The sculptor’s interest in the Czecho-Slovak cause came about in a purely natural manner. For some years he had had working with him, on and off, a young Austrian sculptor’s assistant named Micka (pronounced Michka) and Micka had some odd ideas about the European war. There was need for reapportionment of some parts of Austria, he mentioned. And presently he began to talk about an independent republic that was to be formed by a group of Bohemians and Slovaks. Gutzon was interested in this, as he was in all new republics that were brought to his attention. He looked into the matter and shortly found himself in spirited correspondence with its leaders. The republic makers, he discovered, called themselves Czecho-Slovaks, and with them, as a sort of motivating influence, was Thomas Masaryk. The cause seemed to be popular. Large numbers of these foreigners who had found security and freedom in the United States were now volunteering to go back and fight for their countrymen in Europe, and, since the draft law had not yet gone into effect, nobody stopped them. Masaryk was mostly in Washington trying to get the United States to aid his cause. There Borglum met him and helped him to get a $12,000,000 appropriation from the U. S. Treasury. The two then collaborated in writing a constitution for the new Republic of Czecho-Slovakia. In Gutzon’s files was found a parchment-bound copy of this document with Masaryk’s signature on it, together with a letter expressing the leader’s gratitude for Borglum’s help. That’s how it came about that the sculptor offered a part of his property in Stamford to serve as a military post. The land was vacant, there was plenty of space, and there the Czech volunteers could be trained while they waited for transports to carry them across the Atlantic. As headquarters Gutzon donated an old farmhouse. The volunteers built their own barracks and cleared a parade ground across the woods. The first recruits to arrive at the camp looked a little confused. As a military force they were a lonely lot. The United States had nothing to do with them. They were under command of the French and were to be sent to a French sector when they reached the front. But there wasn’t any French control of them in this country. Whatever military control they had was purely theoretical. The Czecho-Slovak organizers in New York and Washington were pleased by the patriotism of the men who volunteered to fight. But, once they had expressed their satisfaction, they forgot all about the army. It was easy to send passage money to worthy young men all over the country and move them on to the camp in Stamford. As a result of this carefree policy, most of the business of handling the volunteers fell automatically to the Borglum family.