z:\ ambedkar\vol 08\vol8 04.indd MK SJ+DK 1 10 2013/YS 13 11 2013 215
PAKISTAN : LESSONS FROM ABROAD 215
Tiso and Hitler met and had an hour and a half talk in Berlin. Immediately after the talk with Hitler, Tiso got on the phone to Prague and passed on the German orders.
They were :—
(i) All Czech troops to be withdrawn from Slovakia;
(ii) Slovakia to be an independent state under German protection;
(iii) The Slovak parliament to be summoned by President Hacha to hear the proclamation of independence.
There was nothing that President Hacha and the Prague Government could do except say ‘yes’ for they knew very well that dozens of divisions of German troops were massed round the defenceless frontiers of Czechoslovakia ready to march in at any moment if the demands made by Germany in the interest of and at the instance of Slovakia were refused. Thus ended the new state of Czechoslovakia.
IV
What is the lesson to be drawn from the story of these two countries ?
There is some difference as to how the matters should be put. Mr. Sydney Brooks would say that the cause of these wars of disruption is nationalism, which according to him is the enemy of the universal peace. Mr. Norman Angell, on the other hand, would say it is not nationalism but the threat to nationalism which is the cause. To Mr. Robertson nationalism is an irrational instinct, if not a positive hallucination, and the sooner humanity got rid of it the better for all.
In whatever way the matter is put and howsoever ardently one may wish for the elimination of nationalism, the lesson to be drawn is quite clear: that nationalism is a fact which can neither be eluded nor denied. Whether one calls it an irrational instinct or positive hallucination, the fact remains that it is a potent force which has a dynamic power to disrupt empires. Whether nationalism is the cause or the threat to nationalism is the cause, is a difference of