CZECH FREEDOM

Greymouth Evening Star, 19 March 1941, Page 3

CZECH FREEDOM

BRITISH MINISTER CONFIDENT.

[BRITISH OFFICIAL WIRELESS.]

RUGBY, March 17

IThe Minister of Economic Warfare, Mr Hugh Dalton, speaking at a luncheon given by the First Artillery (Detachment of the First Czechoslovak Brigade, said: “I remember Dr. Benes saying to me in 1934, when Hitler’s blood-stained hands had held power for a year, ‘lf war should come, I know that where England is there is victory.’ I recalled those words with a sense of shame in September, 1938. I recall them now with a thrill of pride. I have seen to-day some Czechoslovak troops, sturdy and resolute, who will play their part in the winning of the war and liberating their countrymen from the bestial German tyranny which today holds them in its grip. After you regained freedom in 1918, you tasted twenty years of freedom and achieved great things in many fields. You set a civilised example which our German enemies of to-day might well have followed. Your freedom and your right to live your own national life shall be restored to you in a new Europe of to-morrow. But, in that new Europe, as the bitter history of many generations shows, no State can safely stand alone, least of all if it has Germans for neighbours. I wish, therefore, to congratulate most warmly Dr. Benes and General Sikorsky, on the intimate collaboration of the Czechoslovak and Polish Governments. A close Polish-Czechoslovak union would not only have great value in itself, but might become the nucleus of a much wider federal structure in Central Europe.” '

NAZI TERRORISM.

MONTREAL, March 17.

Senator Vojta Benes, the brother of the Czechoslovakian President, in a broadcast here,/charged the'Nazis with murdering 4000 prominent Czechoslovaks. He said that the Gestapo tortured prisoners to deatfl. .