CZECHOSLOVAKIA: New Deal

When President Eduard Benes, after yielding to the Munich demands, obtained by his last appeal to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain an immediate British loan of $50,000,000 to Czechoslovakia, he had played his last card.

Dr. Benes last week resigned as President, leaving Czechoslovakia in the firm hands of Premier-General Jan Syrovy, and taking leave of his countrymen in an affecting broadcast which acknowledged with dignity that there must now be a change. Dr. Benes, who is independently well off, retired to his 100-acre estate near Prague, where his gardener exulted: “This is the first time I have had a chance to talk with the President about our tulip beds since last spring!”

Dr. Benes will be “the President” to most of his countrymen until he dies. Yet there have always been some Czechs who feel he was mistaken in not making such a compromise with Nazidom as Poland made in 1934. Ablest of these is probably Dr. Frantisek Chvalkovsky. who has an American wife and long lived in the U. S. Dr. Benes has by no means been at odds with Dr. Chvalkovsky, whom he employed as Czechoslovak Minister to Italy until last week and before that to Germany.

Dr. Chvalkovsky has busied himself getting on the best personal terms with Herr Hitler and with Signor Mussolini, who is said to have once sent him this message in Rome: “Come over and see me, I am tired of talking to people who say ‘Yes’.” Dr. Chvalkovsky last week became the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister, will handle many cards of a new deal for his country. He at once left for Berlin, where last week the British-French-Czechoslovak-German-Italian commission set up at Munich was drawing the new Czecho-slovak-German frontier while German troops continued to enter and occupy the zones allotted them and Adolf Hitler darted in & out of his new Sudetenland, alternating Sudeten celebrations in his honor with business in Germany. A fine, heavy bouquet of thorny flowers hurled at the Führer by an “admirer” scratched his face.

Meanwhile, in Czechoslovakia the Prague Government made the smart move of granting autonomy within the Republic to the Slovaks and leaving the new Slovak Cabinet, which was at once set up under Premier Dr. Jozef Tiso, to undertake the thankless job of negotiating with Hungary, which has claimed slices of Czechoslovakia. In Slovak areas Hungarians had hoped to find some of that “yearning” for Hungary which the Sudetens felt for Germany. However, as soon as the Slovaks were given some of the chance to act big which they have long been denied in Czechoslovakia, they started being niggardly with Budapest about giving back the Hungarian minority in Slovakia.

At latest reports the Slovak-Hungarian parley at Komarno had given Budapest no territory except the town of Ipolysag and the Slovak portion of Satoraljaujhely on the border. Hungary was asking 6,000 square miles with a population of 1,200,000 but was apparently getting no backing in this demand from Germany.

On the contrary, Berlin was becoming alarmed lest Poland and Hungary succeed between them in grabbing the eastern end of Czechoslovakia and fortifying it as a bulwark against the ultimately scheduled German push to the East. The whole Munich settlement situation in Czechoslovakia was fluid. Ancient nationality claims and feuds boiled up anew somewhere almost every hour in this tough corner of Eastern Europe where every little old people is supertough. So far as Germany was concerned, chances favored mutual agreement to abandon the holding of plebiscites in the area sketched at Munich and direct occupation by Nazidom of substantially that which Adolf Hitler drew on his map at Godesberg.