The Benighting of Czechoslovakia
Though its implications are tragic, the spectacle of Czechoslovakia putting the clock back is not without its ludicrous side. You cannot turn a man into a lunatic by forcing him to wear a strait-jacket ; nor can you convert democrats into totalitarians by clamping down on them the restrictive paraphernalia of a police state. The endeavour to exclude the heresies of " westernism " (of which the recent closing of the British Council premises in Prague was a ham-fisted symptom) is being sternly prosecuted ; and if the testimony of M. Houdek, who on Tuesday resigned his position as Czechoslovakia's permanent delegate to the United Nations, is to be believed, we may shortly expect a public witch-hunt in which M. Clementis and other well-known figures will feature as the abominable deviationists. The rulers of this unfortunate country have succeeded in stopping the involuntary export of her leading athletes, but clandestine emigration is still being attempted by those citizens who have the courage and the opportunity to try it. From a long-term point of view, the bold experiment of diverting Czechoslovakia from the main stream of Western thought and culture into a backwater of obscurantist tyranny seems unlikely to succeed. Though not the stoutest of fighters, the Czechs have a tradition of independence and a considerable capacity for obstinacy and evasion ; and though force majeure may oblige them to bend their wills to political dictates, the task of stultifying their minds and perverting their outlook may well prove beyond the power of the doctrinaires.
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