CZECHS REFUSE HITLER PLAN

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 229, 28 September 1938, Page 12

CZECHS REFUSE HITLER PLAN

DE FACTO ULTIMATUM

WHY SECOND SCHEME

WAS UNACCEPTABLE

GERMAN VITUPERATION

(British Official Wireless.—Received 3 p.m.) RUGBY, September ,7

text has been published by the Czechoslovakian Legation of the letter which was handed to the Foreign Secretary, Viscount Halifax, on Monday, by M. Masaryk, the Czechoslovak Minister in London, 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 we agreed under the most severe pressure to the so-called Franco-British plan for ceding parts of Czechoslovakia. We accepted this plan under extreme duress. We bad not even time to make any representations about its many unworkable features.

"Nevertheless we accepted it because we understood it was the end of the demands to be made, and because it followed from the Anglo-French pressure that 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 in Prague: 'We have agreed with France that Czechoslovakia be informed that France and Britain cannot continue to take the 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, • new proposition was handed by Mr. B. C. Newton to my Government, with the additional information that Britain is acting solely as an intermediary and is neither advising nor pressing my Government in any way. M. Krofta (Czech Foreign Minister), in receiving the plan from Mr. Newton, assured him that Czechoslovakia would study it in the same spirit in which they had co-operated with Britain and France hitherto.

"My Government has now studied the plan and the map. It is a ae facto ultimatum of the sort usually presented to a vanquished nation, and not a proposition to a sovereign State which hw 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 AngloFrench plan. They deprive us of every safeguard for our national existence. We are to yield up large proportions of our carefullyprepared defences and admit the German armies deep into our country before we have been able to organise it on the new basis or to make any preparations for its defence. "Our national economic independence would automatically disappear with the acceptance of Herr Hitler's plans. The whole process of moving population is reduced 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.

"My Government wish me to declare in all solemnity that Herr Hitler's demands in their present form are absolutely and unconditionally unacceptable to my Government. Against these new and cruel demands my Government feel bound to make their utmost resistance, and we shall do so, God helping." In an official broadcast Dr. Benes said that he cannot allow the destruction of the life of the nation. Czechoslovakia, nevertheless, is ready to solve the entire problem by peaceful negotiation and to fulfil the demands of the Franco-British proposals, however cruel.

*We demand that Germany, too, prove her professed love for'peace by using peaceful instruments."

Reuter's Prague representative said it is emphasised in competent political quarters that the Government confirms its previous acceptance of the Franco-British recommendations and a shares the viewpoint of Mr. Chamberlain that recommendations •hould be carried out as quickly as reasonably possible. An bfficial announcement says the Army is not accepting further volunteers as its ranks have reached capacity.