THE SPIRIT OF PRAGUE
FROM A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
"DELUSION may triumph, but the triumph of delusion is but for a day." These words of Macaulay one might have expected from some professor seated comfortably in his study, and viewing the Central European situation from that distance which lends level-headedness to the inter- pretation of such a situation as that into which the former Czecho-Slovakia State has been plunged by the sudden wild sweep of the German armies into its midst. But in reality they were quoted on the Vaclavske namesti, the principal square of this capital, as 5,000 troops and tanks,. armoured cars and anti-tank gun-carriages were parading before General Blaskowitz, commander of the local forces.
The Press for the past week has described fully the various events that have occurred, and there is no need to reiterate them here. But what is most significant, and should be brought home to every Briton at the present time, is the importance of this attitude of the Czechs in their hour of humiliation. The German aeroplanes may roar overhead, their troops may tramp these streets from morning until night in the endeavour to impress upon these people the military might of the Third Reich. But in actual fact, all they are doing is simply strengthening the conviction of even the simplest Czech that here is delusion gone mad, and that either it cannot last, or civilisation is for ever doomed in Europe. If the Germans imagined that they were im- pressing the Czechs by their military display, they made the biggest mistake possible. They were indicating that their methods are outworn even in the minds of the ordinary citizen, and that he could not take them seriously.
The English and the French, in the eyes of the Czechs, have been guilty of sins of omission for which they have had to pay, but never has anyone here accused them of anything but culpable ignorance and self-interest. The Germans, however, appear as a people who have not yet realised that they have been blinded by their new imperialism to ignore even the most elemental laws of human nature, and to forget those very lessons of self-determination and of sane nationalism which they used so cunningly during the earlier propaganda period of Nazi foreign policy. The Czech is a Slav, and he has still something of the stubborn resig- nation which enables him to sit down under the heaviest burden, apparently resigned to it but in reality waiting only until the favourable moment comes to rouse himself and transfer it to the backs of his taskmasters. He is also a realist—thanks to his long contacts with the Germans—and therefore is prepared to wait for a return of other conditions than the present ones.
Those better conditions may not come tomorrow or the next day, but Czech history is sufficient proof that to attempt to swallow this people is to invite political indigestion for generations to come. As one stood at the tomb of the unknown soldier and watched those men, women and children silently and with wet eyes gaze up at the two flames, everyone knew that their fists were clenched in the determination that some day things would be otherwise. This Prague, March 2151. is not mere wishful thinking. It is the determination resulting from the spirit of the man whose monument occupies the centre of the Old Town Square—the martyr, Jan Hus.
The Czech is also a humanist and a democrat. He has not yet become accustomed to the lying propaganda issued from Berlin, and is disgusted with the reproduction of news which he knows to be absolutely untrue. He will have to bear it, as Prussians, Bavarians and Viennese have done for years past, but he will counter it with as efficient a whisper- ing campaign as ever the Sudeten Germans conducted during last year. Nothing made him more angry than the announce- ment that the Germans were sending in food-relief wagons for the poor here, when he himself knew the contrast between conditions in the Reich and here, and while he watched the officers and men of the invading army gobbling down large quantities of the finest food which Prague restaurants and automats could offer—the like of which they had not them- selves seen for years.
The attempts at Czech in which the early notices of the local troop-commander were written aroused his sense of humour, and even that of the soldiers from the Sudeten areas who know the language, and it also gladdened the Czech's heart as a proof that at least his own people had had no hand in all this until they were forced to do so. (The notices were soon withdrawn.) Before these lines are printed it will be evident whether the western democracies intend to take some definite stand in this newest Reich aggression. But one thing is certain, no Czech will thank them for any more "strong protests" to Berlin. Such actions merely weaken the intelligence of the democracies in the eyes of the people here, especially empha- sising their failure to understand Nazi mentality. The struggle has shifted openly to a very different plane. It is now one between the democracies and German hegemony. and if they do not realise it that is their look-out. Bohemia can even now make a good peace with the Reich, since it is only a temporary stage on the way to the coveted possessions further east; and it is realised that now that the first-cla‘s armaments of Skoda and the Zbrojovka works have been obtained and the material resources and man power of this rich country are at their disposal, the Czechs will for some time, at least, be granted a far greater measure of autonornY than that enjoyed by Austria.
It is dangerous to prophesy, but there is no great risk in affirming that the time may yet come when the Nazis will see that their invasion of Bohemia was their biggest mistakt. It has finally exposed German aggression to the world. stripping it of the cloak of " self-determination " and "the necessity of restoring order in central Europe." Whethc: through war or without war, outside of the Third Reich, or within it, the Czechs will not submit. Hitler's secret entry into and departure from Prague ended his short-lived triumph. Is it a mere coincidence that Austerlitz is in Moravia ?
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