TOPICS OF THE DAY

Waikato Times, Volume 126, Issue 21039, 15 February 1940, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY

Spirit of the Czechs “No doubt.” says The Times, “the uprising of Czech national spirit has drawn sustenance—which is not to say instigation—from the sympathy felt for the Czech cause in Great Britain and France and the knowledge that one of our own professed war aims is to liberate the foreign races which have been conquered and enchained by the Nazis. The inhabitants of the Protectorate are aware that a Czech National Committee has been formed in Paris, on the model of that of the Four-Year War, and they have heard that a Czech Legion is once more being created to fight side by side with the Western Allies. But still more do they realise that their own position is in any case desperate under the Nazis, both materially and spiritually. They are short of food, their businesses have been interrupted and partly confiscated, their schools have been closed. Many of their leaders have been atrociously maltreated. A militarised regime that does not understand liberty is in fact trying to crush a people for whom life without liberty has become not worth living. The Czechs stand now, as they have stood before in history, for national and moral values against a race oi bullies who have tried to expel spiritual life even from their own national system.”