DESIRE TO RESIGN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26719, 13 March 1948, Page 7

DESIRE TO RESIGN

M. MASARYK FROM GOTTWALD GOVERNMENT

DISSUADED BY PRESIDENT N.Z.P.A. Special (Correspondent

LONDON, Mar. 11

The foreign editor of the Daily Express, Mr Charles Foley, who is at present in Prague, says that the late Czech.' Foreign Minister, M. Jan Masaryk, had been determined to resign when the Gottwald Government took control, but was dissuaded from doing so by, Dr Benes, who argued that the greats est service M. Masaryk could do hiscountry would be to remain at the' Foreign Office. Mr Foley recalls that the last time he spoke to M. Masaryk was in Lon-; don on the eve of the Czech leader’sreturn to his country after his long; exile. On that occasion M. Masaryksaid; “Now that 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.” Mr Foley remarks that objective observers in Prague are astonished at the suggestion that the Communists were./ responsible for M. Masaryk’s death, for, nothing more damaging to the Com->" munist cause in Czechoslovakia could/ have taken place. * The special correspondent of the’ Manchester Guardian in Prague, on": the other hand, says the possibility that ' M. Masaryk’s death was not due tosuicide cannot be lightly dismissed, and<recalls that the former Czech Minister' of Justice, Dr Protop Drtina, wasfound injured in similar circumstances.' 1. The correspondent also points out that’ M. Masaryk had striven all his lifeto be faithful to the honoured name” of his great father, one of whose con—victions was that suicide was a~. cowardly means of escape. The correspondent adds that a visitor who saw M. Masaryk in his official-’ residence ofter the Communists as-’; sumed power could not but be struckby the net that had closed around him;" He was confined in the Czeminsky Palace, where he had never lived before, surrounded by new 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, M. Vaclav Nosek.