CONFESSION OF FEAR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 November 1939, Page 5

CONFESSION OF FEAR

LONDON COMMENT ON NAZI FEROCITY. RESTRAINTS ON DESPERATE PEOPLE. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day. 10.48 a.m.) RUGBY’, November 19. Reports of disorders in Czechoslovakia and. of martial law in Prague are prominently reproduced in the newspapers. ’ The "Sunday Times" comments: t “When the Czech student riots occurred in Prague last Wednesday, lhe first impulse of the German authorities was to tell the outer work! that nothing had taken place, but now a very different light is thrown on the episode by the ferocity of the German Government’s self-proclaimed reprisals. Nine! Czechs have been shot, a number, said to be as high as 1200. have been sent] to concentration camps and the Czech university and high school have been closed for three years. The President, Dr. Hacha. himself, hitherto the Germans’ agent in administering the protectorate. has been confined to his house. The meaning of such severities is plain. They are confessions of fear. “How much it may cost Germany to keep Austrians, Czechs and Poles repressed during the war it is difficult to estimate. The Czechs and Poles are disarmed, but they are desperate. An uprising in such circumstances is a tragic and pitiful thing; nevertheless its effect on the use and disposition of the German forces may be considerable.”