CZECHS ASKED TO BE CALM

Southland Times, Issue 23991, 5 December 1939, Page 7

CZECHS ASKED TO BE CALM

Dr Benes Demands

Justice

BROADCAST FROM LONDON (British Official Wireless) (Received December 4, 6.30 p.m.) RUGBY, December 3. Tonight, 24 hours after the Czechoslovak Committee in Paris had ordered a general mobilization of all Czechoslovak citizens abroad, Dr Eduard Benes, head of the committee, broadcast from London a warning to his countrymen in the protectorate to remain calm and not fall into traps set by the Gestapo.

“Do not allow yourselves to be provoked,” Dr Benes said. “All the Nazis do is of a temporary character, like the April weather. Not a stone will remain where they have put it. We do not want revenge. We only want justice and full reparation for all they have done to us, our men, our property and our cultural life.” Another authoritative denial of German insinuations that prominent Czechoslovaks outside their own country had been inciting the Czech people to revolt against their Nazi oppressors was given in a recent letter to The

Times from the con of the famous former President and himself, the late Czechoslovak Minister in London, M. Jan Masaryk. He said: “We are pleading daily with the people at home to bide their time and avoid by all means unnecessary bloodshed. It is established beyond dispute that the Protector and his henchmen do everything in their power to- exhaust and undermine the magnificent patience and discipline of my people.” He attributed the recent revolts in Bohemia and Moravia entirely to a spontaneous rising against the indescribable cruelty and oppression of the German authorities.