Letters to the Editor


Don't blame Yalta

To the Editor:

It is incomprehensible that you allow "History lesson" [in Pulse, May 3-9] to repeat the hoary myth that "in keeping with the Yalta Agreement ... Prague fell to the Soviet side of the line of demarcation." There was no such agreement at Yalta. As Winston Churchill wrote in Triumph and Tragedy -- and others elsewhere -- he, Stalin and Roosevelt had agreed in February 1945 that "Berlin, Prague, Vienna could be taken by whoever got there first."

The crucial decision for U.S. forces not to capture Prague several days before the Soviet army was made by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe. In this, he echoed President Truman's trepidation about a confrontation that would harm hoped-for postwar Soviet-American cooperation. Eisenhower gave in to protests by Soviet generals that they should be allowed to take Prague, even though the Ameri-cans under General George S. Patton could have done so before them. An important local role was played by Josef Smrkovsky, speaking for the Prague National Committee. He told Patton's advance elements that Prague preferred liberation at Soviet hands. In 1967, Smrkovsky admitted that he and other Prague communist leaders feared occupation by the Americans would hurt the party's plans for postwar Czechoslovakia.


Stanley B. Winters
Port Charlotte, Florida, U.S.A.


Note: The writer is author of T.G. Masaryk (1850-1937): Thinker and Politician and served with U.S. forces in Czechoslovakia in 1945.

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Hague not racist

To the Editor:

[Re: "Racism here and there," April 26-May 2] The ill-informed article by Siegfried Mortkowitz about refugees and racism (it's William Hague, not Charles) is a typical knee-jerk reaction of a liberal outsider trying to make political capital out of a very complicated and emotive subject.

Mr. Hague has made no mention of race or even of color, despite Mr. Mortkowitz's insinuations, but in the present climate of political correctness that permeates British society today, anyone objecting to this relentless tide of refugees, mostly economic rather than political, is to be denounced by commentators such as Mortkowitz as a racist.

No one in the Conservative Party, least of all William Hague, wishes to stop legitimate immigration from political refugees in danger of losing their freedom or their lives in their present countries. But if someone outside the former British Commonwealth or European Union is only trying to improve their lot in life by displacing UK citizens in the state housing lists, or by receiving bigger state handouts than even old-age pensioners simply by illegally entering the UK, then it is up to the elected politicians to put their policies to the test. This is not, as Mortkowitz claims, racist.


J. Stephen Rothbart
Prague 2

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