CZECHOSLOVAKIA: Brody and Bombs

Mr. Andrej Brody, the first Premier of Ruthenia since it was granted autonomy within the Czechoslovak Republic, was jailed last week for treason. He was charged with taking money from Hungarian agents to advocate the holding in Ruthenia of a plebiscite to decide whether it should go to Hungary.

Meanwhile, Czechoslovak-Hungarian negotiations over the question of secession by Prague of Slovakian but not Ruthenian territory to Budapest concluded last week with an agreement to let the matter be arbitrated jointly by Germany and Italy. The German Foreign Minister, onetime Wine & Spirits Salesman Joachim von Ribbentrop, went to Rome to design the basis for this arbitration with Benito Mussolini, onetime hod carrier.

Prague papers reported that German artillery and bombers were pounding away experimentally last week at a section of the “Czechoslovak Maginot Line” which was surrendered after Munich, boasted: “The results of the artillery bombardment have been almost nil and only one out of 60 shelters bombed by the airplanes has been destroyed.” The French Maginot Line, according to France’s War Ministry month ago, is constantly being reinforced. And while French experts oversaw the construction of the Czech fortifications, it is not likely that they shot the complete works on the defenses of a foreign country. Nevertheless, it must have given the French General Staff an uncomfortable feeling to learn what German ordnance people were up to in Sudetenland last week. A somewhat kindred sensation would be experienced by a householder who has lost his key, watched a burglar pick it up and go off to study it at leisure.