NOT LONG TO WAIT

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 64, 15 March 1940, Page 8

NOT LONG TO WAIT

FREEING OF THE CZECHS

MESSAGES ON ANNIVERSARY,

CREATION OF A NEW] v EUROPE

(British Official Wireless.) (Received March 15, 2 p.m.)1 RUGBY, March 14. Reviewing the year that has elapsed since the German occupa- . tion of Czecho-Slovakia, the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, in a mes- | sage to the Czech people, said: "Heir Hitler's brutal and treacherous act was less brutal than the rule of terror j that has followed. The world has learnt with indignation of the closing of your universities and schools, the arrest of your intellectual leaders, and the systematic attempts to deprive -your children of the educational facilities for which the country of Dr. Masaryk is justly famed, and to destroy not only the economic but the spiritual life of your nation." That these attempts had" failed, he said, was a tribute to .the Czechs' courage and unity in adversity, and: the British people felt admiration and* [sympathy for their determined struggle ; for freedom. The British Empire had taken up arms, together with the Allies, to restore freedom to the Czechs, j right the wrongs they had suffered, and create a new Europe in' which re- } currence of such evil would be made impossible. FAILURE OF NAZI DESTRUCTION v PLAN. ..,■". .-'. . . The former Czech President, Dr. Benes,* in a message to the Czech, nation, said that the Nazi plan to destroy and for ever enslave the Czechs , had failed. "Today," he said, "it is .*• generally recognised that due to our sacrifice and our present suffering Europe gained a whole year to prepare itself*, for; the unavoidable attack by Germany." After a review of the horrors suffered in the Nazis' inhuman penetration of his country, Dr. Benes concluded with words of encouragement to his countrymen and expressed the conviction that the day of Allied victory, -marking the return of Czechoslovakia's freedom, was not far away.