Indigestible Real Estate

In Los Angeles, Jan Masaryk, son of the late Czecho-Slovakia's late "George Washington," Dr. Thomas Masaryk, last week declared: "Now he [Hitler] has gobbled up the most indigestible people in the world. They will give him a bellyache." In Washington, Nazis got their first taste of Czech indigestibility.

When Adolf Hitler took over Austria, his Ambassador in Washington, Hans Dieckhoff, quietly took over the Austrian Legation on Washington's Massachusetts Avenue without protest from popular Austrian Minister Edgar Prochnik. Last week Dr. Hans Thomsen, German Charge d'Affaires (who in the continued absence of Herr Dieckhoff is Adolf Hitler's No. i man in the U. S.), received orders to take over the building standing right next door to the late Austrian Legation--the Legation of Czecho-Slovakia. He ordered two secretaries to go over and take possession. After they left he rang up Colonel Vladimir Hurban, the Czecho slovak Minister, to say his underlings were on their way.

Colonel Hurban is a steely grey Slovak of 56, who during the Great War fought valiantly with the Russian armies* and under General Allenby in Palestine. He had just been talking to the State Department, which next day had something of its own to say about the rape of Czecho slovakia (see p. 11). He told Dr. Thomsen with urbanity that he ordinarily took no orders from Adolf Hitler.

Presently the Nazi secretaries stomped up his front steps. They clicked their heels and announced in brusque German that they had come to take possession.

Politely but without a heel-click, Colonel Hurban, who speaks fluent German, asked his callers to speak English. They demurred. He insisted. Lest he burst into Czech, the secretaries finally, in stumbling English, said they had a telegram from Berlin. Colonel Hurban asked to see it. Embarrassed, they said it was "secret" but read him part. Graciously, as if they had been children, Minister Hurban explained to them that until he had written orders from President Hacha in Prague, and as surance that such orders were constitutionally issued, he could turn his legation over to no one. Red-faced, the Nazi secretaries stomped down the steps, with some thing very like a bellyache.

Thus the nearly extinct Czecho-Slovak Republic still survived last week with a 50-ft. front on Washington's Massachusetts Avenue. Czech consuls in other U. S. cities followed Minister Hurban's lead. In Minneapolis, Consul Charles E. Proschek said: "I have never received any instructions or training in rules of etiquette on what to do when confronted with international bandits. . . . They can go back whence they came with my compliments." The State Department soon made known that it would in no way assist the Nazis to seize the Czech Government's property in the U. S. If Nazis want it they will have to convince the Supreme Court of their right to it.*

Through all this Minister Hurban refused to show any sign of being downhearted. At the State Department he ran into Dr. Fernando de los Rios, Ambassador of the nearly extinct Spanish Republic. As two men-without-countries they shook hands, had a laugh together (see cut).

*Colonel Hurban is said to have once held Leon Trotsky prisoner, was going to hang him, released him when eloquent Trotsky convinced him that the Red Revolution would go on any way. *After Russia's Red Revolution, the Tsar's Ambassador Boris Bakhmeteff continued to pre side in Washington until 1922. The Imperial Russian Embassy, supported by the Tsarist funds in the U.S., continued in business with diplomatic recognition until the Soviet Union was recognized in 1933.

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