Word: hurban
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Last week, as the voice of his fugitive master, King Zog I, dwindled away behind the mountains of Greece, drowned out by the cannon of Mussolini, Minister Konitza betook himself to the State Department to protest his country's rape and to announce that he, like Minister Hurban of Czecho-Slovakia (TIME, March 27), would not yield his legation to his country's conquerors. Should he hear from King Zog that all was lost he would, he said, burn all his papers: the Italians should never have them...
...Colonel Hurban is a steely grey Slovak of 56, who during the Great War fought valiantly with the Russian armies* and under General Allenby in Palestine. He had just been talking to the State Department, which next day had something of its own to say about the rape of Czecho slovakia (see p. 11). He told Dr. Thomsen with urbanity that he ordinarily took no orders from Adolf Hitler...
Politely but without a heel-click, Colonel Hurban, who speaks fluent German, asked his callers to speak English. They demurred. He insisted. Lest he burst into Czech, the secretaries finally, in stumbling English, said they had a telegram from Berlin. Colonel Hurban asked to see it. Embarrassed, they said it was "secret" but read him part. Graciously, as if they had been children, Minister Hurban explained to them that until he had written orders from President Hacha in Prague, and as surance that such orders were constitutionally issued, he could turn his legation over to no one. Red-faced...
Thus the nearly extinct Czecho-Slovak Republic still survived last week with a 50-ft. front on Washington's Massachusetts Avenue. Czech consuls in other U. S. cities followed Minister Hurban's lead. In Minneapolis, Consul Charles E. Proschek said: "I have never received any instructions or training in rules of etiquette on what to do when confronted with international bandits. . . . They can go back whence they came with my compliments." The State Department soon made known that it would in no way assist the Nazis to seize the Czech Government's property...
Through all this Minister Hurban refused to show any sign of being downhearted. At the State Department he ran into Dr. Fernando de los Rios, Ambassador of the nearly extinct Spanish Republic. As two men-without-countries they shook hands, had a laugh together...