EUROPE’S POWDER MAGAZINE

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 261, 4 August 1928, Page 26

EUROPE’S POWDER MAGAZINE

REAL bohemians A MOST SUCCESSFUL REPUBLIC Dominion • Special Service. (By Nellie SI. Scanlan.) Prague, June 4. Of all the new nations carved out by the war, Czechoslovakia is probably the most successful; the most prosperous of these European republics. Before the war, this territory was part of the Austrian Empire, and part belonged to Hungary. The area which impinges upon Germany was known as Bohemia, and Prague was the ancient city of Bohemia. It was certainly a more euphonious name than the new and cumbersome Czechoslovakia, which embraces Bohemia, Aloravia, and several other small territories. And they have abolished the hyphen; they write it all in one word. . , Prague is the capital of the new republic. They are very proud of their capital, and are restoring its ancient splendour and developing along modern, progressive lines, but without sacrificing anything of historic importance. . One quaint conception was the naming of a principal street “28th October,” to commemorate the 28th October’ 1919, when Czechoslovakia became an independent nation. This country has had a turbulent past. It has been invaded, devastated, conquered. There have been letolts and rebellions. : Twice the Swedes have wrought havoc; it has suffered from tire and pestilence. The Hungarians have possessed it. It has been one of the chopping-blocks of Central Europe. When you have the tide of nations ebbing and flowing across a land, no boundaries can possibly provide perfect contentment. There is, and always must be, a minority question. There are Germans in Bohemia who resent being cut off from Germany. There are Austrians and Hungarians who are exiled under foreign rule. Nor are the Bohemians and Czechs in perfect accord, but the differences between the component parts of the Czechoslovakian Republic are small compared with the warring elements in others, scross the border. During the war these men were called up for service in the Austrian army. But there were others who formed legions and fought for the Allies on various fronts. One legion went to Russia, and after the collapse of the Russian Army it became lost in Russia, and fought- its way out through Serbia td Vladivostock, and finally returned by sea.' , It was when the policy of. self-determi-nation for little nations was accepted by the . Allies -that Bohemia, Moravia, and the other small territories contiguous put in their claim for independence. The record of their gallant legion no doubt helped them. But it was a sad blow to Austria.

The Czechoslovakian Republic contains the richest lands of Austria. Alost of it was held by about 1600 families of enormous wealth, only some of whom were of ancient lineage. There were cases in which one man owned 400,000 acres of fertile land. Nor was it let out to tenant farmers, but. peasant labour was employed, mostly peasant women, for the work in the fields. AVork was hard and wages low, and the; great families prospered. One of the chief products of the laud is sugar' beet. As I write this on the train speeding from Prague to Vienna, I am passing through fields of young, green shoots, over which peasant women, in print .frocks, are bending. Slany have bare feet. Some carry great baskets on their backs, and bend beneath the load. Others again have rakes and hoes, or are on their knees weeding. Babies sleep between the furrows. Patches of scarlet poppies . and blue corn Ho webs glow along the banks beside the railway, and border'the strips of wheat.

Mr. Winston: Churchill’s last Budget, which reduced the duty on raw sugar imported into England, .has hit the Czecho very hard. There are three stages in sugar—the growing" of the beet, . the pulping into raw sugar, and the refining. When all three were carried out in the country there was a greater profit and the peasant got a little more. Now it pays England to import the raw sugar, so, deprived’-of their profit for refining, the peasant gets less for his beet from the manufacturer.

The great'figure in. this Republic is JI. Masaryk, who has been elected as President for life. A man of extraordinary ability and great culture, he is revered by the people as their saviour. After his death, succeeding Presidents will enjoy only a tern! of seven years. JI. Masaryk is now 77 and lives in the ancient castle on the top of a hill overlooking the spires of a hundred churches. One of the first tasks of the.new Republic was the expropriation of the large estates. To make a peasant into a landowner is the best antidote for Bolshevism, and that serious danger was threatening the country. The 1600 great families were compelled to sell their lands and were permitted to retain from 300 to f>oo acres each. The compensation paid was admittedly, inadequate, being paid in paper money or bonds. And from the limited area remaining tl;ey are unable to keep up their old estates. The landowner in Czechoslovakia is the man with a grievance, but numerically he is small. These vast estates were then . made available to the peasant worker, who from a potential Bolshevik became a conservative farmer, with a holding of from two to ten acres. Some have a little more. The industry of the peasant in this part of Europe is astounding. From tiny children to bent, old grandmothers, the whole family of women work in the fields. I don’t know where the men work, probably on the road and railways, or at some nearby factory, but the women in the fields number easily ten to one. There is little machinery, and much of that is drawn by oxen. ' . . . Some of the richest industries, or which Austria was once so proud, are within ■ the boundaries of this new Republic. Glass is one of them. There is also the mineral wealth, and many great commercial factories. No wonder Austria is sore and Hungary peevish. Lord Rothermere, of the London “Daily Jlail,” has long been an ardent champion of revision of these boundaries/ Last week, his son, Jlr. Cecil Harmsworth, JI.P., on behalf of. his father, visited Bucharest, the capital of Hungary, to receive the public thanks of the people, for his advocacy of their rights. He wants to restore to Hungary some of her lost territory.' much of which went to Rumania. The Treaty of Trianon, which deals with this question, is the present storm centre. Now, Sir Robert Donald, a wise and discreet English publicist, has published a book dealing with the injustice to Hungary. Great Britain is a party to that treaty, which gave ample safeguards for international arbitration on disputed points. Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Jugo-Slavia are the three countries that <-ot slices of Hungary, and they were trusted.to keep their pledge. Rumania, however, it seems, refuses flatly to refer the matter to international arbitration. The League of Nations is investigating the trouble just now, but there is always the fear that if an adjustment of’ international boundaries is made, it will open the floodgates of latent • grievances all round. Sir Robert Donald calls Czechoslovakia “the powder magazine of Europe." . . , . Prince Carol, of Rumania, in Ins recent comic-opera attempt to regain the throne, promised in his amazing proclamation. which was to have been dropped from the air. to sponsor a revision of the Treaty of Trianon, returning disputed

territory to Hungary, in return for Hungary’s support of his cause. “It would be a brave man who would upset that hornets nest, and start revising boundaries in Europe,” said one diplomatic authority in Prague, to me. “There are no natural boundaries, and no matter where you fix the frontier, some one will suffer injustice; some group will be dissatisfied.” Meanwhile, Czechoslovakia is consolidating her position, and becoming prosperous. Old Bohemia, which forms so important a part of it, was the first country in Europe to accord sanctuary to the Jews, and grant them religious freedom. It is estimated that the population now includes nearly half a million Jews. What interest is all this to Australia and New Zealand? It was a cause more remote than this which involved us m the war. When Great Britain, makes treaties, we, as part of the British Empire, must share in the consequences, and have a right to know how these experiments and adjustments in MidEurope are turning out.