CZECH FRONTIERS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 August 1938, Page 7

CZECH FRONTIERS

HOW THEY WERE FIXED. GERMANY’S EXPANSIONIST AMBITIONS. Sir Joseph Cook, who is the last surviving British member of the Peace Conference committee which drew the frontiers of Czechoslovakia, declared in an interview with the “Sydney Morning Herald,” that the present trouble over the Sudeten Germans was of so recent an origin that he could only surmise that Herr Hitler’s motives were not derived from solicitude for what was formerly a reasonably contented'minority, but from expanionist ambitions. “My two nearest colleagues on the committee,” said Sir Joseph, “were Sir Eyre Crowe, probably the best-in-formed man on European affairs of his time, and M. Cambon, the French representative. Both are now dead, as are several other members who sat with us.”

The committee, he explained, had set out to draw ethnographic boundaries for the new nation, but had quickly encountered difficulties. One of these centred upon the Teschen coalfields in the north, where some 250,000 Poles were employed. “To have' deprived Czechoslovakia of these coalfields,” said Sir Joseph Cook, “would have been to deny her the means of economic sustenance. We theerfore brought them within the frontier. “When we came to consider the north-west boundatry, which is the present source of trouble, we resolved to make the long chain of mountains there the frontier, not only because it provided a natural barrier, but because all the railheads were concentrated in that area. To have decided otherwise would have left part of the railway system in alien territory. These mountains, I may say, have since been mined, and are heavily fortified. If the Germans should march in this area they will find themselves up against a formidable obstacle.” On the south, he continued, the committee had included about 400,000 Hungarians in the new nation, for the reason that, had it not done so, they would have been robbed of their established market in the interior. Even more weighty was the consideration that Czechoslovakia would have to be provided with a waterway to the sea, by way of the Danube. By fixing the frontier where it did, the committee gave her this necessary facility. “As to the claims of minorities,” said Sir Joseph, “it is almost a practical impossibility to fix rigid boundaries on an ethnological basis in Europe. The best that can be done is to arrive at a reasonable compromise as between various nations and their civilisations. In the case of Czechoslovakia there was created a nation which, under the masterly guidance of Masaryk and Benes, was politically, economically, ,and industrially, a great success from the beginning, until Nazi propaganda began to make itself felt among the German minority. “The courx|ry has been prosperous for nearly 2(f years, and is singularly well governed and progressive. Under the system of proportional representation, the German element, which composes only one-fifth of the population, returned as many members to the national Parliament in proportion to numbers as the Czechs and Slovaks. And it should be borne in mind that relatively few complaints were heard from that quarter until comparatively recently.”