THE GODESBERG PLAN

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 77, 28 September 1938, Page 13

THE GODESBERG PLAN

CZECHS' REPLY

AMAZEMENT EXPRESSED

"AN ULTIMATUM"

RELIANCE ON WESTERN DEMOCRACIES

(British Official Wireless)

(Received September 28, 10.30 a.m.) RUGBY, September 27. The text is published by the Czechoslovak Legation of a letter which was handed to the Foreign Secretary on Monday by M. Masaryk, the Czech 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 AngloFrench plan for ceding parts of Czechoslovakia. We accepted this plan under extreme duress. We had not even time to make any representations about its many unworkable j features. Nevertheless, we accepted it i because we understood it was the end • of the demands to be made and because ;it followed from Anglo-French pressure that these two Powers would accept the 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 should 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 that they would accept full responsibility for their predecessors' decision to accept the stern terms of the so-called AngloFrench plan. NEW PROPOSITION. "Yesterday, after Mr. Chamberlain's return from Godesberg, ?a new proposition was handed by the British Ambassador to my Government with the additional information that Britain was acting solely as an intermediary and was neither advising nor pressing my Government in any way. The Foreign Minister, Dr. Krofta, in receiving the plan from the British Ambassador, assured him that Czechoslovakia woud study it in the same spirit in which it had co-operated with Britain and France hitherto. "My Government has now studied the plan and the 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 up large proportions of our care-fully-prepared defences and admit the German armies deep into our country : before we have been able to organise it on a new basis or make any pre : parations for its defence. Our national and economic independence would automatically disappear with the acceptance of Herr Hitler's plans. The whole process of moving a population is to reduce to panic and flight those who will not accept the German-Nazi regime. They would 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 unconditionally unaccept- ( able to 5 my Government. Against these ] j new cruel demands my Government . I feel bound to make their utmost re- ] sistance, and we shall do so, God helping. "We rely on the two Western demo- ' cracies whose wishes we have followed against our own judgment to stand by , us in our hour of trial."