CZECHOSLOVAKIA

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20907, 12 September 1939, Page 2

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

A GERMAN COLONY RUTHLESS EXPLOITATION Slovakia has been so plundered by the Germans that less than live months after she was ’’liberated” from Czech ‘ domination” the country is ruined, wrote the diplomatic correspondent of the Manchester Guardian on August 3. Rights and Liberties Gone Under Czech ‘‘domination" the ’’races,” religions, and political parties of Slovakia had rights and liberties such as they never had before, and the Slovak Budget was balanced with the help of subsidies granted by the Government in Prague. The rights and liberties are gone, expenditure amounts to 1,535,000,000 crowns, and the revenue to 1,229,000,000, so that there is a deficit uf 306,000,000 —a huge sum lor a poverty-stricken population ol' only 2,656,000. The Germans have robbed Slovakia of ail her war material; they are depleting her forests and even her timber yards; they have taken away foodstuffs in great quantities, the stocks of entire factories and a vast amount of machinery and industrial plant. The resulting scarcity has raised the cost of living, and thus spread distress throughout the country, Slovak workmen have been sent to Germany in multitudes—most of them are nowemployed in the neighbourhood of Hanover. A German Market Slovakia is becoming an exclusively German market. Germany alone is supplying the country with industrial products. Slovak firms that cariuot compete with the German firms are doomed; those that can compete are taken over—whether directly or indirectly—by the Germans. The German minority (about 150,000 in ail) behave as though they were masters of the country. The region bounded by the borders of Moravia and Poland and by a line extending from Bratislava to Pislyany anl along the river Waag and the crests of the Tatra has been declared a special area by the Germans. It Is officially known as “the region occupied by German troops and under German sovereignty.” Slovak “home rule” is a fiction. It is untrue that Germany has no colonies. Both the “protectorate” of B-ohernia-Moravia and the “autonomous” Slovak State are colonies in the full, or rather in the worst, sense of ihe word. Monsignor Tiso, the Slovak Premier, is Hitler's lieutenant, without a will or policy of tois own. while the Slovak people are like catlle who have to accept the decisions arranged between the Premier and the Fuehrer, or rather the orders of the Fuehrer as carried out by Monsignor Tiso, though these orders are sometimes preceded by discussions, for which Monsignor Tiso is summoned to Berlin. The Germans take no interest in Slovakia except as an object of economic exploitation, as a source of cheap labour, and as a military base for further conquests. Slovakia is. in fact, not governed at all, but administered despotically by the Fuehrer and his lieutenant, by Ihe Gestapo, and by the German military authorities.