position of the United States Government to be that _all branches of
the Slav race should be completely freed from German and Austrian
rule_."

On the following day, that is on June 30, 1918, President Poincare
presented the Czecho-Slovak army with a flag and delivered an inspiring
speech to them.

On the occasion of the handing of this flag by President Pioncare to the
Czecho-Slovak army, M. Pichon, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, on behalf
of the government of the French Republic, addressed the following letter to
Dr. Edouard Benes, the general secretary of the Czecho-Slovak National
Council in Paris:

"At the moment when the 21st Regiment of Chasseurs, the first unit of
the autonomous Czecho-Slovak army in France, after receiving its flag,
is leaving its quarters to take up its position in a sector amongst its
French brothers-in-arms, the Republican Government, in recognition of
your efforts and your attachment to the Allied cause, considers it just
and necessary to proclaim _the right of your nation to its independence
and to recognise publicly and officially the National Council as the
supreme organ of its general interests and the first step towards a
future Czecho-Slovak Government_.

"During many centuries the Czecho-Slovak nation has enjoyed the
incomparable benefit of independence. It has been deprived of this
independence through the violence of the Habsburgs allied to the German
princes. The historic rights of nations are imperishable. It is for the
defence of these rights that France, attacked, is fighting to-day
together with her Allies. The cause of the Czechs is especially dear to