to all Montenegrins to rally round it and to prove “that the people is innocent of the crime of its rulers.”
This important declaration is signed by Mr. Andrew Radović, the well-known Liberal leader who resigned the Premiership on the King’s refusal to accept a truly national policy, Mr. Vudeković, former Minister of Public Instruction, and Mr. Janko Spasojević, former Minister of Justice. The character of the Committee, on whose behalf these three Montenegrin patriots sign the Manifesto, is sufficient to establish their appeal as the true voice of the gallant Montenegrin people.
Bohemia’s Demand for Independence
[While much amiable sentiment has been expended on the supposed Slavophil tendencies of the Emperor Charles and his present advisers, the repressive system under which Bohemia has groaned since early in the war continues unabated. But nothing can quell the spirit of the Czechs, and the reference to their liberation in the Allied Note, followed by the Russian Revolution, has had a magical effect upon them. To-day the most prominent of their party leaders are in prison or in exile, but though fresh arrests and inquisitions continue (notably against the directors of one of the leading patriotic banks of Prague), the country is united in sentiment as it has seldom been in the past. The three following documents are symptomatic of its attitude.]
The Union of Czech Journalists in Prague on 25 April addressed to the Austrian Premier and to all Czech deputies the following protest against the methods of the censorship:—
“We draw attention above all to the methods of the Prague Censorship, which are in formal contradiction to the spirit of morality and every principle of civilised journalism. Our newspapers are forced to insert articles sent by the official Press Bureaux as if they were the work of our editorial offices, and we are not permitted to indicate the fact that these articles are imposed upon us by authority. This procedure is not only contrary to the fundamental principles of journalism, but also extremely humiliating, for the newspaper thus finds itself edited, not by the responsible editor, but by the Government Press Bureaux.”
Some weeks later an even more remarkable manifesto was issued to the Czech deputies by over 150 of the leading literary men of Bohemia. Not a single name of any prominence is missing from the list, which includes the poets
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