Joseph McCabe

“ Throughout the summer of 1938 the demands of the Sudeten Catholics grew. The Czech government made concession after concession, but Hitler did not want concessions. He wanted refusal and an excuse to invade. When his troops began in the late summer to concentrate in the direction of Czecho-Slovakia Britain sent Lord Runciman to find the bases of a compromise. Runciman was one of those who held that any development was better than an advance of Socialism and all that he did was to persuade the Czechs to talk nicely to the Nazi wolf and not think of provoking him. ”

“ This situation is the key to Papal policy in Czecho-Slovakia and, as Catholic writers try to defend the Vatican by asking what interest the Church had in helping Hitler in that country, it has to be thoroughly understood. There were nearly a million Catholics who refused to recognize the Pope; and the Vatican considers these "ichismaties" as dangerous and damned as atheists. There were more than 3,000,000 Socialists and Communists, since they had polled 1,700,000 votes at the last election, and there was the most powerful Rationalist body in the world. ”

“ The cutting-up of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire at Versailles had been crude and cruel, but it is a lie originating in Germany and quite generally accepted in Britain and America, that the Sudeten provinces of Czecho-Slovakia had then been detached from Austria and tacked on to Bohemia. Any map that was published before 1919 will show that these provinces are part of ancient Bohemia, which before the Catholic troops so mercilessly trampled on it in the Thirty Years War was the most promising of the smaller civilizations of Europe. ”

“ There had been scandals and a serious split in the Sudeten body, and the coalition government was willing to make reasonable concessions to the Slovaks. They were represented by two parties in Prague, the Slovak Catholic party and the Slovak Centralists. The capital of the province, Bratislava, was a solid city sharing the culture of Prague, and large numbers of its citizens were opposed to the political priests and their hordes of ignorant peasants, and wild-eyed mountaineers. An amiable settlement seemed possible, but this Suited neither the ghouls of Berlin nor those of the Vatican. ”

“ In a land of powerful minorities there are always men who thrust themselves into the limelight by shrieking that the ancient culture of a particular minority is in danger of perishing and they must demand autonomy. ”

“ They are blind to the changed conditions of a world in which small national units only excite the cupidity of more powerful neighbors. The clash, however, only found expression in the melodramatic fights of politicians until the, Nazis took up the grievances of the Sudeten Germans and the disintegration of the Church alarmed the Vatican.
The priests in Slovakia had long been associated with the patriotic movement in that province. The parallel with the situation in Ireland before it was granted Home Rule is close enough to enable anybody to understand. ”

“ The Czechs who inhabited them were as able and vigorous as the urban populations of Germany, and, fearing that the Nazi wolf would sooner or later quarrel with them, they had a fine army and at Skoda one of the greatest armament-making works in Europe. ”

“ This clerical Slovak movement led in the end to the utter ruin of Czecho-Slovakia. This was after Munich, and we need not go fully into the events which led up to that ignoble surrender. The year 1938 opened with a fair degree of tranquillity in the Republic. ”