Foreign News: Sons of Death

If in 1914 heroic King Albert had faced the Germans alone, suddenly deserted by the Great Powers as was Czechoslovakia this week, even the redoubtable Belgian Sovereign might have shown less courage, resourcefulness and firmness than did President Eduard Benes last week. Astonished Prague learned on Wednesday evening from press wires that Neville Chamberlain would fly on Thursday morning to Berchtesgaden, bitterly observed that the violent Sudeten German riots which broke out on Monday night, directly after Hitler’s Nürnberg speech, had been quelled by police and gendarmes so effectively that at 7:30 p. m. on Tuesday orders went out from Henlein headquarters for Sudeten German fighting to cease and outlawed Nazi symbols to be withdrawn.

Enough Rope. Falkenau, a typical Sudeten German town, was a flaunting forest of swastika banners on the afternoon before this Henlein order went out. By next morning not a single swastika was flying in Falkenau, and on the streets Nazis no longer greeted each other with the Hitler salute, as all had done the day before.

This neutral U. S. correspondents eyewitnessed. Dashing about in motorcars, they verified that only in the western frontier sector of the Sudeten German area had there been bloodshed. The north, east and south were calm “with business as usual,” but in the west 46 had been killed by Wednesday night and savage acts were verified. Citizens of Habersberg gave eyewitness testimony that on Tuesday fully-armed Sudeten Nazis had besieged the local commandant and his gendarmes for three hours. When the commandant surrendered and emerged, they said, Nazis closed in around him, beat and kicked the commandant to death.

Since three gendarmes still remained besieged, the Nazis dragged the wife of one through the streets by a rope binding her wrists, ordered her to beg her hus band to come out, which she did. Few minutes later a bus load of gendarmes drove up, one was instantly killed in the bus by a Nazi’s shot, another was killed as he dismounted. The Nazis scattered as the gendarmes opened fire and after ward the commander of the relieving force said, “The gendarme’s wife who was tied up with this rope was lying on the ground.

She had been kicked, spat upon and otherwise insulted. Another woman had been shot in the stomach, made a prisoner, and taken to the inn, where we found her.” Correspondents found both women in a hospital at Falkenau. Dr. Stoehr, the Sudeten physician in charge, hustled them out while the women called from their beds, “Let us speak to the foreign correspondents!”

Schwaderbach— On Thursday, while Mr. Chamberlain was in the air, Sudeten German violence burst out on a much larger scale. Storm Troops besieged, captured police headquarters in the border town of Schwaderbach, opened the frontier to Germany, and marshaled such a heavy show of armed force that fresh forces of gendarmes who arrived were ordered by Dr. Benes from Prague to hold their ground around the town but not attack, lest the scale of operations amount to “warfare.”

The President, acting on reports from each Sudeten district, was now declaring martial law in those where bloodshed was actual or imminent. In Germany it was said that Adolf Hitler and Konrad Henlein were finding it impossible to get through to each other over Czechoslovak telephone lines, although Viscount Runciman talked from Prague to the Prime Minister at Berchtesgaden.

Suddenly on Thursday, the radio networks of the Reich crashed out that thousands of Sudetens were fleeing to Germany, scrambling over the frontier at isolated points, and that at Eger, Führer Konrad Henlein had issued a proclamation before entering Germany as Czechoslovak Fugitive No. 1: “The use of machine guns, armored cars and tanks against defenseless* Sudeten Germans has reached the highest point of Czech oppression! … It is definitely impossible for the Sudeten Germans and Czechs to live in the same state. . . . We want to return to our home† in the Reich! . . . God bless us in our just fight.”

”Party Activity.” This proclamation the Czechoslovak Cabinet studied for two hours, then decided it was treason. President Benes ordered not only the arrest of Henlein, now a fugitive, should he ever return, but also immediate confiscation of Sudeten Nazi Party funds and property including firearms. Nazi Deputies were not deprived of their parliamentary standing and immunity, but the President declared Parliament adjourned, and his decree enjoined all Nazis against “party activity.” The north, east and south districts were still calm, but in the west bloody scuffles continued. The Government, in efforts to convince Sudeten Nazis that their game was up, let it be known that the army, without any published mobilization order, had last week quietly completed the same full Czechoslovak mobilization as took place on May 21 — against which Orator Hitler raged his loudest at Nürnberg.

Troops with gleaming bayonets appeared in Sudeten villages at last, re-enforcing the gendarmes, but the Nazis still “ruled” Schwaderbach.

“Iron Nerves” In Prague, where U. S. Minister Wilbur J. Carr was having his wine cellar swiftly transformed into a cemented and sandbagged refuge against bombs, Viscount Runciman took off for London, but Viscountess Runciman stayed on to keep Czechoslovaks from feeling that Britain was deserting them. Over the weekend non-Nazi Sudeten Germans, previously cowed by Storm Troops, felt safe enough to sign up by thousands in the Sudeten Social Democratic Party. To check this trend, Sudeten Nazi No. 2 Ernst Kundt manifestoed Saturday to Nazis: “Remain within yourselves what you always were ! Keep waiting until Adolf Hitler and Prime Minister Chamberlain have completed their fateful conversations. Keep your iron nerves!”

Urchins distributed this proclamation, as adult Nazis had no relish for the risky job, and many Sudeten Germans bitterly complained that it hardly took “iron nerves” for Konrad Henlein to flee. From Germany came tart reminders that during the World War a certain Dr. Eduard Benes was a political fugitive from the Habsburg Empire. Indeed, he had fled out of Austria at the same obscure border point where Henlein fled in.

In a fresh Henlein proclamation from Germany, the “Little Führer” said that a military corps of Sudeten refugees was being formed. He thundered: “Benes is too cowardly to admit before Czech peasants the collapse of his policy. He sees his last hope in a European catastrophe. Completely realizing what will be the conclusion, he is now using Bolshevistic Hussite hordes in the uniforms of Czech soldiery upon the defenseless Sudeten Germans!” (see p. 15}. In Henlein’s home town As, around which the German frontier bends, the Czechoslovak police chief said of himself and his men: “It would take Germany only ten or 20 minutes to capture As. We 80 Czechs here are Sons of Death. . . . We wouldn’t have a chance.”

“State of Emergency,” On Sunday the new Henlein fighting force arming itself in Germany was said to number 40,000, to have put on green shirts. Its first move was to launch in quick succession two hit & run frontier attacks on the Sons of Death at As, leaving two sons seriously wounded.

Meanwhile, President Benes at last decreed a “state of emergency” amounting to Dictatorship for the whole of Czechoslovakia. Some 4,000 non-Nazi refugees who fled from the attacks of Henleinists in Sudeten districts were lodged in the Masaryk Stadium at Prague, most of them fed by the Red Cross. “We cannot believe it!” sobbed a Sudeten German refugee woman. “Germans attacking Germans! They [the Nazis] turned us out of our homes only because we were Socialists!” As the British and French Premiers were conferring in London, President Benes flashed to No. 10 Downing Street a demand that the Great Powers make no decision without first consulting Czechoslovakia, added an implied threat that Czechoslovakia would fight rather than submit to being dismembered by a plebiscite or any other “formula” which the Great Powers might devise. Czechoslovak Premier Dr. Milan Hodza broadcast a flat rejection of the plebiscite idea, warned his people that “any minute” they might find themselves at war, thundered: “We face the next few days with the confidence of a people who know they can defend themselves!” “Pretty Cocky!” Neutral U. S. correspondents in Prague were invited to broadcast to the world. Cried the New York Herald Tribune’?, Walter B. Kerr: “They don’t walk about the streets here with haggard faces, wondering what will happen if their country of 13,000,000 loyal citizens has to fight against Germany’s military machine. No, they’re pretty cocky! Their confidence is sometimes incredible.

They fill their coffee houses until 3 and 4 and 5 in the morning. They dance and sing as if they were as safe as a cowman on a Texas ranch.

“Only one thing makes them flare up in anger—and that is when some one suggests it might be better to let Germany have what Germany wants! The Czechs want to fight for their country, and they will fight if the Government will let them. I don’t think it makes any difference whether France and Soviet Russia honor their obligations and come with help, or whether Great Britain sends an army to the Continent; the Czechs would rather fight alone than lose part of their land without a fight.”

Sold Out. Viscountess Runciman and other women of the British Mission left Prague for London this week just ahead of the staggering news that Britain and France demanded Czechoslovakia yield part of the Sudetenland to Germany with out even a plebiscite. “Impossible ! That can’t be true!” Government officials cried as press wires first broke the news, later confirmed to President Benes by the British and French Ministers. In London, the shock “cracked” Czechoslovak Minister Jan Masaryk, son of the late founder of Czechoslovakia, and he took his break down to bed. In Paris, the Czech Minister Stefan Osusky left the Foreign Office with tears in his eyes, crying: “Do you want to see a man convicted without a hearing? Here I stand!” In Moscow, the Czech Minister Zdenek Fierlinger exclaimed he was positive Russia would “march,” but no other Moscow diplomat thought so, and in Geneva the Soviet Foreign Commissar Maxim Litvinoff would only say through a secretary: “This is a very delicate matter.”

Meanwhile, President Benes and Premier Hodza had not cracked, calmly announced the Anglo-French demands were “receiving consideration.” Prague papers were encouraged to print them in full, placed under rigid censorship as to editorial comment. As the Czechoslovak cabinet sat hour after hour indecisively pondering its answer to the Anglo-French proposals, the Government sent a blunt question to Paris: What would France do about its pact with Czechoslavakia if Prague’s answer was no? The question was born of desperation. Under the treaty setups, Czechoslovakia can call on France for aid only if she is the victim of “unprovoked aggression,” can call upon Russia only after France has marched. President Benes had been informed that Paris might regard a Czechoslovak refusal to do as Britain and France demanded as “provoking aggression” from Germany, canceling the treaty safeguards, absolving those who had already sold out the little Republic.

* Neutral correspondents in Czechoslovakia unanimously agreed that the Sudeten Nazis had been armed not only with pistols but also with machine guns and that, in the clashes Henlein spoke of, the Government had used police in riot cars rather than soldiers in tanks.

†Excepting one district with approximately the area of no square miles, no part of the present Czechoslovak Republic ever belonged to Imperial Germany. Konrad Henlein and over 99% of all Sudeten Germans alive before the Republic was founded were born subjects of the Habsburg Kaiser, not the Hohenzollern. Henlein’s mother was a Czech, but to him, as to Austrian-born Hitler, there has never been any doubt that Germany is “home.”