MAFIA AND FREEDOM

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 59, Issue 4218, 1 December 1939, Page 6

MAFIA AND FREEDOM

A CZECH. SECRET SOCIETY’S WIDESPREAD NETWORK. TO END NAZI TYRANNY. In Germany a freedom movement is gradually becoming vocal as the people are awakening to the fact of their disastrous bondage to Nazi tyranny. The freedom movement of the Czechs, on the contrary, had its origin at a much earlier date. The Czech freedom movement has borrowed the name of Mafia. Little enough it has in common with the Mafia which took its rise in the island of Sicily. The aspirations of the Czech Mafia are indeed worthy of a nobler name. The only resemblance between the Sicilian and the Czech Mafia is that each of them started as a secret society for a political purpose. Here the parallel ends, for there was much that was sordid in the Sicilian Mlafia which has no place in the Czech Mafia. The Czech Mjafia has for its aim and object to resist the foreign yoke and to build up a free nation. The organisation arose during the Great War, and was founded with the express purpose of fighting against the Hapsburgs for Czech independence. Its leaders were Thomas Masaryk and Eduard Benes. At the end of the Great War Czecho- Slovakia reached its goal in becoming a free country, and the Mafia, serving no longer any useful purpose, faded away for the time being. MAFIA REVIVED. For a period of years since the Great War the Czechs have enjoyed their dearly-Won liberty, and {have been in full exercise of their right of self-government. Now darker days have fallen upon them, and once again the secret machinery of the Mafia has been set in motion to win back their cherished independence. This time the Mafia finds a ready and universal response from a nation determined at all costs to shake itself free from the toils of Nazi tyranny.

With this single aim in view, all the efforts of the Mafia are concentrated on every means whereby the hold of Nazidom on their country may be weakened. One of their chief weapons is, of course, propaganda. As the secret anti-Nazi German Freedom radio station is everywhere impairing the morale of the Nazi regime by its mysterious broadcasts from an unknown source, so the Mafia has a thousand channels through which the people of Czecho-Slovakia are kept prepared for the day when they can once more make a united national effort for their freedom. “ Trust Benes and never- forget our national motto, ‘ Pravda Vitezi ’ (Truth Prevails) ” is the inspiring watchword which speeds through the land like the fiery cross arousing the Scottish clansmen of old. ■Secret radio transmitters like that now operating in Germany have baffled the- attempts of the Gestapo to discover them. SABOTAGE IN KEY FACTORIES. Thousands of workers in Czechoslovakia are in league with the Mafia and afford it active co-operation by espionage and sabotage in the key industries vital to the Nazis, such as the armament factories and the famous Skoda works. ‘When the Nazis started their wholesale transportation of Czech workers into Germany the ever-pre-sent M'afia agents went with them and introduced the methods of factory sabotage devised in their own country into Germany, and kept in close touch with the German freedom movement. The revolt which has recently occurred in Czeco-Slovakia is but a foretaste of the national rising which may take place as soon as favourable conditions offer. It is idle for the Gestapo to suppose that it can disarm the Czech nation, for the utmost ingenuity is resorted to by the Czechs in hiding away these arms till the time arrives. The Mlafia members, from their long experience, have developed a network of freedom organisations which works in subterranean channels not to be detected by members of the Gestapo. YOUNG MEN’S SUPPORT. The youth of Czecho-Slovakia who have enjoyed some twenty years of independence are whole-heartedly in support of the movement. The Mafia has active centres in foreign countries, especially in Paris and in the United States, where many Czechs with large resources are labouring for the common cause. Such a national system demands the ceaseless vigilance of the Gestapo and is at present a thorn in the side of hte Nazi Government, hampering its freedom of movement and immobilising large forces which the Nazis would otherwise have at their disposal for action in other vital areas. —Wilmot P. M. Russell in the Weekly Scotsman.