CRAFTY DR. BENES

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 9 December 1938, Page 3

CRAFTY DR. BENES

FOUNDING OF CZECH STATE LLOYD GEORGE’S REVELATIONS LONDON, 2nd December. J lie opinion that if the late President, Musury k, instead of Dr. Benes, had represented Czechoslovakia at Versailles, or if Dt Benes had carried out his promises to grant local autonomy, the present Czech tragedy would not have occurred, is expressed by Mr Lloyd George i l llie second volume of "The Truth About the Peace Treaties.” Mr Lloyd George says that Dr. Benes, in 1919, presented claims with great craft, igftorikg the fact that ho was incorporating races which in President Wilson's principle of self-determination should have gone to Germany. He pretended that not 3,000,000, but only 1,500,000 Germans were iucorporate 1 in Czechoslovakia. He promised to make Czechoslovakia a sort of Switzerland, giving Germans minority rights. lie admitted that the Poles were in the majority at Teschen, but seized it

because lie said lie wanted its coal, and he underestimated the number of Hungarians in the new State. lie made an audacious proposal for a corridor joining Czechoslovakia with Yugoslavia. Bauer, the first socialist President of Austria, said the new State would be :i polyglot nation similar to the old Aus-tra-11 ungarian Empire, and that it would set all Europe alight. Lloyd George says that the Czechs had rendered a great service to the Allies and so Penes’ claims were granted.