions and battalions are composed almost entirely of former prisoners of war. The minister further went on to describe the propaganda of the Czechs abroad, the activity of Czech committees in enemy and neutral countries, especially in Russia and Switzerland. He also mentioned the case of Pavlu, a Czech soldier, who in a Russian newspaper described how he penetrated the Austrian trenches in the uniform of an Austrian officer, annihilated the occupants and after a successful scouting reconnaissance returned to the Russian ranks. The minister described the attitude of the 'Sokols' and the Czech teachers. The tenor of his speech was that Klofáč is responsible for the anti-Austrian feeling of the Czech nation and that therefore he should not be released."
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?"
The most interesting document in regard to the attitude of Czecho-Slovaks during the war is the interpellation of ninety German Nationalist deputies (Schurf, Langenhahn, Wedra, Richter, Kittinger and others), of which we possess a copy. It contains 420 large-size printed pages, and it is therefore impossible for us to give a detailed account of it. The chapters of this interpellation have the following headings:
1. The dangers of Pan-Slavistic propaganda.
2. The situation at the outbreak of the war.