Timely Topics

Northern Advocate, 30 September 1938, Page 4

Timely Topics

“I think it would be possible to write history to show that races have prospered just in proportion as they have been refreshed THE REFUGEE with new blood ” PROBLEM. writes Mr J. A. Spender, in 'another contribution to the “Yorkshire Observer.” “The excess of nationalism is sufficiently dangerous without being aggravated with racialism and antisemitism. The countries with stailcnary or declining brth-rates must keep their doors open, the countries with an excess of population must have outlets. If there is not this voluntary give and take and mutual reciprocity between nations, the causes of strife will multiply and there will be no hope of lasting peace. Not to be less but to be more hospitable to the strangers within or knocking at our gate is one of the lessons which the world-most needs today. 'The most practical conclusion for the mo,ment is that we must all do our part |in solving the terrible refugee problem, which has just been explored 'at > Evian Conference.”

■32 IK IS s : - “The Times,” in an editorial published on July 27 made the following statement, which is particularly interesting today: CenTHE CZECH tral Europe is still in a PROBLEM • very unsettled condiion; 'and the gap that 1 exists between the disputants in Czechoslovakia is still very wide. Much patience ,will be needed before it can be bridged. And all parties can well afford to show it, for in the meantime the Sudetens are being treated better, probably, than any other minoriy in Europe. But their claim, of course, is that they should not be regarded as a minority at all, but rather, as a partner-nationality in the Czechoslovak State. It must be admitted that they were given grounds for this hope. At the time of .the peace-making they sought in vain to become attached to Austria-Germany, but were consoled by the declaration made by Dr. Benes that Czechoslovakia was to be a sort of new Switzerland, “taking into consideration, of course, the special conditions of Bohemia.” The geographical distribution of the Germans in Bohemia does in fact make anything like territorial autonomy extremely difficult and unnatural; and since the rise of Nazism in the Reich the Czechoslovak Government has had an additional deterrent against granting complete' political self-government, because the ideology of the Sudeten regions would be identical with that prevailing across the frontier and completely different from, if not antagonistic to, that of the State of which they Termed a part. If complete autonomy were accorded, political, racial, and linguistic affinity would make the Reich the natural heme of the Sudetens; if the regions were governed centrally from Prague, autonomy would obviously not be complete. That is the dilemma.