EUROPE FROM PRAGUE [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] Sut,In
your issue of April 1st; Sir Alfred Zimniern in his article " Europe from Prague " stated among other thingS that 25 years ago the children in Slovakia " were brought up as Magyart and .punished for tittering a word of German—or, in Slovak villages, Slovak—to one another even outside the classroom." - May I venture to draw your attention to the fact that, e.g., the wife of the present Prime 'Minister of Czechoslovakia, Mme.-Hodza herself was 27 years ago a teacher of the SloVik language in the Slovak school of Opazovaa community situated in the South of Hungary, where the Slovak piipufatiori forms merely an enclave? This fact in itself is a very eloquent
argument against Sir Alfred's statement since, if in a place remote from any region populated by a compact mass of Slovaks there was a Slovak school, it is obviously unthinkable that in -the territory where the population consisted in its majority of Slovaks, the Slovak language should have been suppressed by methods alleged by your illustrious con- tributor.
In fact there were in Northern Hungary many hundred Slovak schools during the Hungarian regime, in addition to nearly 3,500 schools in most of which the language of instruction was both Hungarian and Slovak.
But Dr. Hodza himself—who as far back as 1905 had been returned at a by-election to the Hungarian Parliament by a Slovak constituency of Southern Hungary,"and who one year later at the general election succeeded in filling, in company of his Slovak fellow-deputies, no fewer than nine seats in the Hungarian House of Commons—was the Editor of the Sloven- sky Tyzdennik, a Slovak paper printed in the Slovak language and published at Budapest, the capital of Hungary.
All this at a time when minority treaties were unknown, and consequently Hungary had' no commitment at all regarding the treatment of her minorities !
Another and definite proof of the regrettable lack of exactitude in the statement of Sir Alfred is the fact that the Slovak population of the region, which up to 1918 formed part of Northern Hungary, retained its Slovak character and language in spite of the Hungarian methods of oppression alleged by him—during a period of ten centuries while they were living in community with the Hungarians. This certainly would have been impossible if they had really been Subject to the alleged treatment. It is a historic fact that many Slovaks of modest extraction have risen to the highest posts and honours in Hungary. The late Cardinal Prince Primate of Hungary, Janos Csernoch, was the son of a poor Slovak peasant ; Ottokar Prohaszka, the late Bishop of Szekesfehervar, too, was the son of a poor Slovak artisan, &c. To this day there are hundreds upon hundreds of people of Slovak origin who hold important offices in Hungary.
I would feel grateful if you would be good enough to grant space to these remarks by which I have endeavoured to con- tribute to the cause of truth.—I have the honour to remain.
Sir, your obedient Servant, LAszth
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