LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
THE CZECH REVOLUTION
SIR,—In your excellent article in last week's issue, in which you described the recent tragic events- in Prague, you go on to state that " no one could believe they could happen in Czechoslovakia." I agree that too few people in this country believed that such things could happen, but having recently spent a few weeks in Czechoslovakia I can assure you that a great many people there not only thought 'present events likely but, in many ways, regarded them as inevitable. Later in your article you say, "It was because elections; in which the Communists were expected to lose ground, were impending in Czechoslovakia that the blow was struck." A great many Czechs expressed to me the hope that the Communists would not lose too many seats in the elections for the very reason that, if they thought they were going to, action would be taken before the elections and, if not then, certainly afterwards.
The measure of -independence given to the Czechs since the war was, as the people knew, purely relative. Russia could at any time have ' taken the whole country in a matter of hours, and there was nothing that the Western democracies could do about it. Swift action along the lines-,advocated by Mr. Churchill at Fulton two years ago, backed by military alliances, might have saved Czechoslovakia. But, alas, all the Czechs saw and heard were a group of our Left-wing M.P.s prancing around Eastern Europe telling them that Britain was the cause of most of the world's troubles and, if there were any not the fault of Britain, then they were certainly the fault of America. Such pep talks did little to foster the impression of Western solidarity. As I left Prague before the recent events took place I was unable to witness the pqlicemen being kissed in the streets—a sight which appears to have caused Mr. Plans- Mills such edification. However, let us keep our sense of proportion in this matter. Surely we were assured on all hands that the Nazi troops were welcomed with open arms in the countries that they annexed before the war, and, by the same token, who can doubt that the humble folk of Bulgaria, Rumania and Hungary have, by this time, embraced a score or more of the N.K.V.D.?
Once more the cry has been raised, " Thus far but no further." How bitter that must sound to a free and independent people, recently released from seven years' hard labour, now condemned, to penal
servitude for life.—Yours, &c., J. A. CREAN. Preston Court Farm, Beddingham, near Lewes.
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