The Daily Alaska empire., 1939-03-28
Death of a Nation
Philadelphia Record)


 Czechoslovakia died yesterday. Tn it's two decades of life it approached great power But perhaps it will be remembered of the few nations that never committed act of aggression upon its neigh bors No glory" attaches to it's name There are things that can be said about a nation.
 Czechoslovakia relatively strong when Ger many Austria and Hungary were still prosrate from defeat and when Russia was torn by civil Even then the Czechs did not attempt to spread their bon diaries They did not dream militantly of the ancient Bohemian dominance in Central Europe although that is no more far-fetched than the Roman Empire hokum Mussolini feeds the Italians and the Nordic myth which Hitler tells the Germans
 Czechosovakia relied upon the guarantees of the League of Nations, backed, supposedly, by the power of Britain and France. Meanwhile, it attended well to it's business encouraging democracy in the hos tile soil of Central Europe building up independent farmer class encouraging industry.
 The defect that proved fatal to Czechoslovaza was congenital, not mistake of policy The actual ter itory inhabited by Czechs alone or by Sovaks alone was too small and dispersed to make a nation with any chance of survival a genuinely independent political entity.
 Some Slovak leaders agreed to the plan of the Czechs, Masaryk and Benes, for combined nation But there was no genuine sympathy between the two peoples. Economic cultural and religious differences set them against each other from the first.
 The Czechs were more advanced in industrial development. Thus it was only natural that their capital should find outlet in Sovak territory It Ndo Czech exploitation The Czechs took readily selfgovernment But it to be expected that the Sovaks should resist Czech control of the political life of the nation.
 Sovak resentment against Prague was intense even before Hitler But it is possible that the union of the two peoples might have been worked out in time if force had not arisen that ready to take advantage of every disunity in Central Europe
 The racial and cultural division of Czechoslovaka is by unique in Europe There are dssident n in in fla ami in Spain Less than half the people in Russia are Russians. However much it is repressed the drive for Ukrainian separatism, Georgian separatism and a half dozen other nationalist movements that troubled the Tsar remain strong
 Hitler makes constructive contribution to the basic problem of Europe-to find formula for com promise between the economic need for unity and the cultural need for self-determinaton and nde- pendence.
 But though he offers no answer Hitler knows how to take advantage of the problem. He has expunged the ancient cultural differences within Germany in the regimented drive toward the dead leve of totan tariansm
 The strength and the contradiction in his posi- tion that he enforces unity within while encomag ing separatism and disunity without.
 For the present, that program is unquestonably effective. Especially with MT. Chamberlain and M. Daladier concurring with Htlers plans
 Certainly those gentlemen bear as much if not more responsibility for the tragic end of Czechosovakia than the dictators themselves.
 The dissolution of Czechosovakia is an unwritten clause in the Munich pact
 Had Britain wished to the remnant of Czech cslovaka without fighting it could have granted credits to protect and rebuild the position of Prague after Munich. But it tossed the Czechs few million and let Hitler have the next move.
 Now Hitler has moved. He has another six months of glory to take the Germans minds off their troubles
 The Czecho-Slovak dissolution is another step in the "appeasement' which MT Chamberlain always has known would not "appease"