Peace in Our Time [Volume: 7(1988), pp. 417-426]

Cross Currents 7 (1988)
A Yearbook of Central European Culture
PEACE IN OUR TIME
Curtis LaFrance
I left Telc in the middle of the night, during a complete blackout.
It was September, 1938, and I was occupying precious space on the hard
seat of a third-class compartment, sandwiched between young Czech
recruits reporting for duty to defend their country. In the faint light of
a single bulb in the ceiling, I could barely see the solemn faces around
me. I felt distinctly out of place. My reason for going to Prague seemed
almost frivolous compared to the grim mission of these much younger
men.
As the train rumbled through the blacked-out countryside, my mind
wandered back to recent events-to my visit the previous week with friends
in Hall, Austria, near Innsbruck, to my arrival in the peaceful, little town
in southern Bohemia, and to my first meeting with my elderly hostess,
Mrs. V., the mother of one of my professors at Columbia. I was to stay
with her a few days to brush up on the language before entering the university in Prague. My elementary Czech did not go far beyond a "Dobry
den" in the morning and a "Dobrou noc" at night, but we both made
brave efforts to expand the conversation.
It was a relief when she introduced me to a young man who spoke
English. We spent some lazy days together, walking in the woods and along
the lakes which surrounded Tel6, or strolling under the arcades of the
main square, lined on all sides with Baroque buildings. We discussed
politics, but it was hard to believe in the eventuality of trouble. Even the
requisitioning of horses by the local military failed to arouse much excitement.
In the evenings, the rather idyllic days gave way to an atmosphere
of tension. Mrs. V. and I sat in her darkened living room, listening apprehensively to the rantings of Adolph Hitler. I had crossed the Czechoslovak
border at Hornm Dvoriste on September 12, the day Hitler delivered his
final message to the annual Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg. His campaign
against the Czechoslovaks was reaching fever pitch. He never mentioned
the name of President Benes without the insulting prefix: Der Verbrecher
(the criminal). After the Congress, in speeches hours long, the Fiihrer continued to rail at the Czech government. The word "Sudetenland," the
German-speaking border area of Czechoslovakia, was heard so frequently
during these harangues that we knew, without understanding his German,
what Hitler was threatening.
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