CZECHOSLOVAKIA: Soup Temperature

Adolf Hitler, referring in his Reichstag speech fortnight ago to the 3,200,000 Germans in Czechoslovakia, gave a vague but menacing impression that the Nazi Reich was prepared to fight on their behalf. Last week General Jan Ludwig Krejci, Chief of the General Staff bluntly announced at Prague: "Czechoslovakia must be prepared to defend herself alone for the first few days against a brutal and quick attack by motorized forces, assisted by aviation—an attack without warning!"

General Krejci further stressed that Czechoslovakia is already building emergency fortifications along her German frontier; that the great Skoda Munitions Works, one of the largest in Europe, is being moved (from beer-famed Pilsen near the border) to the central part of the country; that Soviet Russia and France are sworn military allies of the Czechoslovak Republic.

When the French Government a few days later renewed its pledge that France will stand with Czechoslovakia if Prague calls for aid, Czechoslovakia felt vastly bucked up. President Eduard Benes announced that Prague will refuse to discuss with Berlin the question of granting "autonomy" to its German minority. The soup, said Dr. Benes. philosophically, "is never eaten as hot as it is boiled."*

In Berlin all this was accepted without protest. With Mr. Chamberlain planning a four power pact that is not to include Russia, it looked to German observers as if Czechoslovakia's Soviet support might soon evaporate. In that event they hoped that Germany might perhaps get the German part of Czechoslovakia as part of a general European settlement without the necessity of fighting for it.