The camp commander, a Czech, was a professional agnostic. He said it hurt him to look at any sort of religious observance. This made things difficult for him because the greater part of the Czecho-Slovak volunteers were deeply religious. They were always aware that they were going into danger, and until they came to Stamford they had always been able to go to church when and if they wanted to. The conflict between the commander and his troops was rapidly approaching a state of open mutiny when Borglum intervened. He arranged to have mass celebrated in his home whenever a contingent of soldiers was due to go abroad. Father Kubacec would come up from Yonkers on the eve of their going, to hear confessions. In the morning he would celebrate mass on the open terrace. And everybody in the camp would attend except the commander. When the first group left for the front they wanted to carry the new republic’s flag, which, so far, they had seen only on the camp stationery. Gutzon requisitioned one from the headquarters in New York, but there was none there, either. So he toured the New York shops for suitable flag material and brought it home. It was cut by a Bohemian tailor from Chicago on the table in the Borglum dining room. Four stars, representing four provinces, were eventually stitched to the field. The camp commander said that very likely there was no other flag like it anywhere in the world. He was probably right. A hundred men marched with this flag down Wire Mill Road to entrain in Stamford for the boat from New York. They were dressed in blue-gray uniforms with berets of the same color. And somehow, they looked like soldiers. Gutzon frequently wondered how many of them had survived the war. Every few weeks a similar pageant rolled out of the Borglum estate. Altogether several thousand volunteers learned squad drill and the manual of arms on Gutzon’s front porch. Several hundred were still there on Armistice Day and went roaring to town to join in the general celebration. In the meantime the sculptor and some other Americans had formed an association of independent mid-European nations. Leaders of the nations and American aides assembled on October 25, 1918, in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, where they drew up a declaration of common aims. This much-bandied declaration of independence was signed by Paderewski for the Poles, Masaryk for the Czechs and five other lesser lights for nations in being or about to be. A preceding Victory Meeting had been held in Carnegie Hall with Masaryk and Paderewski as principal speakers. It was a conclave volcanic in its enthusiasm for two nations that now have been allowed to die. It is remembered chiefly for Paderewski’s remarkable speech.