APPENDIX .A. Note on the Present Position of the Munich Agreement of 29 September 1938 THE Munich Agreement, concluded between Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy for the cession of the Sudeten German territory by Czecho­ slovakia, although officially dated 29 September 1938, was in reality signed in the small hours of the morning of 30 September. l To it was annexed a declaration by the British and French Governments guaranteeing the new boundaries of the Czechoslovak state against unprovoked aggression. Germany and Italy also agreed to give a similar guarantee to Czechoslovakia 'when the question of the Polish and Hungarian minorities in Czechoslovakia had been settled'. It was further declared that the problems of these minorities in Czechoslovakia, if not settled within three months by agreement between the respective Governments, 'shall form the subject of another meeting of the Heads of the Governments of the four Powers here present'. Because of its nature, the Munich Agreement was not subject to the usual forms of ratification, and no provision for such procedure was included in its text. Parliamentary approval was accorded to Mr Chamberlain and to M. Daladier, on 6 and 5 October respectively, by means of votes of confidence but by the time these had been given in the House of Commons and the Chamber of Deputies the terms of the Munich Agreement were already a fait accompli. On 2 November 1938 the German and Italian Foreign Ministers, Ribben­ trop and Ciano, handed down the First Vienna Award, which, without consultation with, or reference to, the British and French Governments, adjudicated the fate of the Polish and Hungarian minorities in Czechoslovakia, in violation of the annexe to the Munich Agreement.2 The structure set up by the Munich Agreement was destroyed on 15 March 1939 when Hitler proclaimed that 'Czechoslovakia has ceased to exist'. Slovakia and Ruthenia proclaimed their independence on 14 March and the provinces of Bohemia and Moravia were annexed to the German Reich as a Protectorate.3 On the second anniversary of the signing of the Munich Agreement (30 September 1940), Winston Churchill in a broadcast to the Czechoslovak people announced that the Agreement had been destroyed by the Germans,4 and on 18 July of the following year the Czechoslovak Provisional Government was officially recognized by the British Government and by General de Gaulle's National Committee.s It was not, however, until 5 August 1942 that this statement was given official form. On that day the British Foreign Secretary, 612 The Semblance of Peace Anthony Eden, announced in the House of Commons that he had sent a Note to the Czechoslovak Ambassador, Jan Masaryk, declaring that 'as Germany has deliberately destroyed the arrangements concerning Czechoslovakia reached in 1938, in which His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom participated, His Majesty's Government regard themselves as free from any engagements in this respect. At the final settlement of the Czechoslovak frontiers to be reached at the end of the war, they will not be influenced by any changes effected in and since 1938.'6 Of the other two signatories, France and Italy, General de Gaulle declared on 29 September 1942 that France considered the Munich Agreement to be null and void/ and a similar statement was made by the Government of Ivanoe Bonomi, on behalf ofItaly, on 26 September 1944.8 At the conclusion of hostilities in Europe in May 1945 and the consequent resumption by Czechoslovakia of her full sovereignty and independence, the Czechoslovak state reconstituted itself within its pre-Munich frontiers. This act received tacit approval from the British, American, Soviet and French Governments, but the question of the Munich frontiers was not raised at the Potsdam Conference and therefore finds no mention in the Protocol of 2 August 1945. The reason for this was that three of the four signatory Munich Powers had repudiated the Agreement and that no German Govern­ ment existed at that moment. The matter was therefore left over until a final peace treaty with Germany was formally concluded. When it became apparent, however, that the conclusion of such a peace treaty would be long postponed, successive German Federal Chancellors announced their repudiation of the Munich Agreement. Thus, on 15 October 1964, Dr Ludwig Erhard declared that in no circumstances would Western Germany present territorial claims against Czechoslovakia,9 and his successor, Dr Kurt Kiesinger, on 5 July 1968, was even more definite, announcing explicitly that in so far as Germany was concerned 'the Munich Agreement no longer exists'. 10 Thus all the four participants in the Pact of Munich have repudiated their signatures and, as far as Her Majesty's Government is concerned, there has been no basic change in policy since Mr Eden's statement of August 1942. Indeed it has been re-emphasized. Michael Stewart, during his first tenure of office as Foreign Secretary, took the opportunity, during an official visit to Prague in April 1965, to assure Czechoslovak Ministers that 'the Munich Agreement was detestable, unjust and dangerous as events have shown to the peace of Europe'. He added that it was 'completely dead and had been dead for many years .. .'. The mere historical fact that it was once made could not justify any future claims against Czechoslovakia. When the time came for a final determination of Germany's frontiers by a peace treaty, the treaty discussions would start from the basis that Czechoslovak frontiers were not in question.u Explicit though this statement may appear to be, it was not sufficiently definite to satisfy the Czechoslovak Government, who took advantage of the thirtieth anniversary of the signing of the Munich Agreement to make a further demarche. On 27 September 1968 the Czechoslovak Ambassador called at the Foreign Office and made a formal request to the Minister of State, Appendix A 61 3 Goronway Roberts, that Britain should make a formal declaration to the effect that the Pact of Munich was null and void. He was informed that his request would be 'examined'." Though the matter is of purely academic interest - except perhaps to the Czechoslovaks - there might possibly be a good reason to make a formal Four-Power Declaration which should bury the ghost of the Munich Agree­ ment once and for all. In view of the powerful initiative taken by the British Government to bring the Agreement into being in 1938, it might well be considered a gracious act on their part to take the initial steps towards its formal repudiation. APPENDIX B The Yoshida Letter IN the secret agreement reached between John Foster Dulles and Herbert Morrison, then Foreign Secretary, in June 1951, it was agreed that neither the Nationalist Chinese Government in Taipeh nor the Communist regime in Peking should be invited to the Conference of San Francisco and, more­ over, that Japan's future attitude towards 'China' 'must necessarily be for determination by Japan itself in the sovereign and independent status contemplated by the treaty'.' * The agreement was to have some interesting repercussions. It was on Mr Dulles's personal plea that the British Foreign Secretary agreed to the terms of secrecy, this being alien to both his own personal inclination and to the avowed policy of the Labour Party, who were tradition­ ally averse to 'secret diplomacy'. However, Mr Dulles had specifically asked that no public statement disclosing the nature of their agreement should be made, as 'it would embarrass me', and Mr l\1.orrison therefore reluctantly assented. 2 For a while all went well. Shigeru Yoshida, the Japanese Prime Minister, who knew of the Anglo-American agreement, behaved throughout the San Francisco Conference with impeccable dignity and in conformity with all that Mr Dulles could have desired, and there is good evidence that American influence was even exerted on him to restrain his obvious anti-Communist sympathies. Up to the moment of the signing of the treaty on 8 September 1951, therefore, both sides had remained loyal to the terms of the Morrison-Dulles accord and to the preservation of its secrecy, but almost immediately there­ after the situation became complicated and murky. The kindest explanation of what followed is that it was the result of bungling misunderstanding on the part of the State Department, but there do not lack those who interpret the result as one of deliberate sharp practice on the part of John Foster Dulles. The interpretation placed upon the Morrison-Dulles accord by the British Foreign Office was that 'the sovereignty and independent status' of Japan, to which reference was made in the accord, could only exist when the treaty which created it had become effective upon the ratification, and this interpre­ tation was known - and presumably understood - by both the United States and Japanese Governments.3 However, an unforeseen difficulty now arose. The rejection of the Treaty of Versailles by the United States Senate in * See above, p. 524. AppendixB 615 1920 and the consequent mortification of President Woodrow Wilson has had a traumatic and lasting effect upon successive Presidents, Secretaries of State and majority party leaders in the Senate. 'Never again' has become their watchword, and they are determined that no President and Administration shall again be subjected to so humiliating a defeat. Inevitably, therefore, it has become axiomatic that when a major treaty is about to come before the Senate and its powerful Committee on Foreign Relations, every possible precaution is taken so to prepare the ground in advance that the danger of rejection is avoided. It was in accordance with this policy that by mid-September, shortly before the Treaty of San Francisco was to be submitted to the Senate, some fifty-six Senators sympathetic to its ratification wrote warningly to President Truman that 'Prior to the submission of the Japanese Treaty to the Senate, we desire to make it clear that we would consider the recognition of Com­ munist China by Japan or the negotiating of a bilateral treaty with the Communist China regime to be adverse to the best interests of the people of both Japan and the United States'.