DR. BENES’ REPLY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 298, 28 September 1938, Page 5

DR. BENES’ REPLY.

AMAZED AT THE MEMORANDUM. NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE THREATENED. (United Press Association—Copyright.' (Received This Day, 9.30 a.m.) LONDON, September 27. The Czechoslovakian Legation has published the text of a letter which was handed to Viscount Halifax on Monday by M. Masaryk (Czechoslovakian Minister) and which constitutes the Czechs’ reply to the German memorandum. In the course of the letter it is stated: “Britain and France are very well aware that wo agreed, under most severe pressure, to the so-called AngloFrench plan for ceding parts of Czechoslovakia. Wo accepted this plan under extreme duress. We had not even time to make any representations about its many unworkable features. Nevertheless, wo accepted it because we understood it was the end of the demands to be made and because it followed firm Anglo - French pressure. These two Powers would accept responsibility for our reduced frontiers and would guarantee us their support in the event of our being feloniously attacked.

“The vulgar German campaign continued. While Mr Chamberlain was at Godesberg the following message was received by my Government from the British and French representatives at Prague—we agreed with France that Czechoslovakia be informed that France and Britain cannot continue to take responsibility of advising them not to mobilise.

“My new Government, headed by General Sirovy, declared they would accept full responsibility for their predecessors’ decision to accept the stern terms of the so-called Anglo-French plan. Yesterday, after Mr Chamberlain’s return from Godesberg, a new proposition was handed by Sir Basil Newton (British Ambassador) to my Government with the additional information that Britain is acting solely as intermediary and is neither advising nor pressing my Government in any way.

“Dr. Krofta, in receiving the plan from Sir Basil Newton, assured him that Czechoslovakia would study it in the same spirit in which they co-oper-ated with Britain and France hitherto. My Government has now studied the plan and map. It is a de facto ultimatum of the sort usually presented to a vanquished nation, and not a proposition to a sovereign State which has shown the greatest possible readiness to make sacrifices for appeasement. Not the smallest trace of such readiness for sacrifices has yet been manifested by Herr Hitler’s Government. “My Government is amazed at the contents of the memorandum. The proposals go far beyond what we agreed to in the so-called Anglo-French plan. They deprive us of every safeguard for our national existence. We are to yield large proportions of our carefullyprepared defences and admit German armies deep into our country before we have been able to organise it on a new basis or make any preparations for its defence. Our notional and economic independence would automatically disappear with the acceptance of Herr Hitler’s plans. The whole process of moving the population is to reduce to a panic flight on the part of those who will not accept the German Nazi regime. They have to leave their homes without even the right to take their personal belongings, or even, in the case of peasants, their cow. “We rely on the two Western democracies, whose wishes we followed against our own judgment, to stand by us in our hour of trial.”