[Illustration: Professor Thomas G. Masaryk]



INDEPENDENT BOHEMIA

AN ACCOUNT OF THE CZECHO-SLOVAK STRUGGLE FOR LIBERTY

By VLADIMIR NOSEK

Secretary to the Czecho-Slovak Legation in LONDON

1918



PREFACE

In the following pages I have attempted to outline the story of our
movement for independence. The manuscript of this book was completed over
four months ago. Since then many important changes have occurred in the
international situation. Chapters in which we dealt with the then still
existing Dual Monarchy must of course be read in the past tense, since
Austria exists no more. And again, many things which we anticipated and
hoped for in the future have already become accomplished facts. However, I
trust that the story itself has not only lost none of its value thereby,
but has acquired an additional interest from a historical point of view.
Our aim of national independence, only quite recently declared by our
adversaries to be "an empty dream of moonstruck idealists," has become
to-day not only a practical proposition, but an accomplished fact. We have