PEACE STUMBLING BLOCKS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17255, 3 September 1919, Page 7

PEACE STUMBLING BLOCKS.

DISPOSITION OF TESCHEN.

CESSION TO THE POLES. INDIGNATION OF THE CZECHS. By Telegraph— Association— (Received 9 p.m.) A. and N.Z. VIENNA. Sept. 1. The cession of the Teschen coalfields to the Poles by the Peace Conference is causing indignation among the Czecho-Slovaks, who threaten to occupy the district as soon as the Czech prisoners of war in Russia return.

The disposition of the Teschen district is one of the most serious territorial problems that has confronted the Peace Con-.*, ference. Though the principality of Teschen measures only 900 square miles, it contains valuable coal mines located in the north-western and northern end of the district. Before the war Teschen was!: included in Austrian Silesia. An officially authorised statement of the Czechoslovak claim to Teschen was recently issued. In this it was asserted that out of a population of 437,000, 125,000 are Czechs, 75,000 are Germans, 60$0Q are people commonly known as Wasserpoles or people of Polish stocks swayed by German influence; 54,000 are Gorals, Slav mountaineers in the southern part of the district, and finally about 100,000 are Poles, mostly recent immigrants from Galicia, who came to work in the coal mines and iron mills of this district. For more than five centuries Teschen belonged to the Bohemian Crown, and up to about 40 years ago the Czech language and Czech schools alone struggled against the attempts of the Austrian Government to make the land German. Since the introduction of Parliamentary institutions into Austria, the German minority needed the votes of Polish deputies in [ Parliament in order to rule, and as payment supported Polish claims in Teschen. Czech schools were changed into Polish schools and Slav peasants whose speech was on the transition line between the literary Czech language and literary Polish were gradually taught to call themselves Poles- Entire villages which under the census of 1880 were purely Czech became purely Polish in IbaO. The importance of this small district for the Czechoslovak Republic is twoiold. In the first place the main railroad connecting the Czech half of the republic with the Slovak half passes through the very centre of Teschen between uderburg and the Pass of Jablunkov. To replace this railroad would be a very difficult undertaking by reason of the mountains separating Moravia from Slovakia. Of still greater importance are the coal mines located in the north-western and northern end of the district. These mines produce the only coal suitable for coking, without which the great Czecho-Slovak steel industry cannot exist In the past nearly all of the coal produced around Oderburg was used in Czecho-Slovak factories, very little going into lands now Polish.