Czech deputies of the Austrian Imperial Council and deputies of the Diets of the Czech lands

“ We, deputies of the Czech nation, true event today to these principles of our ancestors, have therefore greeted with joy the fact that all States based upon democratic principles, whether they are belligerent or neutral, now accept with us the right of nations to free self-determination as a guarantee of a general and lasting peace. ”

“ We, deputies of the Czech nation, declare that a peace which would not bring our nation full liberty could not be and would not mean a peace to us, but only a beginning of a new, desperate, and continuous struggle for our political independence, in which our nation would strain to the utmost its material and moral forces. ”

“ Our nation asks for independence on the ground of its historic rights, and is imbued with the fervent desire to contribute toward the new development of humanity on the basis of liberty and fraternity in a free competition with other free nations, which our nation hopes to accomplish in a sovereign, equal, democratic, and socially just State of its own, built upon the equality of all its citizens within the historic boundaries of the Bohemian lands and of Slovakia, guaranteeing full and equal national rights to all minorities. ”

“ Also the new Russia accepted the principle of self-determination of nations during its attempts for a general peace, as a fundamental condition of peace. The nations were freely to determine their fate and decide whether they want to live in and independent State of their own or whether they choose to form one State in common with other nations. ”

“ Our brother Slovaks became the victims of Magyar brutality and of unspeakable violence in a State which, notwithstanding all its apparent constitutional liberties, remains the darkest corner of Europe, and in which the non-Magyars, who form the majority of the population, are ruthlessly oppressed by the ruling minority, extirpated, denationalized from childhood, unrepresented in Parliament and civil service, deprived of public schools, as well as of all private educational institutions. ”

“ Comparable, therefore, with the Corfu declaration is the statement of the Czech deputies at Prague, January 6, 1918, when they met in convention with the unconvened diets of the three Tzecho-Slovak provinces. The progress of the growth of the idea of independent nationality among this people is further comparable to that of their brother Slavs in the fact that, like the Poles and the Jugoslavs, they now have a figthting force at the front, fighting under their national flag and politically speaking a Tzecho-Slovak national army. ”