NAZIS AND CZECHS.

Evening Star, Issue 23354, 25 August 1939, Page 8

NAZIS AND CZECHS.

It is evident from various reports that are published that the German Nazi leaders are not having an easy time in the conquered provinces of Bohemia and Moravia. Naturally, the people are kept in hand by the Power ’of German militarism, but the Nazis are said to bo exasperated at the attitude of stubborn resistance which they are encountering on every side. They are adopting characteristic tactics, and they themselves provoke incidents which they claim as justification for their increasing brutality towards the population. Examples of this that seem almost incredible are given by Mr Hubert Ripka in an article in the ‘ Spectator.’ According to him a German policeman, who was drunk at the time, was killed in an ordinary sordid tavern brawl. A reign of terror followed, but it was proved afterwards that the “ reprisals ” preceded by two days the murder which was alleged to have caused them. These measures were taken n’ot only against Marxists, who were supposed to have been responsible for the murder, but against all sections of the population, including a Roman Catholic priest, who was gravely mishandled. About 500 people were placed under arrest. The rule of law has ceased to exist. A completely arbitrary regime has been imposed over the whole of Bohemia and Moravia. The Germans are above the Jaw, and the Czechs are excluded from its protection. A Czech has no possible means of redress, no matter how brutally and unjustly he may have been treated, After the German invasion in March Hitler issued a proclamation stating that the country was to become a protectorate of the German Reich, to be known as the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. It was provided that its citizens should possess only a sort of second class citizenship, inferior to tho full citizenship of the Reich. While the head of the State was permitted to remain, the real ruler of tho country is the Reich Protector. His original role was that of advisor and supervisor, but his position has been enlarged until his office is one resembling that of a provincial governor with legislative powers. The Czechs accordingly are in the position of an inferior and enslaved race. Nazi politicians reiterate that the Czechs will not be Germanised, but many of the towns where they live and work are being changed into German towns. In Jihlava, where the German minority exceeds 25 per cent., all Czech national monuments, including those to Huss and Masaryk, have been removed, and the police force is wholly German. Czech schools and cultural institutions are being shut down, and German schools are being started in wholly Czech districts. At the same time local government is being completely Germanised. Czech municipal councils are forcibly dissolved, and tho Prague Government has been ordered to nominate Germans in their place. Though the Nazis have assumed control through the mailed fist the spirit of tho people is not broken, and there is underground a strong feeling of resistance which makes Germany’s task exceedingly difficult. Slovakia, the third p.f the three pro-

vinces comprising what was formerly the Czecho-Slovakia republic, is in a different category. Nominally it is an independent sovereign State, but as it is under German “ protection ” it is hard to see that it is any better off than the other two. The Slovaks hated the Czechs, and were only too ready to break their association with them. Already they are beginning to me their attitude, for they realise that to all intents and purposes they have placed themselves under the heel of Germany, and in doing so have sung the swan song of their independence.