English Translation

1 SSS S S T of 20.VIII.1940. Appreciated guests, dear co-workers ! When the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was established in March l939, many members of the Czech Volkes expressed their doubts about the correctness of the decision of their president. When, a year ago, the Czech Federation was set up for cooperation with the Germans through the wish and drive of the President of the State, the number of doubters and opponents was quite large, but the events confirmed the correctness of both decisions to the fullest extent. The Czech people see today's situation as a given fact of permanence and act accordingly. Delivered from its former megalomania, which it believed to be able to change history, it voluntarily entered the only right way to establish itself in the sense of historical events. However, the Czech and German peoples do not mean anything new. Only the old-fashioned relations are resumed. History, the common settlement area, a thousand-year-old neighbourhood, a mutual penetration of both peoples, all this adequately explains the cooperation as an elementary natural necessity. Periodic disillusionments should never become tragically profound under the circumstances. As often as history has seen a tense relationship between our two peoples, the adverse consequences of such an attitude have always had an impact on both peoples but in excess of them on our people.