Commonwealth and. Forei g n
CZECHOSLOVAKIA'S GERMANS
A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT FROM
Prague, Nov. 14th ON SUNDAY, November 14th, local elections were to have taken place in Czechoslovakia. A little less than three weeks before polling day the elections were suddenly postponed and every public meeting in the whole of the Czechoslovak Republic was banned until further notice. W hat was the cause of this drastic decision and what have been its results ?
Czechoslovakia prides itself on being an island of democracy in a sea of dictatorships. Though some have doubted the existence of the island, no oae doubts the sea, and the question inevitably arises—how long will the island remain unsubmerged in the rising and turbulent waves ?
Czechoslovakian democracy is threatened from within and from without. It is threatened from across its longest frontier by the most ruthlessly totalitarian, state in Europe. It is threatened from within by reactionary elements of all national- ities—Czech, Slovak, Hungarian and German. Hitherto the most serious has been the German. Not only has the Henlein party shown a tendency to co-operate with the Czech and Slovak reactionaries but, more dangerous still, it has united with the external German threat to put pressure on the Czecho- slovak Government.
This united internal and external pressure reached a head some three weeks ago. A small election incident occurred at Teplitz Schonau. Several Henlein deputies declared themselves to have been assaulted by the police. The police asserted that the exact opposite had occurred. The news was immediately transmitted to Berlin—there even seems evidence that the transmission preceded the event—together with a peremptory letter from Konrad Henlein to President Benes demanding immediate autonomy for the German districts. Insulting head- lines once more filled the German newspapers and a wild campaign was started against the " brutal oppression by the Prague democrats." Henlein's election campaign, which was already exploiting local grievances in terms of a Czech-German struggle, was reinforced by the whole machinery of Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry. It seemed that this tremendous pressure from without and from within must lead to some sort of capitu- lation on the part of a Power so apparently weak in internal and external affairs. Political, and above all, party, feeling was running high, and there was serious danger of further incidents in other parts of the country. For a few days the Czechoslovak Government hesitated, then came the almost start- ling and defiant decision to postpone elections and to cancel all public meetings. Nobody moved either on this side or the other side of the frontier. " The brutal oppression of the Prague democrats " led neither to a single act of revolt on the part of the Sudeten Germans nor to any active intervention on their behalf by their sympathetic kinsmen in Germany.
It appeared, to resume the metaphor, as if the storm had broken too soon. The tide was still so low on the shores of the island that no ordinary storm sufficed to submerge it. The result of the Teplitz incident was a rebuff. Democracy had indeed received a blow but it rebounded on those who had aimed it.
The decision to postpone elections and to prohibit all public meetings was anti-democratic. The events which preceded it are evidence that it takes not only a Government but an Opposition to make a democracy, not only a majority but a minority also. But the open decision of a Government, whose very basis is democracy, to prohibit freedom of assembly and of voting is a sign of the times. Not only have the dictators overthrown the democrats in their own countries, but they are rapidly making impossible their existence elsewhere—and the democrats reply that they will take no part in " ideological quarrels."
But what are the actual results of the events in Teplitz ? First and foremost is the postponement of the elections. Post- ponement is probably something of an euphemism. Elections must be announced four weeks before they take place. Such an announcement will not be made till the budget is through Parliament. This will take several more weeks and it is un- likely that there will be any time in which to hold them this year. Next year the Government is unwilling to hold them ,because it is the twentieth anniversary of the Republic, and the Government is unwilling to introduce party strife into a year of national rejoicing. The Czech and Slovak parties are naturally angry that they are penalised in their own districts for the misbehaviour of the Sudeten Germans in theirs. On the other hand, there is a certain relief that Henlein borough and rural councils will not be elected in the fortified frontier districts. Those who have gained most from the postponement are the German Activist (Governmental) parties who stood to lose as severely as they lost in the Parliamentary elections 2 f years ago. Politically hostile councils would have put untold pressure on them, and the boycott of socialist and liberal workmen and shopkeepers by Henlein employers and consumers would have proceeded apace. As it is they have gained time, and time is the first healer of the German political disease.
The ban on all public meetings was no loss in this period, in which fell the anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Com- munist and anti-Communist meetings do not soften political tempers, and the risk of disturbances was large enough.
The second important result is the consolidation of Czech public opinion. During the last year or so there has been a tendency in the Agrarian Party (the strongest Czechoslovak Party) towards co-operation with the -Henlein Party with the ultimate prospect of a right wing Czech-German coalition GOvernment. Such a Government would have meant the end of German activism, a severe blow to the more liberal and socialist Czech parties and a reorientation of Czechoslovak foreign- policy towards Berlin. The events of Teplitz have shown once and for all the relations between the Henlein party and Berlin—relations which no independent Czech can stomach. Whether by conviction or only by circumstance, Henlein is today, willy nilly, the instrument of Nazi pOlicy.
Finally, the events of Teplitz have had a profound psychologi- cal effect. Though nobody expected that Germany would go to war for the sake of a small election incident, her attitude to the postponement of the elections was a clear sign that she is not yet ready to risk intervention. It seems that the whole campaign of the German press was an affair of the Propaganda Ministry against the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and that counsels of moderation have again won the day in Berlin. Still more important, Teplitz has made it clear that the Sudeten Germans are in no such revolutionary mood as they are sup- posed to be. It is significant that when it comes to trouble with the police those mostly involved are deputies enjoying parliamentary immunity. The fear of a spontaneous uprising of the Sudeten Germans with immediate assistance from Germany has been shown to be premature, if not unfounded.
On the other hand, it cannot be said that the relations between Germans and Czechs have improved in any way during the last year. The February Agreement, (promising full equality of treatment to the Germans) where it is not being sys- tematically sabotaged, is inevitably slow in its operation. Though many Activists may have benefited directly from it, it has done nothing to win the Sudeten German minority as a whole• to a policy of activism. The crux is still the deep-rooted distrust between German and Czech—for which the inter- national situation and, above all, the foreign policy of Germany is largely responsible, together with the centuries-old struggle inherited from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is the old struggle for power in Bohemia—a struggle made more bitter because each nation has come to believe that its existence depends on its predominance. There will be no peace in German Bohemia till the Czechs cease their attempt to make it Czech, till Germany has ceased to persuade its neighbours that their only safety lies in a reliable population and impenetrable fortifications on their GLrman frontiers.
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