THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

ESTABLISHED 1840 REGISTERED AS A NEWSPAPER

VOL. 173 No. 5158

LONDON, MARCH 18th, 1939

SIXPENCE

IN T H IS I S S U E

TH E E N D O F CZECHO-SLOVAKIA

By Our Central European Correspondent

THE CORONATION OF PIUS XII

A Description by an Eye-Witness

PRIESTS IN POLITICS The position of Mgr. Tiso and Mgr. Voloshin

TALKING AT RANDOM

By D.W.

MEN AND BOOKS

By Viator

Full L is t o f Contents on page 340.

THE WORLD WEEK BY WEEK Teuton and Slav

The Anschluss and the occupation of Sudetendeutschland included within the frontiers of the Reich only a Teutonic population. The occupation of Bohemia is different in kind from either of those preliminary events : it is the first unconcealed move of Teuton against Slav, the first stage in the great Drang Nach Osten, of which the ultimate destination is the Ukraine. It has been accomplished with no sign from Russia of counter-movement. Thirty years ago, when Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, the world waited in suspense for months, to see what move Russia would make. The conflict between Teuton and Slav is centuries old; in recent history, since the time of the Tsar Alexander II at least, it has been of capital importance. The Great War was precipitated by a clash between the Teutons of Austria and the Slavs of Serbia. Never, before this week, has so bold a stroke by one race against the other passed unchallenged. It has succeeded because Russia, as a military power, has ceased to be a factor in European politics. But the Third Reich can hardly have to wait long before the consequences of the annexation of Bohemia become apparent. When Herr Hitler on Thursday proclaimed that it is now part of the Greater German Empire, he took possibly the most hazardous step he has yet taken. The presence of an angry Slav population inside Germany will certainly be a serious embarrassment sooner or later, and may have incalculable consequences in provoking reaction against the National-Socialist regime. The Slavs of Eastern Europe will at once, with the Magyars, take every step to secure their position against a further Teutonic advance. Already the Poles and Hungarians have their common frontier. The position of Slovakia remains uncertain : Herr Hitler has given it a nominal independence, but it is more than probable that it will seek reincorporation with Hungary, of which, for every historical and geographical reason, it is part. Dr. Tuka, prominent among Slovak separatists, advocated this course long before the German threat arose. The Third Reich may, during the past week, have taken a step towards further expansion ; but she may equally, by ill-considered and even unnecessary aggressiveness, have raised obstacles that will make further extension of her influence eastwards impossible without danger greater than she has yet had to face. The Sequel to Munich

Munich was only the beginning so far as the dismemberment of Czecho-Slovakia was concerned, and it is not possible to understand the ease and rapidity of the final settlement without a glance back over the five months which intervened between the Munich Conference and the disappearance of the Republic of Czecho-Slovakia from the map of Europe.

Czecho-Slovakia’s readjustments with her neighbours have received more publicity than the internal reorganization of the State, but it is necessary to recall that the Ambassadors’ Conference in Berlin which determined the new German-Czech frontiers, and the arbitral award of Vienna which returned the Magyar districts of Slovakia and part of Ruthenia to Hungary, created a State whose very viability was open to question. The German frontiers had been designed to cut all the main lines of communication (thus there was no direct railway connection between Prague and Bratislava, the Slovak Capital, and to go directly from Ruthenia to Slovakia it was now necessary to take to the hills on horseback). The most valuable minerals and some of the finest agricultural land had passed either to Germany or Hungary, and to give a typical example of the general