Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 4 March 1948 — Page 15

Rs A.

- =—='We Didn't Realize What Was Happening’

By JOSEPHA CHEKOVA As told te NEA Service NEW YORK, Mar. 4¢—Every-

.|body in Pragiie knew that trouble

was brewing .— that some day, soon, the Communist minority

She Saw a Nation Die. i U. S. Singer Tells Dramatic Story of Czechoslovakia

| Yet so discreetly thorough were the Reds’ preparations, and so innocent was democracy, that the Bolshevik putsch was practically complete before most of Prague realized that the fateful hour had istruck. ' Only after beloved President Benes had given in to Moscow's

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would try to take over Czechoslovakia for Russia’s benefit,

agents, and I was on a train be-

understand what I had been watching for five days. I ought to be in the funeral parlor with my mother’s body in-

EDITOR'S NOTE: Josepha Chekova is an who was in Czechoslovakia on a congert tour when the Reds took over. Daughter of Cg parents who emigrated to U. 8, she is one of the first Americans to come back from Prague with a dramatic, eyewitness account of the last days of Czechoslovakia's independence.

stead of telling this story. It was because of her death that -I rushed home. But she loved America for the opportunity it gave her and my late father when they came here from Czechoslovakia many years ago, and I know she would rather I tried to do something for the living— to warn the people of this country how Communism strikes.

yond the Czech border, did I} §

’s Doom

SAW THE FALL — Josepha Chekova: They tried to find a commonplace explanation for the unusual.

The Reds took over the radio stations. Office workers were forced from their desks into the streets, to demonstrate their acSoniance of the new regime—or else. As I sit here in New York, and see everything so calm, so peaceful, so normal, I have to force myself to realize what I saw

Finns Find ‘Error In Stan's Letter

Believed Loophole To Escape Arms Tie

tion may provide the loophole Finland needs to escape signing a military pact with Russia, observers reported today. The error was found in the translation of Premier Josef Stalin's personal letter to President Juho K. Paasikivi requesting Finland to enter into a treaty of friendship and military alli-

ance. A revised translation of the letter indicated the Soviet Union is seeking a similar, but not an identical pact with Finland as was signed with Romania and Hungary. Clause two of the Romanian and Hungarian pacts provides that all mutual assistance shall be provided in case of war. Finnish leaders interpreted this to mean Russia could use the Finnish army anywhere in case- of hostilities, - Finland, however, has no objection to opening negotiations on a treaty of friendship with Russia and the revised translation of Stalin’s letter may present an op-

happening in democratic Czechoslovakia. It doesn’t ‘seem 8- | sible, though I watched it. i The wife of a good friend of| mine tried to kill herself with |

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‘| people—is the perfect planning and organization with which a Communist minority left the anti-

Communist majority helpless, h

hopeless, defeated. ! ni it a So did my anti-Communist friends. Yet it was so casual, so stealthy, that we didn’t realize what we were watching. From the day I entered Czechoslovakia four months before, for a concert tour, I sensed a terrific undercurrent of unrest. The anti-Communist majority all recognized that. They knew it meant trouble. But they thought the crisis wouldn't come until May. Saturday morning Gottwald and others talked to 10,000 Reds in the Staro Mestka Namesti. The mob frenzy was terrific. There, and in the suburbs, that day for

my taxi driver what it meant. “Maybe the government is and anti-Communists,” he sug-| gested. “Maybe it's military ma-| neuvers.” Not In on Secret He was an anti-Communist. He wasn't in on the secret. Like the rest of us, he tried to find a commonplace explanation for the unusual. Sunday was quiet. I went taj religious services in a students’ club. Afterward the doors were locked. The students opened them for me to leave, and asked me to hurry, and locked them after me. Outside .was a crowd of Communists. I know now the students feared trouble. pa

gas, when she discovered what | had happened. “I went through it | ps with the Germans,” “I just can’t stand it ain wi the Russians.” = ih

I saw strong men with tears running down their cheeks in elpless despair. And friend after friend asked me, each in his own words, the same thing a woman asked me when I bought some dolls from her to take home: “Please, please will you tell Americans that we are looking to them for help? We were let down at Munich. Nobody can understand our despair when Russians —not Americans—marched in for the liberation. And still we want them to know that we are not East-minded, though we are dominated by Moscow today. We still look to the West for our salvation. Can you make Amer-

she said.

portunity to propose this.

Czech Reds Capture 3 in Border Fight 4 (UP)—A Socialist member of

PRAGUE, Mar. National parliament, Bohuslav Deci, was captured by frontier guards Tuesday when he tried to cross the border illegally from Czechoslovakia into American-occupied Bavaria, the'Communist organ Rude Pravo reported today. Milada Prochazkova, 19, daughter of Adolf va, former health minister, also was caught while trying to cross into Bavaria the same day, the newspaper sald. She and her companion, Jiri Wild, 40, were arrested. A spokesman at the presidential palace sald President Eduard Benes was not expected to 1return to Prague from his summer home in Sezimovo Usti for some time.

CATTLE DISCRIMINATE . Livestock often refuse to eat

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electricity in Prague failed. I was/ lin a trolley car that just stopped 'and sat. For 45 minutes we waitled. Then I walked to my destina[tion. I noticed soldiers with machine {guns in front of the radio station, {but no disorders. Power was off |for three hours. Some said a short {circuit resulted when a man fell lonto a wire, others when a trolley was derailed: Tuesday Prague was packed |with a seething mass of people. I {don't know where they came |from. In front of the Rude Pravo

| Vaclavska Namesti, a mob of, {Communists milled and chanted. {Directly across the broad avenue a. crowd of students shouted |“Long Live Benes” in front of the| {Social Democratic newspaper | Svobodna Slova. Came the Fatal Day | ~ Soldiers—Communist directed —with machines guns and fixed bayonets held the dense crowds of watchers in check. It took two hours for a trolley trip that Still | {we thought it was only a demon|stration. | Wednesday was the fatal day. I went to the National Club to] meet a friend on business. Every-| thing was grilled and barred. All| 'non-Communist newspaper offices | were closed; their staffs, from] editors to office boys, had been| thrown bodily into the streets. | Trucks packed with armed] civilians, rifles, cruised the streets and]

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month.

The butchers, not necessarily evil men, are constantly on the alert for thieving dogs. I watched

all mongrels) squat on his haunches for an hour staring at

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with a sickening blow, and the terrified dog fled.

Resumes Watch

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Dogs Reflect

Misery of War-Torn Greece

Wretched Canines Wander City Streets

In Quest of Refuse Cans or Unwary Butchers By FRED SPARKS, Times Foreign Correspondent VOLOS, Greece, Mar. 4—They say you can tell how things are in a country by the way they treat their dogs. ¢

pretty terrible in “Greece, for the

dogs are the most wretched, half-starved, broken-down lot of pathetic creatures I have ever seen. Here in this poor seaport town of 50,000, they wander the

dogs appeared out of an alley and set on the fiicher. One tore at his flanks and another stood in front of him and barked, and the third picked up the chop when the poor fellow dropped it. The trio scampered off together to consume their high-jacked property. A lone dog hasn't got a chance in Volos—he must belong to a pack to survive

Welfare League Elects Officers

New officers of the Columbia Place Welfare League were elected last night at a meeting at the home of Mrs. Anna Bates, 4022 {Cornell Ave. | New officials Thompson,

are Mrs. president;

Ada Alfred

|Mrs. Ernest Dix, recording secretary and W |treasurer., W

flliam Fellows, illiam Martin is retiring; president.

The group also resolved to register protest to Gov. M. E

{ |

Thompson of Georgia concerning| At Truman the hooked beefs. Finally—after the scheduled execution of Mrs.

false starts—he darted Rosie Lee Ingle and her two sons, several and Wallace and Sammy Lee.

The letter charged that the

The butcher's heavy three were “protecting thémselves administration foot came down against his sides|from unwarranted attack result- waste”

ing in the death of their assallant” and asked Gov. Thompson to free them.

The group also voted to be al co-operating agency in a “Stop|

Simpson Methodist Church Mar, 12. The meeting sponsored by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is to raise a fund to “halt the.legal lynching” of the Wallace family. |

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UAW Executives Reject Wallace

Plan Own 3d Partly After November

CHICAGO, Mar. 4 (UP)—The executive board of the CIO Auto Workers turned its thumbs down today on Henry A. Wallace and said it would form its own third party after the November elections. The board, holding its quarterly meeting here this week, said Wallace’s third movement is “a Communistic maneuver designed to advance the foreign policy interest of the Soviet Union.”

It urged all groups “honestly committed to winning economic security and abundance” to join in forming “a genuine progressive party” after this year's election. Adopts Resolution The board adopted a resolution fully supporting “the position of the national CIO in rejecting and repudiating the 1948 presidential candidacy of Henry A. Wallace.” It denounced the Wallace group as “a political maneuver contrary to the best interests of labor and {the nation” and as “an obstacle in {the way of the establishment of a successful and genuine progresjive political party in the United ates.”

| The resolution, which was in-

fantastic prices for the average Grayson, vice president; Mrs. troduced by UAW President Walpocketbook—is sold a few days a | Alice Lawson, financial secretary; ter P. Reuther,

was adopted unanimously by 16 members of the board. Eight board members |did not attend the meeting.

Dewey Levels Guns

‘Economy’ ALBANY, N, Y,, Mar. 4 (UP) —Gov. Thomas E. Dewey, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, accused the of “profligate of public funds today. He said its policies has forced the country near economic ruin. In a telegram to Wisconsin primary delegates supporting his candidacy, Mr. Dewey said the

{the Lynching” mass meeting at national government was “torn

by bitterness and quarrelling.” He said President Truman's cone duct of “both our domestic and foreign affairs has been so weak and {incompetent that it has failed in both.’ ’

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