GERMAN PLANS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 March 1939, Page 4

GERMAN PLANS

EVENTS IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA EYES ON UKRAINE. RUTHENIA WORTH WATCHING. I hear interesting things from Czechoslovakia, states Miss Ida Moir in the "Inverness Courier,” on January 13. No doubt, you saw last week the announcement that the Skoda works had been taken over by the Anglo-Czechoslovakian Bank and the Prague Bank, in that they had bought the 60 per cent holdings of the Schnei-der-Creusot concern. Nominally Skoda now belongs to these Czech banks, but in reality they are in the hands of the German Government. The Skoda works are in Pilsen, jus.t within the new frontier, but it is not only the Skoda, works that are concerned. It is much more serious, for Skoda own iron and steel works and coal mines as well, not to mention the small arms factory at Brunn or Brno, where the Bren gun is made. And Germany is also making the Bren gun and wants it! I heard all this several weeks ago from Prague. I have also just heard that" Skoda is working practically twenty-four hours a day on armaments, and has received orders not to take any orders from any country that is not friendly to Germany. Prague is completely under orders from Berlin, and they simply have no say in the matter now. There is no course left open for them but to become a vassal state dependent upon Germany—otherwise they cannot exist economically. What is really very serious from a military point of view (and from any other point of view really) is the construction of this new roadway by the Germans cutting through Czechoslovakia from Breslau to Vienna, and making, when finished, a clear road through to the Balkans and the East. A CENSORED PRESS. In Czechoslovakia now they may use the Nazi greeting, wear or display swastikas, and foster Nazi-Socialism in any way they wish. They have also started anti-Semitism there, under orders from Berlin, and there was never anything of that in Prague; though there are plenty of Jews there! The “Prager Tagblatt,” which was the newspaper of the German minority in Czechoslovakia before, and whose editor, a Jew, committed suicide recently, has now been reconstituted and called'the “Prager Beobachter” (“Prague Observer.”) No doubt, a copy of the “Volkischer Beobachter” of Germany! The “Pragar Tagblatt” was a very good paper, but will now, of course, be completely Nazi in outlook. The Government paper, the “Prager Presse,” still continues. I have been seeing it lately, and it is also quite I hear, too, that fifty censors have been installed in Prague to deal with all newspaper matter, and that foreign correspondents have to lay their stuff before them before sending it off.

RUTHENIAN PROBLEM. I have also been hearing from Uzhorod, formerly the Capital of Ruthenia, now in Hungary. There is no doubt that Hitler is after Ukraine and means to try to get it. When I was there in .August they discussed it then —should Czechoslovakia be taken over by Hitler (only none expected it to happen so soon, though everyone knew that he had made up his mind to get it). If you had been there as I was and seen the desperate conditions of these wretched mountain folk and the peasants in general far from the towns, you would understand how impossible is the present situation for them. It was wicked to give back Uzhorod and Muchachevo and Berehovo to Hungary—particularly the first two—even though they had formerly belonged to Hungary. But Czechoslovakia in twenty years had made new towns of them and poured money into the province' as a whole. From being a miserable little provincial town under Hungary, utterly neglected by the powers that be, Uzhorod became a wellbuilt and well-run town of 37,000 inhabitants, with a whole quarter of fine buildings and houses built by the Czechs for administrative purposes and for their staff. In Czechoslovakia the railway line is cut in fourteen points when one wants to go South, according to the new frontiers, but in Ruthenla, where there is only one railway and one main road, both these are cut, and communication entirely stopped unless through Hungary now. It is an extraordinary situation! Here is this little tail of Czechoslovakia cut off from her absolutely by rail and road! NEXT BATTLEGROUND. That Slovakia would go Nazi is not surprising to those* who have been studying the politics of Eastern Europe these last years, as the Hlinka group have been agitating autonomy, and, with it, Nazi-ism, for long enough. But they have gone absolutely to the extreme, and I hear that Bohemia and Moravia are not all pleased at the way that Slovakia has been behaving. If they are not careful Slovakia will go over right to Germany soon! Their capital, Bratislava, is anyhow surrounded by Germany (formerly Austria), and Hitler just seized another suburb when he was there lately, and the Slovaks could do nothing but protest! The Slovaks are on one side of the Danube at Bratislava and the Germans on the other—in a suburb which was formerly Czech! The British ViceConsul for Czechoslovakia, Mr Pares, has been moved to Bratislava—purely for political purposes, of course, and to watch events there. There is just the Pro-Consul left at the Vice-Consulate at Prague to deal with matters there. That shows where we consider the next move is to be. And undoubtedly Ruthenia is worth watching, for there will be happenings there before long when Hitler gets going in the spring. In “Mein Kampf” he openly declares he wants Ukraine for Germany, and intends to make a bid for it, and he_certainly is going to try! So keep an eye open for events in Ruthenia and how they develop there, for that is to be the next “battleground/”