economic development, and also upon territorial agreements and
international arrangements so framed as to guarantee land and sea
frontiers against unjust attacks; the restitution of provinces or
territories formerly torn from the Allies by force or contrary to the
wishes of their inhabitants; _the liberation of Italians, Slavs,
Rumanians and Czecho-Slovaks from foreign domination_; the liberation
of the peoples who now lie beneath the murderous tyranny of the Turks,
and the expulsion from Europe of the Ottoman Empire, which has proved
itself so radically alien to Western civilisation."

The greatest success of the Czecho-Slovak National Council, however, has
been the formal recognition by France of the formation of an autonomous
Czecho-Slovak army in France with the National Council at its head. By this
act France recognised:

(1) That the Czecho-Slovaks have a right to form an army of their own,
which right appertains only to a sovereign and independent nation;

(2) That the Czecho-Slovaks have a right to fight on the side of the
Entente, and therefore are to be considered as one of the Allies;

(3) That the political direction of the army is reserved to the
Czecho-Slovak National Council, which right is usually accorded only to the
government of an independent state.

The full text of this historic document, signed by the President of the
French Republic, M. Poincare, the French Premier, M. Clemenceau, and the
Foreign Secretary, M. Pichon, and dated December 19, 1917, reads
as follows: