One Farewell

Dr. Fernando de los Rios, the badger-bearded Ambassador who since 1936 represented Spain in Washington, called formally last week on Secretary of State Hull to say goodby. Like his Loyalist comrades at home (see p. 20) he had decided to surrender. He turned his embassy over to Miguel Lopez Pumarejo, the Colombian Ambassador, and accepted a job lecturing at the "University in Exile" in Manhattan's New School for Social Research. Next day Secretary Hull offered diplomatic recognition to Dictator Franco.

In marked contrast to extinct Loyalist Spain, Czecho-Slovakia-in-the-U. S. last week continued spunky and vocal. Since their nation was organized in exile (at Pittsburgh, 1918), some of its first army officers trained in exile (near Stamford, Conn., 1916-18), Czechs and Slovaks refused to consider their nation dead just because it is now crawling with Nazis.

Mr. Hull still deals, at least in theory, with Czecho-Slovakia's Minister Vladimir Hurban, who last week still occupied his legation in Washington. After a meeting in Chicago, Bohus Benes, nephew of deposed President Eduard Benes, announced that delegates of 1,500,000 Czechs and Slovaks in the Americas would convene somewhere in the U. S. this month "to lay the groundwork for a new Czechoslovak State." To an anti-Nazi meeting in Manhattan, Dr. Eduard Benes sent word that the Czechs and Slovaks will, "at the right moment . . . rise again . . . declare our independence . . . fight for that to the last man." Pretty Vladimir Hurban broadcast from Washington: "Everyone must be ready! . . ."

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