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Show Jan Masaryk Took His Life In Protest Against 'Robots' By H ACKHAGE Pirtcs Analyst and Commentator WASHINGTON For some time after I heard the tragic news of Jan Masaryk's suicide, a strange memory haunted me .... I saw A man and woman alone in a darkened room. They are two of the last three human beings on earth. The rest have lieen destroyed by an army of automatons man-created robots. Creatures who have all other human attributes, but no sensitivities, sensitivi-ties, no souls. Mechanically-made, the robots are the triumph of the productivity of the machine. But they have revolted and turned against their creators. They now are marching on the last human i 'It stronghold. I h e : lights go out, you can hear the rhyth-' rhyth-' mic tramp, tramp, i tramp of their iron feet. There is a crash of glass as they push, insensitive in-sensitive to pain, through the windows win-dows two revolver revolv-er shots ring out in the dark as the human beings corns' corn-s' mit suicide to save This may have been an indication of his true purpose; to direct the underground. un-derground. But something changed his mind about the course he w?.s to pursue. pur-sue. One must take into consideration the attitude toward self-destruction in a country which had a long tradition tradi-tion of martyrdom and underground resistance, and no Catholic background. back-ground. I do not know how much of a mystic Jan Masaryk may have been. But it has been emphasized that only a few hours before his death, he visited his father's grave with others, to venerate the honored memory. And he remained there, alone, long after the others had gone. Perhaps he felt that he had received, re-ceived, in that lonely vigil, some mystic command, say as Ilamlet did after a similar experience: ". . . and thy commandment all alone shall live within the book and volume of my brain, nnmix'd with baser matter: yes, by heaven!" Peace Depends On World's Children Recently I received a pamphlet from the General Brotherhood board containing an article by Gordon All-port, All-port, department of social relations at Harvard, entitled: "Guide Lines for Research in International Cooperation." Coop-eration." Allport points out that most international in-ternational conferences meet in the themselves from the horrible wrath of the automatons. That, you may remember, was the climax of the play RUR "Rossums Universal Robots" written by Karel Ivapek. I tvas reminded of it because of one of the first deeds of Jan Masaryk Ma-saryk in 1946 when he returned to his native country after the exile Imposed on him when Hitler's robots crushed the first Czech republic. When Masaryk returned, he laid flowers on the grave of Karel Kapek, the great Czech author who wrote that prophetic play, giving us the word "robot" and the warning behind be-hind it. The words comes down f.'om the old Slavic "robota," servitude. We have accepted the word. We have not heeded the warning. warn-ing. The robots, like the Golem of the Hebrew myth, and the Adam of the Psalms "yet being imperfect" be- r i I " " : j- v " . 1 ore a soul was breathed into his lubstance offer a grim warning to is now. Unhuman beings released today, may re-enact Kapek's play on a stage, wide as civilization. Day after day come the frightened fright-ened echoes from Europe of the fear of war. And yet no people svants it. If you were to write down all the material demands of the diplomats and the rulers of each nation, and put them in the hands of the peoples of the world and tell them: If you want these you must nave war, who would pay the price Df war? None. None but a robot, without sensitivity, without souJL The martyrdom of Jan Masaryk teems to have hurt rather than helped the Communist cause. I spent tome time with the former Czechoslovak Czecho-slovak ambassador to' the United States, Juric Slavik, on the evening eve-ning of the day when Masaryk's suicide sui-cide was announced. Slavik believes that Masaryk felt he could serve his country better dead than as a living prisoner, pris-oner, for the ambassador says he was a prisoner. Masaryk, alive, but with every word and gesture filtered through the censorship of the Communist screen, would become be-come a symbol of the spirit of Czechoslovakia surrendered, enchained, en-chained, a noble and historic name and all it has stood for, besmirched be-smirched and obliterated. Dead, ' the name, the spirit, live. The ambassador recalled an episode epi-sode in that epic odyssey which has gone down in military history as Credit: United Nations World These United Nations members don't quarrel. Can you guess the co,untry to which these children of members of the United Nations Na-tions staff belong? glare of cameras, microphones and bald heads, and that it is time to concentrate our efforts on the children. chil-dren. In teaching children about the peoples of the world, Allport says the tendency is to accentuate the DIFFERENCES. He says: "The American child learns with horror about head- - v I t hunters, about infanticide; and he learns to laugh at the Dutch who clop in wooden shoes, and at the quaint observances of Easter among adherents to the Orthodox faith. The implication of inferiority is a usual by-product of our present method of teaching cultural and national differences. dif-ferences. Less dramatic, but far sounder, would be the teaching of the common considerations of justice and morality that are identical over vast areas of the earth. Practices that may SEEM to differ dramatically drama-tically often indicate common aspirations as-pirations and common values. The prayer wheels of Tibet and the silent si-lent Quaker meeting have virtually identical functional significance; so too the initiation rites of the Pawnee and the American high school commencement. com-mencement. Little effort has been made, All-port All-port claims, to search for the common com-mon ground of mankind and he suggests that the United Nations prepare an encyclopedia of the uniformities uni-formities and similarities in the De-liefs, De-liefs, practices and aspirations of all peoples an encyclopedia which would serve as a reference guide for innumerable aspects of woild policy for years to come. Allport thinks that a study of tut common peoples of the world undoubtedly un-doubtedly would reveal that more Important to them than boundaries and national aspirations are matters mat-ters of self-respect, pride, food, shelter, marriage and the welfare wel-fare of their children. Yes, as I said earlier, ask the peoples peo-ples of the world to vote between capture of territory, acqu sition oi ports or oil fields at the price 'A w-r- and there would bp no ques ti iii of their choice I i JAN MASARYK The name, the spirit, live. one of the marvelous achievements of World War I the march of the Czechoslovak Legion which fought beside the Allies against the Rus-lians, Rus-lians, and after the Bolshevists had made their peace with the Germans, fought its way from the Ukraine to Vladivostok, a trek that makes the world's great marches pale by comparison. com-parison. Many believe that Masaryk Bad remained on with the new government govern-ment as foreign minister, not be- cause he accepted as inevitable Communist domination, but because be-cause he felt he could serve best within the government, working secretly se-cretly with democratic elements. He made a cryptic declaration in a speech to the Czech army after the Communist assumption of power, pow-er, in which he said: "Czech and Slovak brothers I am with you." |