ADVICE TO CZECHS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 December 1939, Page 5

ADVICE TO CZECHS

FROM LEADERS ABROAD AVOIDANCE OF GESTAPO TRAPS. TIME FOR REVOLT NOT YET. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY. December 3. Tonight, 24 hours after the Czechoslovak committee in Paris had ordered general mobilisation of all Czechoslovak citizens abroad. Dr Benes, head of the committee, broadcast from Loudon a warning to his countrymen in the protectorate to remain calm and not tall into the traps sei by the Gestapo.

“Do not allow yourselves to be provoked.” Dr Benes said. “All the Nazis do is of a temporary character, like April weather. Not a stone will remain where they have put it. We do not want revenge. We only want justice and full reparation for all they have done to us, to our men, our property, and our cultural life.” A further authoritative denial of German insinuations that prominent Czechoslovaks outside their own country have been inciting the Czech people to revolt against their Nazi oppressors was given in a recent letter to "The Times” from the son of the famous former President and himself the late Czechoslovak Minister in London, M. Jan Masaryk. “We are pleading daily with the people at home to bide their time and avoid by all means unnecessary bloodshed.” he said. “It is established beyond dispute that the Protector and his henchmen do everything in their power to exhaust and undermine the magnificent patience and discipline of my people.” He attributed the recent revolts in Bohemia and Moravia entirely to a spontaneous rising against the indescribable cruelty and oppression of the German authorities.