To the Editor of the "Nortu-Cuina' DAILY News"
Smin your leading article of today you say that "there are other and more important questions to be dealt with than one of whether or mot three million Germans in (Czechoslovakia shall be returned to the Reich." ' That is very true. A State composed, as the so-called "Czechoslovak," of very great minorities, as is shown by your corres pondent Pro Parmi. is artificial in the highest degree. There a mo such people as "Czechoslovaks." Where are Czechs and there are Slovaks and there is not much love Jost between them. The Slovaks (2.5 millions) of Upper Hungary were detached from the motherland through the dictated Peace Treaty of Trianon together with one million Hungarians and 0.5 million Ruthenians. There was no plebiscite (in contravention of the Wilsonian 14 points) and not the shadow of self determination, Hungary has, with peaceful means, fought for almost 20 years for the rectification of the injustice to which she Was subjected in 1919 and, at least in England, the perversion of historical facts on the part of the Czechs, Roumanians and Serbs, which formed the basis of the Treaty which robbed Hungary of two-thirds of its territory and population, has long ago been discovered.
For this reason British support of the Czechs is withheld, and this the more so, as the Czechs have had ample time to come to a fair compromise with the minorities which outnumber them, but have failed to do so until, through the threat from the Germans, they offer concessions Which to-day are valueless whilst, if made even 5 years ago, would have had the effect of a beau geste.
Blinded by their unexpected success at the peace conferences of 1919 the Czechs have lost all sense of proportion and really persuaded themselves that they had created a state and a nation. They entirely overlooked the fact, that a nation of 65 millions cannot, in perpetuity, be kept disarmed and defenceless and that a day of reckoning must come, when the political attitude of the Czechs towards Germany during its years of disarmed impotence would have to be accounted for.
The same considerations apply to those parts of "Czechoslovakia" which were detached from Hungary, and the intransigent policy of ne Czechs which they have adopted towards Slovaks, Hungarians, Ruthenians and Poles will in due cour: bear its own fruit.
Having been one of the main causes of the collapse of the Austro-'Hungarian Monarchy it wold be poetical justice indeed if the same fate now overtook "Czechoslovakia, Pro LIBERTATE, Shanghai, Mar. 24.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.