SLOVAKIA’S FATE

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 September 1940, Page 10

SLOVAKIA’S FATE

DISASTER UNDER GERMANY. Has Slovakia any independence? Is she simply Germany’s chattel, a welcome reserve of cheap labour and raw materials, a spring-board for the next aggression? asks a writei' in the “Manchester Guardian.” Is the effusive servility of her rulers—“ The Slovak nation prays to God to pro ■ tect Hitler and his nation” —due to fear and helplessness or to sym- ■ pathy? Diplomatically, politically, and economically an “independent” Slovakia is immensely useful to the Reich. She can be used as small change in bargainings with Russia, Italy, or Hungary; she can be held out to the Croats, the Magyars in Roumania, or to any discontented minority as the tempting example of a small State which achieved freedom under Germany’s protection. Her timber, iron, gold, silver, cereals, and cattle are easy booty, yet at the same time she can be forced to supplement her raw materials by concluding trade agreements —under her own name, but for Germany’s benefit—with other coun- ; tries, as she has recently with Roumania and Yugoslavia. Slovakia is, in fact, being systematically stripped and plundered. Her native sawmills and cellulose factories are unemployed for lack of timber, houses in Bratislava are unheated for lack of wood, while 90 per cent of Slovakia’s timber production |is exported to Germany. No reafforestation is carried out because of I the shortage of young plants, and if German rule lasts for another five years the Slovak forests will have been destroyed. The metallurgical industry is at a standstill because the whole of Slovakia’s mining production is needed by Germany. Although there is a soap famine the few soap factories cannot work because the small quantity of fats and chemicals that Slovakia can produce or import must go to the Reich; Slovak textile factories can get neither raw wool nor woollen yarns; Slovak flour-mills, although only about 30 per cent of them are working, are on short time because of the scarcity of sacks. Coal, coke, fats, soap, butter, milk, eggs, rice—all are scarce and expensive. In the Bratislava radio’s market report on February 14 listeners heard that “in spite of our last week’s report, according to which there was no shortage of* rice in, Bratislava, you could not get rice . . . But another great quantity is due to arrive shortly and will be even cheaper than the last: This rice, coming from Holland, will cost five crowns a kilo.”

COSTS TWICE AS MUCH. In fact, owing to scarcity, bad distributing arrangements, and hoarding, it usually costs nearly twice that. (Under the Republic the best rice cost three crowns a kilo.) Again, on February 21 the market report announced bitterly that “the shortage of timber, fuel, and coal is as bad as in 1928, when we had an equally severe frost. . We cannot understand why fuel prices are not yet fixed.” Although the Slovak Government announced in December an agreement with Germany for the delivery of 80,000 tons of coal and 20,000 tons of coke a month, deliveries have never exceeded 10,000 tons owing to the shortage of rolling stock and the. shocking state of the railway through the Vah Valley. Meanwhile, German debts to Slovakia have reached unbelievable heights. The Slovak National Bank announced in its December report that it had paid 100,000,000 crowni to the families of the 60,000 Slovaks;

working in Germany. Germany sent an acknowledgment of the debt, which “will be paid after the war.” According to the Slovak Minister of Economy, Slovakia’s clearing claims against Germany and the “protectorate” are 1,000,000 crowns (the total Slovak Budget is only 1,500,000 crowns). This does not include Slovak expenditure on the transport and billeting of German troops or on the strengthening of roads and bridges or the building of fortifications, work done at Germany’s orders. There is nothing to be said in favour of the Slovak Government. It is incompetent, servile, boastful, and corrupt. For months past a struggle has been going on inside it between the so-called “moderates,” headed by President Tiso, and the Germanophile gangsters, led by the Prime Minister, Tuka (imprisoned for treason under the Republic), and Mach, the Propaganda Minister. Mach has twice attempted a Putsch, the last time after his visit to Berlin at the end of February, when he was promised German support which did not appear. The struggle seems to have reached its climax at the celebrations of Hitler’s birthday in Bratislava, when Tiso was not invited to the reception at the German Legation nor was present at the national defence festival, although Tuka and the whole of his Cabinet were there. The speeches made by Mach and Tuka on this “Day of National Defence,” with their threats against all those with, “Czecho-Slovak sentiments,” and their slavish praise of Hitler—“ Adolf Hitler knew how to bear hate, and that is why he is loved,” declared Mach—show that the Berlin group is now in control of the Government and that there will be a sharper terror than before. How real opposition to the Government and the Germans is Mach’s and Tuka’s angry protests show. “You know very well,” said Tuka, “that here in Slovakia are many people who do not wish for this State and do not wish for it even to-day. They must be prevented from destroying our order.”

The Slovak Government is quite unable to stop anti-German demonstrations, although Germans have been brought in to “supervise” the tribunals. Slovak students, when the universities in the “protectorate” were closed, refused to attend Vienna University and went off to work as labourers instead; scarcely a week goes by without reports in the official “Slovak” stating that Slovak workers and peasants were imprisoned for speaking against the Germans and the regime and shouting “Down with Germany!” “Long live the Czecho’Slovak Republic!” “We want Benes!” The influence of the Slovaks in America, which is very powerful, is almost wholly against the Slovak Government, against the Germans, and for a new Czecho-Slovakia. Even I the Slovak leaders themselves trv nervously to make allies among the Czecho-Slovak National Committee by attempting to intrigue with Slovaks abroad, or by letting it be rumoured that they are not opposed to collaboration with the Czechs but that they have definite ideas as to how it should be carried out. What future has Slovakia? With Hungary she is on the worst of terms, and Count Csaky’s recent speech was only one in a long series of violent polemics; if Germany hands her over to Hungary in payment for services rendered she can expect little mercy from the Magyars. She is too small, poor, and weak to remain independent without being under German or Russian domination. It is hard to see how she can exist outside a reconstituted Czecho-Slovakia.

Most Slovaks, I believe, now realise this and see what a terrible price “independence” has cost them. “We are aware,” writes one of them in a

letter, “that after Hitler’s defeat we shall regain our lost freedom and human dignity. We are .working forthis. The only question is how long it can be borne.”