MORE MINORITIES

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22519, 29 September 1938, Page 1 (Supplement)

MORE MINORITIES

Poles and Hungarians

The trouble over Czechoslovakia has been made more complicated this week by demands from Poles and Hungarians that the Polish and Hungarian areas in the Czechoslovak state shall be returned to their parent countries. This action followed the - announcement of the plan agreed-on by the French and British Governments, and afterwards accepted by the Czech Government, that parts of the Sudeten area with a majority of Germans should be handed over .to Germany. The Poles and Hungarians took the attitude that if the German minority was treated in this way, similar rights should be given the other national minorities in Czechoslovakia. . The Polish minority is situated in the Duchy of Tescheri, at, the-corner where the frontiers of Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia join. It has an area of about 500 square miles and its population of Poles is stated by the Poles themselves to be 200,000, and by the Czechs to be 80,000. It was seized by the Czechs at the end of the world war* and there has been a dispute about it ever since. The district is very valuable because of its deposits of coal and iron ore. It. supplies more than 95 per cent, of Czechoslovakia’s coal, 70 per cent, of her steel, and 60 per cent, of her iron. The only railway from Prague to the eastern part of the republic crosses this area. The Hungarians, of the Magyar race, comprise -5 per cent, of Czechoslovakia’s population. or about 800,000 people. .