NOTES AND COMMENTS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 301, 1 October 1938, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS

CZECHOSLOVAKIAN LIZARD. “Czechoslovakia, is shaped like a large lizard, with its head protruding right into Germany,” said Mr Harold Nicolson, "M.P., in a recent broadcast talk. ‘lts neck is caught between German Silesia on the north and German Austria on the south. Its back and tummy are wedged between Poland and Hungary. And its tail dangles rather limply in the direction of Rumania. Along ittr nose and down its chin are large see lions of German people, calling themselves the Sudeten Germans. Its back is complicated by the presence of Hungarian minorities. The Czechs, as you know, are a branch of that great Slav family which includes Russians, Yugoslavs and Bulgarians. They are racially an.i culturally wholly different from the Gi i mans. Now the German case is as follows: ‘Here we have 3,000,000 people of cur own race living under an alien government just across the border of the third German Reich. What would you English feel if there were 3,000,!XK) Englishmen living in subjection in the area between Calais and Havre and subject to the French Government? fhat sounds a very reasonable argument. But in fact the circumstances are not wholly similar. In the first place the Sudeten Germans have never belonged to Germany. In the second place the nose of the lizard is really not a nose but a beak, in the sense that it is shaped by two mountain ranges which form a very natural barrier between Bohemia and Germany. One cannot take snips out of a person’s beak. In the third place, if all the Czech minorties joined tin 1 people oil the other side of the frontier Czechoslovakia would break up into little pieces. And in the fourth place, rather than he broken up in that manner, the Czechs would go to war.’’