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Contents

Prefatory note
I. Slovakia and the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy
II. The voice of the new Poland
III. Round Paris
IV. The Hungaro-Slovak agreement
V. The struggle for autonomy
VI. Hlinka's political views
Conclusion

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Prefatory note

Andrew Hlinka, the Slovak politician, is a mere name to the ordinary member of the British newspaper-reading public. His recent death produced numerous obituary notices; but most of them were perfunctory and colourless productions, giving an imperfect idea of the character of the man and the nature of his work. Intimidated by the Czech censors, the Press of his own political party did not dare to mention certain facts essential to a proper understanding of his political career.

Nor is it possible to learn much about his political aspirations and achievements from foreign books of reference, which record only the bare facts of his life. They record that, born in the village of Cernova in 1864, he came of Slovak peasant stock; that, having studied theology, he wrote various devotional and theological books and translated the Bible from Latin into Slovak; and that, as a journalist, a leader of the co-operative movement, and the founder of the People's Bank and of several factories, he rapidly acquired a strong personal hold over the Slovaks. But no details are given of his work during the last twenty years of his life.

Those years were devoted to the struggle for Slovak autonomy. He strove with unflagging zeal for the realization of the dream of an autonomous Slovakia. He regarded the Pittsburgh Agreement, by which President Masaryk had solemnly promised the American Slovaks that autonomy should be granted to Slovakia, as the fundamental hope of achieving his aim. When the original document was brought from the United States in the summer of 1938, the whole Slovak people pledged themselves to the principle of national independence. Hlinka was then at the very height of his popularity. He died within a few weeks of this amazing demonstration of attachment and affection: he died happy in the knowledge that his beloved people were firmly united in their aim of winning that independence for which he had worked with burning conviction and indefatigable energy. Events are proving the justice of his cause. The artificial State of Czechoslovakia is now being reconstructed in the interests of those peoples whom the Treaty of Versailles forced to accept its sovereignty.

As one of Father Hlinka's oldest friends and collaborators, I have decided to publish this brief account of some of his less familiar political activities in the hope of facilitating a more accurate estimate of his influence on recent political developments in Central Europe.

Francis Jehlička
London, October 1938

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