Saturday, April 22, 1939

A letter to the English

We thank you, dear English gentlemen, for the German short-wave radio, at half-past eight and quarter to eleven, and also for the “Londoner Sonderberich” which you then broadcast. You have no idea how many of us Czechs listen to your news, although it is intended for Germans. Your voice, Mr. London announcer, is a source of comfort and strength to us in our humiliation.
Many speakers have been addressing us of late. Our ears have been battered by the roar of these artificially amplified speeches, lies so pompous that we shudder with hatred when we hear them. In these addresses they scream at us: friendship, and we hear: betrayal; they scream at us: development, and we hear: slavery.
But don't think that these are just the voices of the German language. This is how the Czech language has been spoken to us lately, too. They encourage us with the words cleanse to corruption, with nation to de-nationalization, rebirth to rigor mortis.

Dear Mr. London announcer of the radio news in German, do you understand how pleasant your voice sounds to us, what a relief we derive from your news, where words are words, sentences are sentences, where every word is not a lie repeated ad infinitum and a theft perpetrated upon us.
We hear from you that Hitler will ask the small nations if they feel threatened. We're glad to know that you know it will be a shameless game of words again. We will be forced here as soon as possible to give, in the form of pledge to National Partnership, our so-called free consent to everything that is happening in our country. Therefore, sir, when the German radio and newspapers and the Czech radio and our papers proclaim that the Czech nation is satisfied with its fate, know that every word is the exact opposite. When you see photographs in the world press proving these lies, know that even with a photographic camera and a film camera it is possible to lie. For example, our newspapers report that a large audience attended a military parade at Masaryk Stadium. That is a lie. Only Germans brought to Prague for that purpose were there. Perhaps a photograph will accompany this report to the world press; however, in the original, unedited one, it is clearly visible that there was not a single person in the stands where full crowds once watched the Sokol assembly exercises. There were only some German and Czech officials in the main stand. Therefore, do not believe a single word or a single photograph that comes to you from our country.
Do not forsake us, gentlemen of England, and help us to free ourselves from this world of lies, which, like serpents, arouse in us a terrible feeling of disgust and threaten us with death.
Many of us are resentful of you English. You must forgive them. It was too great a blow to us in September for many to want to see beyond your mistake, if there was one. Even the more judgmental among us do not know to this day whether you sacrificed our interest to your own, or whether you had even then higher political aims in mind, to which we had to be temporarily sacrificed. Despite this bitterness, which I hope you will understand,