United States recognises the Czechoslovaks

On 3 September 1918 the American Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, issued a short statement on the Czechoslovaks. It stated that the Czechoslovak peoples had taken up arms against the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires and had placed in the field organised armies which were waging war against them under officers of their own nationality and in accordance with the rules of war, and that they had entrusted supreme political authority to the Czechoslovak National Council. The United States government therefore recognised that a state of belligerency existed between the Czechoslovaks thus organised and Germany and Austria-Hungary, and recognised the National Council as a de facto belligerent government, clothed with authority to direct the military and political affairs of the Czechoslovaks. Washington also declared its readiness to enter into formal relations with this government for the purpose of prosecuting the war against the common enemy. According to some accounts the decision was taken on 2 September and announced the following day.

The statement was the fruit of several months of efforts by Tomáš Masaryk. The chairman of the Council had arrived in the United States in May, after a long journey from Russia across Siberia and Japan, and Czech and Slovak émigrés in Chicago and other cities gave him a triumphant welcome. His talks with Lansing and other members of the government helped ensure that, after the cautious declaration of 29 May, the State Department went further in June and came out in favour of the complete liberation of the Slav peoples from German and Austrian rule. After British recognition on 9 August, Masaryk and Lansing agreed on the next step. On 31 August Masaryk handed the Secretary of State an extensive memorandum on the need for the Allies to recognise the Czechoslovaks. According to his memoirs, Lansing drafted the text on the model of the Balfour declaration and showed it to him before publication, and Masaryk thanked President Woodrow Wilson in writing.

Washington was particularly concerned with the Czechoslovak cause because of Siberia. In the summer President Wilson had justified sending troops to Russia chiefly by the need to help the soldiers of the Czechoslovak Legion, who since their revolt in May had been fighting the Bolsheviks along the Trans-Siberian Railway. In mid-August American infantry landed at Vladivostok alongside the Japanese, British and French. The State Department instructed the embassy in Tokyo to disseminate the statement and pass it on to Harbin, Vladivostok and Peking, and the consul in Archangel to give it the widest possible publicity. Abroad it was also spread by the American propaganda office, the Committee on Public Information.

The American formula was stronger than the British one. London had called the Czechoslovaks an Allied nation and the National Council “the trustee of the future government”, whereas Washington called it outright a government, albeit only a de facto one, and confirmed that its soldiers were waging war on Germany as well. On the same day, 3 September, an Anglo-Czechoslovak agreement was signed in London setting out the detailed consequences of the August declaration. Others followed the United States. Japan recognised the Czechoslovak army as an allied army on 9 September, and according to Czech accounts Italy recognised the Council on 3 October. When in October Austria-Hungary approached Wilson for peace, the President replied that after the recognition of the National Council, autonomy for the peoples of the monarchy was no longer enough for the United States. The day before, on 18 October, Masaryk had proclaimed in Washington the Czechoslovak declaration of independence.