Give & Take

President Eduard Benes scarcely knew whether he was coming or going. On the one hand, his great friend and ally, Russia, was offering to add to the Republic of Czechoslovakia at the expense of Poland. On the other, she was threatening to add to the Soviet Union at the expense of Czechoslovakia.

The offer was made by way of the Warsaw (formerly Lublin) Polish Government, which indicated that it might be willing to trade Teschen in return for Czech recognition. The threat was made by way of the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic, whose Kiev radio unexpectedly broadcast a claim to the Czechoslovak province of Carpatho-Ukraine (also known as Ruthenia), the only part of Czechoslovakia yet liberated by the Red Army. The Teschen area (500 sq. miles), rich in coal and heavily industrialized, had been tossed by Adolf Hitler as a sop to Poland after Munich. Backward, mountainous Ruthenia (4,886 sq. miles) had never formed part of the Ukraine.

In return for shifting Czechoslovakia firmly into the Russian orbit, Dr. Benes had extracted a Soviet promise to respect the Republic's pre-Munich frontiers. But last week Russian Foreign Commissar Viacheslav Molotov was reported to have sent a disturbing note to the Czech Government in London: the Soviet would respect its promise, but Ruthenia showed a strong tendency to join the Soviet Ukraine. Said the Kiev radio: most of Ruthenia's 800,000 citizens speak a Ukrainian dialect, have voted in a plebiscite (organized by the Ruthenian Communist Party) for incorporation in the Ukraine. Already Peoples' Committees were dividing large landholdings among the peasants.

By week's end the Czechs were discussing recognition with the Warsaw Government. In London, Dr. Benes and his Government hastened the packing of their bags for an earlier-than-planned return to the endangered fragment of their Republic.

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