Since the Czech policy became a mere component of the western
part of the Empire after the Compromise 1867, the Czech political elite, with an orientation to the conception of historical rights, strove for an equal national position. As a result, they lost interest in the Slovak policy as an ally and the Slovak question as a part of a wider conceptual solution. The Slovak politicians with a natural right conception rejecting historic rights as “old rubbish” were placed in a complicated situation. On the base of historical rights there were many attempts to realize the cooperation between the part of the Czech politicians and Hungarian opposition against the Vienna court. Such cooperation, however, did not have a chance of success and only aroused discontent among the Slovak political elites. Slovak policy after decades on the crossroad between Vienna, Budapest and Prague came with the beginning of the WW1 into the new geopolitical situation. In May 1917 the Czech political
programme, for the first time, abandoned the principle of historic rights, crossed the river Morava and included Slovakia and the Slovaks in its sphere of interest. After the Czechoslovak Republic was declared, the struggle - propagandist, mental, military and diplomatic - for Slovakia was only beginning. and Obsahuje poznámkový aparát pod čarou