Primary Documents - Robert Lansing on the Creation of a Czech State, 3 September 1918
Reproduced below is the
text of U.S. Secretary of State
Robert Lansing's official
statement formally recognising
Tomas
Masaryk as the prospective head of a post-war Czech state.
Click here to read an earlier statement by Masaryk, in July 1918, on the rationale for Czechoslovak fighting in Russia against German and Austro-Hungarian forces. Click here to read the declaration of independence of 18 October 1918. Click here to read an extract from Masaryk's address upon re-entering Prague as President in December 1918.
Robert Lansing on U.S. Recognition of Czecho-Slovak National Council as a de facto Belligerent Government, 3 September 1918
The Czecho-Slovak peoples having taken up arms against the German and Austro-Hungarian empires, and having placed in the field organized armies, which are waging war against those empires under officers of their own nationality and in accordance with the rules and practices of civilized nations, and Czecho-Slovaks having in the prosecution of their independence in the present war confided the supreme political authority to the Czecho-Slovak National Council, the Government of the United States recognizes that a state of belligerency exists between the Czecho-Slovaks thus organized and the German and Austro-Hungarian empires.
It also recognizes the Czecho-Slovak National Council as a de facto belligerent government, clothed with proper authority to direct the military and political affairs of the Czecho-Slovaks.
The Government of the United States further declares that it is prepared to enter formally into relations with the de facto government thus recognized for the purpose of prosecuting the war against the common enemy, the empires of Germany and Austria-Hungary.
Source: Source Records of the Great War, Vol. VI, ed. Charles F. Horne, National Alumni 1923
Ack Ack was a term used to describe anti-aircraft fire.
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