ALLIES’ AIM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 March 1940, Page 11

ALLIES’ AIM

CZECHS AND SLOVAKS TO BE FREED LIBERATION AFTER VICTORY. RECOGNITION BY BRITAIN AND FRANCE. Czechs and Slovaks will be freed ■ from German domination and their ■ national independence restored with i an Allied victory in the preesnt Eu- • ropean struggle, writes J. Emlyn i Williams, London correspondent of the “Christian Science Monitor.” Bos- ; ton. Such is the meaning of Britain’s recognition of the Czechoslovak National Committee’s competence to represent the Czechoslovak peoples and organise a new Czechoslovak army to fight with Britain and France. Britain’s latest action follows that of France, and Viscount Halifax’s letter to Dr Edouard Benes, dated December 20, closely resembles the letter Lord Balfour sent on August 9, 1918, to Dr Thomas G. Masaryk, head of the then existing Czechoslovak National Council. But it is important to note that, whereas the first letter was sent after four years of war. the present one appears within four months of the outbreak of this war. Ex-President Benes is head of the new. Committee of Eight, including five Czechs and three Slovaks, for co-ordinating the work of national independence throughout the world, and more especially during the next few months to mobilise two Czecho-Slovak divisions in France. The committee is functioning both in Paris and in London through Dr Benes, now a resident in a London suburb. CHEERING NEWS. News that British official recognition has followed the French will certainly cheer the Czechs and the Slovaks both within former Czechoslovakia and outside. To the Czechs in Bohemia-Moravia, where German oppression continues unabated, the step will raise new hopes. It will be welcomed by the Slovaks, who are nominally free, but whose country is really a puppet of Germany an being run by a small reactionary clique detested by the vast majority, who are longing for the return of former conditions in which Slovakia was part of the Czechoslovakian Republic. This new step marks outward unity of the Czechs and Slovaks in their fight for the restoration of their former Republic, but this does not automatic- ' ally mean that Czechs and Slovaks are ■ absolutely united in their conception of a new State. It would, indeed, be almost superhuman if there did not 1 still linger among the Czechs the feeling that they had been betrayed by • the Slovaks in the fall of 1938 when J the Slovaks broke away from Prague ’ and took on a semblance of independence, despite, as the Czechs maintain. , so much expenditure of the Republic’s wealth upon improving Slovakia.

ISSUE OF CENTRALISATION. To this the Slovaks from their standpoint would probably reply that had they only been treated differently then they would have reacted differently. The whole problem today, as for years past, is that of Czech centralism on Prague, or decentralisation, and such a problem will have to be worked out later.

For this reason it is regrettable that Dr Milan Hodza, prominent Slovak and former Premier, does not appear among the names of the Council, since his experience and following in Slovakia would be valuable in this connection.

Recognition here of the Czechoslovak National Council is also a dear indication that Britain has realised the importance of an independent Czechoslovakia in a new Central Europe, and that a Habsburg restoration, whatever it may mean for the future of Austria, does not include the lands of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. To the Reich it means that German evacuation of Bohemia-Moravia definitely becomes one of Britain’s war aims.