small nations? _We welcome the resurrection of the great and united
Polish State, we witness the great Yugoslav nation shaping its
boundaries along the Adriatic, and we also see Ukrainia arising. At
such moments we want to live as well, and we will live_!"

_(c) After the Amnesty_

The political amnesty of July, 1917, intended to appease the Slavs, had
just the opposite effect: it only strengthened the Slav resistance which
acquired fresh strength and impetus by the return of the old leaders.

Kramar was hailed like a sovereign when he entered Prague again. He now
became the recognised leader of the whole nation. The _Narodni Listy_
became the mouthpiece of all the most eminent leaders of the nation without
party distinction. Its issue of October 31, 1917, contained a map of the
future independent Czecho-Slovak State and a series of articles. We will
quote only a few passages from an article written by deputy Rasin which
read as follows:

"The war has brought our problem home not only to us but to the whole
world. Nothing could have better expressed our situation than the
propaganda of Mitteleuropa. Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria had to form a
bridge for the imperialistic march of Germany to the Persian Gulf _via_
Constantinople and Bagdad. The Czechs and Yugoslavs were to be crushed
and become the victims of those plans. This was the ideal that the
German nation considered as its war aim and as a war aim of
Austria-Hungary. They could not have obtained a better reply than was
given to them by the Czechs and Yugoslavs in their demand for their own
independent states, which would be able to form a permanent bulwark
against the _Drang nach Osten_ as planned by the Germans and Magyars.