40
PRAGUE
After President Svoboda's appeal to the people to recognize the
necessity for the Moscow agreements and calling for unity and calm, a
student paper published the speech made by General Jan Syrovy, then
Prime Minister, on September 30, 1938:
My highest aim, like everyone of you, is to preserve the life of the
nation. We took over this obligation from the hands of our fathers
who lived a harder life than we because they were not free. And
we must fulfill this mission not only with love in our heart but
also with clear heads.... We have had to choose between making
a desperate and hopeless defence, which would have meant the
sacrifice of an entire generation of adult men as well as of women
and children, and accepting, without a struggle and under pressure,
terms which are without parallel in history for their ruthlessness.
We have been anxious to make our contribution toward peace and
we have been willing to make it - but not in the way which we
are constrained to do. We were deserted. We stood alone.... The
most important thing is that unity and concord should reign
amongst us, and that there should be no conflict within our ranks.
. . . We depend upon you - you must trust us!
In
the same issue the students printed a speech made by Klement
Gottwald, the first working-class president, who laid the foundations
of socialism in Czechoslovakia but also, in 1950, submitted to pressure
from Moscow and gave his consent to the arrest and execution of his
former colleagues. On October 11, 1938, Gottwald, then a Communist
Deputy to Parliament, spoke to the National Assembly:
. . . [T]he audacious aggression of the enemy was encouraged by
the fateful capitulation of the Czechoslovak Government on 30th
September. We declare to the nation and to the world that the
Government had neither the constitutional nor the political right
to capitulate. The army wanted to fight. The whole nation wanted
to defend the country by all means....
It
is not certain that the
enemy would have launched a military attack if he had seen that
he would meet armed defence on the part of Czechoslovakia. Ac–
cording to the aggressor's tactics one could assume that in such
a case he would have not resorted to arms. . . . The world still
does not know what unprecedented violence has been perpetrated
on us, with what devilish subtlety the roots of our State and national
life are being severed. This we must cry to the world every day,
every hour, and all possible occasions.
If
anybody thinks that by
passively looking on at what is happening he will incline the
aggressor to mercy, he is cruelly deceiving himself and others. This
aggressor knows no pity. We must demand of this Republic's Gov–
ernment - if it wishes to be called a r«,;al government - that it
reject this flagrant interference in the Republic's internal affairs.
The August invasion did not create conflict among the Czech
