760F.61/116: Telegram
The Chargé Near the Czechoslovak Government in Exile (Schoenfeld) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 13—7:05 p.m.]
Czecho [No.] 16. Soviet-Czechoslovak treaty of friendship, mutual assistance and postwar cooperation which was signed at Moscow yesterday consists of 6 articles and a protocol. Advance draft of the treaty was forwarded to Department with despatch 87 of December 6.3
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Today’s Daily Worker carried an article by Dr. Ripka, Czechoslovak Foreign Minister,4 in which he states that the Soviet-Czechoslovak pact, aimed at German aggression, has fulfilled the longstanding desire of the Czechoslovak people for a direct alliance with the Soviet Union. He refers to the idea of friendly alliance as “fixed in the political outlook of the Czechoslovak people” and states that unlike the Western countries, Czechoslovakia did not look upon the Bolshevist Revolution as an obstacle against Russia’s return to Europe. He mentions that in his memorandum to President Wilson in 1917 Professor Masaryk5 rightly estimated the great change in Russia when he wrote “The Bolshevists will remain in power longer than their adversaries assume” and added “All the small nations in the east need a strong Russia, because they are otherwise at the mercy of the Germans and Austrians.” That, Dr. Ripka states, has remained the guiding principle of Czechoslovak foreign policy from 1917 up to the present day but not for selfish reasons only.
Continuing, he states “It is of course true that if Russia and Britain do not participate in European affairs the Czechoslovak dam, deeply wedging in the Germans, would be the first to be swept away in the German flood. But it is equally true that the Germans must, as Bismarck said, and as Hitler has shown, first be the masters of Prague if they are then to be also masters of Warsaw, Belgrade, Paris, Brussels and of course also of Kharkov and Smolensk.” So, he states, although the Soviet-Czechoslovak pact answers the real [Page 727] interests of Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, it also serves general European interests.
“Thus,” he claims, “this agreement deliberately conceived in accordance with the British-Soviet Treaty of Alliance—also met with understanding at the Three–Power Conference in Moscow.”6
He also sees in the agreement “the first constructive foundation for the alliance of the powerful USSR with the other central European nations” and refers with strong approval to the protocol of the treaty which envisages the possibility of similar agreements with those neighbors (particularly Poland) who may desire it.
For these reasons, he concludes, all those who do not wish to see German domination over Europe sincerely welcome the pact, for “they rightly look upon it not only as the main instrument for stemming the march of Pan-Germanism at the outset but also as a constructive element for ensuring peace and security for the whole of Europe[”].
Dr. Ripka told me this noon that this article is a summary of an exposition which he is to make before the Czechoslovak National Council day after tomorrow and that its publication by the Daily Worker before he had delivered it is somewhat embarrassing. He added that it is substantially accurate.
- A summary of the provisions of the treaty between Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, and of a protocol, has been omitted; for texts, see Department of State, Documents and State Papers, vol. i, No. 4, pp. 228–229, or British and Foreign State Papers, vol. cxlv, p. 238. For statement issued by the Department on December 13 upon the signature of this treaty, see Department of State Bulletin, December 18, 1943, p. 439.↩
- Not printed.↩
- Hubert Ripka was at this time the Acting Minister for Foreign Affairs.↩
- Tomás Garrigue Masaryk, first President of the Czechoslovak Republic, 1918–1935.↩
- See telegram No. 1741, October 26, 1 p.m., from the Ambassador in the Soviet Union, and footnote 84, p. 717.↩