How Did Masaryk Die ?

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 March 1948, Page 5

How Did Masaryk Die ?

“The Czech Foreign Minister (Mr Jan Masaryk) had been determined to resign when the Gottwald Government took control, but he was dissuaded from doing so by the President (Dr Benes), who argued that the greatest service Mr Masaryk could do his country would be to remain at the Foreign Office,” says Charles Foley, foreign editor of the Daily Express, who is now in Prague. Foley recalls that the last time he spoke to Mr Masaryk was in London on the eve of the Czech leader’s return to his country after his long exile. On that occasion Mr Masaryk said: “Now it is all over we will make the dear old Czech land a land fit to get up for in the morning. If I did not believe that I would jump in the sea or take a pill.” Foley remarks that objective observers in Prague are astonished at the suggestion that the Communists were responsible for Mr Masaryk’s death, for nothing more damaging to the Communist cause in Czechoslovakia could have taken place. The special correspondent of the Manchester Guardian in Prague, on the other hand, says that the possibility that Mr Masaryk’s death was not suicide cannot be lightly dismissed, and he recalls that the former Czech Minister of Justice (Dr Prokop Drtina) was found injured in similar circumstances. “Faithful to His Father” The correspondent adds that Mr Masaryk had striven all his life to be faithful to the honoured name of his great father, one whose conviction was that suicide was a cowardly means of .escape. i y . “A visitor who saw Mr Masaryk in his official residence after the Communists assumed power could not but be struck by the net that had closed around him,” says the correspondent. “He was confined in the Czernin Palace, where he had never

lived before, surrounded by new secretaries, and never allowed to see visitors alone. Every statement he made was censored, and all appointments in the Czech diplomatic service were in the hands of the Communist Minister of the Interior (Mr Nosek).”

The Prague correspondent of the Paris newspaper Le Matin says that four days before he committed suicide Mr Masaryk told him that the Communist Government “is a knife at the throats of myself and Dr Benes. You know as well as I do that my country is no longer free.”

“Untenable Position”

In Washington a State Department, spokesman said that official reports received there tended to confirm that Mr Masaryk apparently killed himself because he was forced into an untenable position by the Communist regime.

Five Czechoslovak Legation officials in Buenos Aires, including the First Secretary, Mr Vladimir Suchan, resigned today. Mr Suchan, in a statement, said: “My Christian conscience does not permit me to collaborate with a regime imposed by a partisan minority whose ideology is different from that of the majority of Czechs and contrary to all principles of human rights.” The Swiss radio has reported that seven Swiss Universities have refused an invitation to join in the 600th anniversary celebrations of Charles University, Prague, in April. The refusal was made “in the light of recent events at Charles University,” where the Rector and some of the staff and students were dismissed in the Communists’ purge. It is reported from Copenhagen that universities of Denmark, Sweden and Norway have also declined invitations to take part in the Charles University celebrations.