English Translation

The opposition groups seemed to be faltering, but Němec did nothing to hold them together. He only looked for a beating to which the guilt could ultimately be transferred, and believed that he would find it in the Slovak People's Party. Father Hlinka looked through the chess train and immediately answered with a communiqué that the candidates of the so-called bourgeois bloc had been driven into an undisputed game (!) when the question of guilt was to be rolled over to his party of the Slovak autonomists. The mask had fallen! Around midnight from 17 to 18. The Czechoslovak Press Office issued the following message on December 15, just hours before the election act: "Prof. Bohumil Němec, the chairman of the Czechoslovak National Council, who had been called upon by political parties to serve as President of the Republic, had made the condition that he would only maintain the candidature if he were the candidate for the majority of the Czechoslovakian political parties. The undecided behaviour of a political party led Prof. Bohumil Němec to ask the remaining political parties to refrain from his candidacy in order not to weaken state and national unity (p. 409 f, op. cit.). The only opposing candidate was thus eliminated, only a few hours were left until the state act, Benesch was the all-encompassing candidate on the Presidential chair of the Republic! On the morning of 18 December 1935, the vote took place in the Vladislaus Hall of the Prague Castle: 440 votes were cast, 340 for Benesch, 24 national democrats voted from formless 8 Golem II. 113