Western and Eastern Democracy
The letter in which on December loth Lord Halifax gave formal recognition to the Czecho-Slovak National Committee as " qualified to represent the Czecho-Slovak peoples, and, in particular, to make arrangements concerning the Czecho- Slovak army in France," is a document of historic import- ance, and it is probably no coincidence that it was despatched immediately on the return of the Foreign - Secretary from a meeting of the Supreme War Council in Paris. The effect of the letter is that the Committee, of which Dr. Benes is naturally the chief member, is recognised as constituting in effect a provisional Government, analogous to the Polish Government at Angers, though less fully organised. It is hoped that both Czech divisions and Polish divisions will be fighting on the Western Front by the spring, an impressive advertisement of two of the Allies' essential war-aims. The Poles have intensified the sym- pathies of the Western democracies towards them by the manifesto recently issued at Angers, in which the Polish Government declared that its mandate was derived solely from the will of the people, and that whatever might be said about the form of the Polish Government in the past, there would be nothing in the nature of a military dictatorship in the future, but a democratic constitution calculated to emphasise the identity of view between Poland and her French and British allies. Such a declaration has the effect of focusing attention afresh on the supreme problem of creating a Europe in which a democratic Poland could survive.
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