Britain's Interest in Crisis To the Editor of the "NosrH-CHiwA Dany News"
Sm,—I venture to believe that the two enclosed letters which appeared in "The Times" on various dates last month also will prove of interest to your readers, Shanghai, June 21.
Sir.—It has been pointed out in your columns that violence would be done to the principle of self-determination if the Czechoslovak Republic were te be destroyed and its territories distributed among other states. Such a development would be a disaster; nevertheless the principle of self-determination cannot be invoked on behalf of the independence of the Czechs and rejected in respect of the Sudeten Germans. The opportunity for the Sudeten Germans to control their own destinies may well be the only practical means of ensuring the continued independence of the Czechs.
"The justice of the Sudeten German claim can hardly be denied by those Who hold that self-determination was Mighty. advanced by the Allies as their aim in the Great War, and who believe in adhering to principle. But principle is abandoned by some, on the supposed ground that ethnogra-Fhical distribution. does not lend Jisel to the demarcation of districts mainly German and contiguous to ihe German frontier, and. that a Czechoslovakia shorn' of its predominantly "German districts ' would hot be "viable." The facts, however, When looked at without bias, point the other way.
A careful study of the 1990 census figures shows large and compact areas close to the frontier, where German-Speaking people form over 70 per cent—in much of the area, over per cent—of the population. The boundary between the predominantly German areas and the overwhelmingly Czech lands is remarkably sharp and very reasonably straight. The decline in the proportion of Germans io Czechs, as between one district and another, is so sudden that the boundary of ihe region where the Germans are more than 50 per cent. very largely coincides with that of the zone where there are over 70 per cent, and even, along much of the Jine, with the limit of the zone over $0' per cent. of Germans. On the Czech side of this line, zones where Germans are as numerous as 30 per cent, are very few indeed. Thus, one crosses gülekly from overwhelmingly German "to overwhelmingly Czech country. The two populations do not shade off gradually, is in many Other cases of ethnographic borderlands, through wide belts of evenly divided people, Tt would be perfectly practicable, should it become necessary, to Separate altogether from the Republic the whole of the predominantly Ge: man areas, with the exception of the Moravske Trebova district in Northern Moravia, where a large Germans lies across Ways. Such separation wi damage the shape or convenience of the territory of the Republic, save by the sccrilice of a mountain frontier which facilitates defence; the value Of this frontier has in any case been undermined by the presence of German forces on the non-mountainous Austrian border. The important industrial town Pizen—in German Pil. xen—(from which the Skoda arsenal is being at least partly removed to Slovakia) is inside the Czech ethnographic area, A division along the 50 per cent Hine would give to the German speaking districts (whatever future ight be devised for them) a Czech minority of some 400000. On the Other side, from a quarter to a third (pro something under a million) of the Germans would be left behind, many of them in the bigsCzech towns; where they form absolutely a large Community, but Felatively a small part of local population. Seifdetermination earn only mean giving effect to the wishes of the majority. and in this case it is (on either side) an overwhelming majority. The fact that there is mo solution, save that Of good trentment, for the disadvantages of people who are a true minority in their own areas does not affect the desitabilit determination to others who, in well of applying seit-defined districts near the frontier are almost solidly German.
British people would hardly be willing to make sacrifices on behalf of the Czechs if actual hostilities were to result from the refusal of the Czechoslovak Republic to con: er a settlement on these lines, Nozt-Boxton.
Ji, Cowley Street, Westminister, Sir,—I find public opi in Ger-Still anxious for friendly relations with Great Britain, but they are loosing faith in our national sincerity and political sense As regards sincerity many of them ask, for nce, how it is that we who do profess io believe in liberty and the felt-determination of peoples shoul deny the will of the Sudeten Germans—solld block of three and a half millions—to liberate themselves from the rule of the Czechs who, in that ethnograplical absurdity called Czechoslovakia, are actually in a minority among the combined numbers of Germans, Poles, Hungarians, Slovaks, and Ruthenians, whom. they govern with no light hand. Why, they ask, does England object to those Sudeten Germans linking up with their fellow Germans If that is thei desire, and by what right do we object? I confess I don't know the right answer.
At the present time the German 1 am told, are trying to ci down these Sudeten Gerni to avoid any popular explosion which lit lead to the menace of a pean War if England and France ist upon upholding the integrity of Czechoslovakia. But here is question they ask: Why Europe be even remotely threat by a war which would lead to fri ful horrors and general ruin in order to uphold an artificial State which reproduces in a small area the mixture of races of the Old Austro-Hungarian "Empire? Within of war Czechoslovakia wou have disappeared oft the map and Ew would be fighting to the death non-existent State which was a tion of all facial ideals. Is that ask, England's present If so, where is the sen: question is also hard to answer.
Vienna, May 7.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.