"Our representatives in Japan and Serbia will be appointed later.
"We have the honour to inform you that we have taken these decisions in agreement with the political leaders at home. During the past three years our whole political and military action has been conducted in complete agreement with them. Finally, on October 2, 1918, the Czecho-Slovak deputy Staněk, President of the Union of Czech Deputies to the Parliament in Vienna, solemnly announced that the Czecho-Slovak National Council in Paris is to be considered as the supreme organ of the Czecho-Slovak armies and that it is entitled to represent the Czecho-Slovak nation in the Allied countries and at the Peace Conference. On October 9, his colleague, deputy Zahradník, speaking in the name of the same union, declared that the Czecho-Slovaks are definitely leaving the Parliament in Vienna, thereby breaking for ever all their ties with Austria-Hungary.
"Following the decision of our nation and of our armies, we are henceforth taking charge as a Provisional National Government for the direction of the political destinies of the Czecho-Slovak State, and as such we are entering officially into relations with the Allied Governments, relying both upon our mutual agreement with them and upon their solemn declarations.
"We make this declaration in a specially solemn manner at a moment when great political events call upon all the nations to take part in decisions which will perhaps give Europe a new political régime for centuries to come.
"Assuring you of my devoted sentiments, believe me to remain, in the name of the Czecho-Slovak Government,
(Signed) "DR. EDWARD BENEŠ,
Minister for Foreign Affairs."
CZECHO-SLOVAK DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
"At this grave moment when the Hohenzollerns are offering peace in order to stop the victorious advance of the Allied armies and to prevent the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary and Turkey, and when the Habsburgs are promising the federalisation of the empire and autonomy to the dissatisfied nationalities committed to their rule, we, the Czecho-Slovak National Council, recognised by the Allied and American Governments as the Provisional Government of the Czecho-Slovak State and nation, in complete accord with the declaration of the Czech deputies in Prague on January 6, 1918, and realising that federalisation and, still more, autonomy mean nothing under a Habsburg dynasty, do hereby make and declare this our Declaration of Independence:
"Because of our belief that no people should be forced to live under a sovereignty they do not recognise and because of our knowledge and firm conviction that our nation cannot freely develop in a Habsburg confederation which is only a new form of the denationalising oppression which we have suffered for the past three centuries, we consider freedom to be the first pre-requisite for federalisation and believe that the free nations of Central and Eastern Europe may easily federate should they find it necessary.