Paris Peace Conf. 184.01102/62
Professor A. C. Coolidge to the Commission to Negotiate Peace
[Received February 12.]
Sirs: I have the honor to report that I have just returned from Prague where I spent nearly three days. During that time I saw President Masaryk twice, on the second occasion I lunched with him and had a conversation afterwards. In general he seemed to me rather tired and nervous and he spoke of not being able to sleep at the time of the recent fighting about Teschen. This question, which I shall report on separately, has evidently been much on his mind. He dwelt on the breaking of the agreement made by Messrs. Paderewski and Dmowski with him, indeed he repeated the story two or three times. He also talked of the necessity for the Czechs to get the mines at Karvin, not only to procure the coal that the Allies were demanding of Bohemia, but also to check the Bolshevism that was rampant at Karvin and that was infecting the workmen in the Czech mines. Somehow I gathered the impression that in the affair he had been led rather than he had taken the lead himself, and he was evidently unhappy about the whole matter.
President Masaryk also took up the question of the historic boundaries of Bohemia and declared that the Czechs must have them, indeed that they are prepared to fight for them even if the decision of the Entente is unfavorable to their claims. When I questioned him a little he admitted that certain districts might be conceded without serious loss. He said he believes in the principle of self-determination, but that in the German Bohemian districts there are many Czechs whose interests must be considered and whom the Germans could not be trusted to treat fairly. He admitted that many of these Czechs were recent immigrants to the mines, but said that in these democratic days the miners had as good a right to be protected as the land owners or anyone else.
In speaking of Slovakia the President admitted that the Czechs were at present occupying certain territories which were almost purely Hungarian, but he rather intimated that the final boundaries there were still unsettled.
He spoke with some bitterness of what he called the dishonesty of the Hungarians, instancing that the Hungarian Government had recently appealed to the Austro-Hungarian Bank for a sum of 2,000,000,000 kronen, which had been allotted to Hungary from the last [Page 328] general loan, but had not yet been handed over to them. They are now asking for the whole of this sum regardless of the fact that their country is now much reduced in territory and has, therefore, no right to more than its share in proportion to its size. He added that the bank had prepared to hand over the whole sum of the money if the Czecho-Slovak Government had not protested. The President also referred to the way in which Austria had stripped Bohemia during the course of the war and spoke of her unwillingness to liquidate and give back many things to which the Czechs were entitled.
Finally President Masaryk more than once expressed his hope that the United States would soon appoint a regular minister to Bohemia.
I have [etc.]