 The Columbia Broadcasting System presents One World Flight. We don't know quite exactly what is going here and we don't know what is going in America. What is going on in America. What are the conditions and so on and so on. Especially social conditions and so on. You are listening to Edward Benish, president of Czechoslovakia, speaking at his desk in the presidential office of the Rachani Palace in Prague, Czechoslovakia. During an interview with the CBS playwright producer Norman Corwin. The voice of Mr. Benish is one among several authentic sounds and voices recorded inside Czechoslovakia. To be heard on this sixth of a series of thirteen broadcasts based on Mr. Corwin's recent 37,000 mile global trip as first winner of the One World Flight Award. This is Norman Corwin from Moscow to Prague as a distance of about 1200 miles as a plane flies and on a day in late July, an unsettled day in which the weather changed from country to country, we flew that leg of the One World Flight. The land beneath us, with its frequent streams and rivers, looked as green and innocent as though it had never heard the names of old wars nor the rumor of new ones. Yet not long ago, over every inch of the distance we were consuming so quickly and comfortably armies had fought, blood had mixed in the streams and rivers, villages had been sacked, cities bombed. A dead man for every foot of the way. We flew over white Russia, Poland, a thin slice of Germany, crossed the Czech border and soon sighted the Vltava, better known through music as the River Moldau, coiling around the terraced hills of Bohemia. And then, in a matter of minutes, the towers, bridges, rooftops, chimney pots of Prague. Prague is a graceful city, baroque and gothic, with a skyline of radio transmitters and cathedral spires. Its ancient history is obscure, but Czechoslovakia's modern history, the whole world knows only too well. This country, slightly smaller than Wisconsin, was the republic handed over to Hitler at Munich by agreement of two sister democracies. It was the vortex down which all of Europe was to be drawn. I was naturally anxious to see what betrayal and occupation and the trials of reconstruction had done to Czechoslovakia, whether its people were happy and confident, whether they were still friendly to the United States, the country which had done so much to create their republic, how they felt about Russia, whether they were, as we'd been told along the way, a bridge between east and west, whether they were in a mood to embrace the concept of one world. I had no trouble getting answers to these questions. In no other country did I find people more articulate about themselves and the world. Nowhere, a deeper sense of anti-fascism. For as President Benish said, in an interview of which you'll hear more later, Every Czech must be anti-fascist. And every Czech must be against any whatever revival of fascism everywhere. Because with the fascism is connected intimately. The greatest unjustice which has given mates against us. This attitude seemed consistent all the way from the Presidential office down to the coal mines. One afternoon we drove out to Kladno, the mining city northwest of Prague, and went down into the Benish pits, named after the President. In no time we were surrounded by miners, each eager to speak into the microphone to be heard above the din of mine machinery. Mrs. Slavko Grigoreva of the Czech Radio acted as interpreter, and in the following exchange I have eliminated for the sake of time all translations going into Czech and the Czech replies. My first question was whether they were worried about another war. Yes, we are afraid of war. Mainly because there is still Germany with so many Nazis and fascists who are allowed to carry on as before. And also the another reason is that there is still the Franco-Spain, which is always a new incentive for another war. Most of the men were internationally minded, but I found at least one isolationist. This fellow told our interpreter. Well, I'm only a simple worker, he says, and I look at the things in this way. You belong to the Europeans, America, to the Americans, and whatever we do at home is our own affair. I asked the miners whether they were inclined more to the east or to the west, and I got an answer indicating how deeply Munich had affected their attitudes and how well they remember it. He says that with 99% we inclined towards the east, and only with 1% we inclined towards the west. We belong, we are Slavs, and we belong to the large Slavonic group of nations. And whenever we look at the past, we know what has happened to us from the west. I asked another miner what if he could make a wish tonight that might come true tomorrow he would wish for. Well, I'd wish this, that all the gentlemen from the west and from the east would realize that we are men, that we are human beings, and that they would adjust their politics according to that, that they would adjust their politics to serve humanity, to serve mankind. And as long as they don't do this, we won't have any peace. Back in Prague, I talked to some students who were planning a World Student Congress for the following month. They, too, were insistent on the anti-fascist character of their movement. One of them, Ms. Masalkova, said... Yes, we feel that there's a great danger. There's a great danger for fascism still now in Europe and in Germany. And I found that in Czechoslovakia, as in most of the Europe conquered and occupied by Hitler, the terms fascist and fascism took on different meanings from what was generally given to them back home. In America, to a great many, fascist is often merely a bad name you call a person whose politics you don't like. It's a term thrown about loosely when a group breaks into heated argument. Some of us are prone to call each other fascists or communists over issues ranging from labor unions through rent control to atomic energy. But in a country like Czechoslovakia, a fascist means something quite real, not theoretical. The people of Prague saw fascism march down their main street. They saw their friends taken out of their homes and shot. They were tortured. One that almost everybody we met had either personally suffered or was related to somebody who had been tortured or killed by the Nazis. Jan Jan Silvera, for example, who assisted us in these recordings. He was the only one of a family of 18, including parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, who was not executed by the Nazis. Yet none of these people seemed bitter or cynical. They were resolved to do everything they could, not to let it happen again. But their resolution was never vindictive. It was calm, reasoning, and vigilant. I asked Dr. Sebe of the Czech Underground, who had been tortured and sentenced to death by the Nazis. I asked him what he, as a man to whom fascism and war held a very deep personal meaning, what he would most urgently recommend to the United Nations. He replied, This is what would be my message, my humble message to the United Nations. Not to breathe the idea that there is a necessity of a war between the West and the East, between the Western and Eastern conception of life. I know that this is the last hope of fascism. They do everything, especially in Germany and in any part of the world, to breathe this conception. One day, Bill Cougerman of the American Embassy drove us out to the town of Dobrish to visit a palace occupied by an association of Czech writers. The drive began in the heart of Prague, which said he is as noisy as it is beautiful, and that's getting into a lot of noise. This recording of normal morning traffic will give you some idea. Prague, after Warsaw and Moscow, had an air of prosperity. It was second only to Stockholm among European capitals we visited in its appearance of well-being. Stocks seemed to be high in the stores, produce was plentiful. You could even buy canned tomato juice, the luxury unheard of in most of the world outside of the United States, for the equivalent of six cents without any ration ticket. We drove through busy, narrow streets, passed a monument enshrining the first Russian tank to enter the city in the battle for liberation, then into the outskirts, followed a bank of the Voltava to the countryside, under the romantic, non-political bohemia of song and legend. We went through magnificent pine groves and wound among wooded hills. My colleague, Lee Bland, reminded us, looking out at this first-class scenery, of how much first-class culture, how much good literature and music had come out of this little country, tunes long familiar to Americans, tunes like Humoresk, and the dances of the bartered bride by the Czech Schmetiner, by the Czech polka by the Czech vine-bagger. Czechoslovakia is understandably proud of its artists, and it seems generally to take loving care of its culture, at least if its treatment of writers is any indication. When we reached the palace at Dobrys, we found it to be pretty much the kind you've built for yourself at some time or other, in an architectural daydream, big, sprawling, opulent, with formal gardens and a swimming pool, library, ballroom, marble bathtubs and all that. The new coalition government decided writers were a national asset, and so it bought and turned over to a writer's syndicate this expensive palace. To join the syndicate, a writer must have three published books to his credit, or three plays produced. Then the writer may, if he chooses, live at this palace for a stated period of the year, meals included, with or without family, for $2 a day. When we arrived, children were running around the palace, chasing puppies. I asked their parents whether they had come there to work or to rest. When they came here, they called it a house of recreation, but they hope it will develop into a house of creation. And now it seems that really people are beginning to work here, and when you awake in the morning, you can hear about 10 typewriters rattling away, so it looks as though something was going to be created here. For a whole afternoon, we talked with a score of poets, novelists, essayists, playwrights, and it was pretty clear that they had a highly socialized sense of art. A young woman novelist, Miss Stenglova, had a personal formula for the relationship of the individual to the state. I am a cheque, and whatever happens to my nation, happens in the first place to me, so that all I can do with my work is to say I am a good cheque. These writers, like most people we met all the way around the world, were very curious about America, and their curiosity took the form of direct questions. I thought you might like to hear what people ask about us in a country like Czechoslovakia, and so I recorded, one after another, a series of such questions. Dr. Yurka would like to know if America has the right information about this country. Mr. Dundar, the novelist, asked whether America with the Lincoln and Washington tradition, and America which has in its hands today the phase of the world with the atomic bomb, whether America would be capable of using this dreadful weapon against progressive democratic regime. What are the American people really like, and what is America? Dr. Nauman would like to know if from the American economic system there's not going to develop a new economic imperialism in the world. And Dr. Nauman would like to know how the young American people have reacted to the war and the problems subsequent to the war. And Mr. Schafranic would like to know what truth there is in the rumor that the Americans in the American zone of Germany prefer the Germans to other people. You will have noticed that some of these questions implied criticism of American policy, but it would be a mistake to assume that this meant unfriendliness. The checks from all I gathered have never forgotten America's role in helping them to establish their republic 29 years ago. And it was a pleasant surprise for me on July 26, 1946 to find an American flag made of flowers blooming handsomely at a monument to Woodrow Wilson on one of the main streets in Prague. I mentioned this in the course of an interview with Jan Popanick, Czech minister Plenipotentiary, and he remarked, and they are rather proud of it. They did not change. They continue to have the same feelings toward the United States. They appreciate and are thankful for all the help they have received during the war from them. And this flag is only a small sign of what they feel, what they express, and will be expressing in the future. Mr. Popanick described the changes in Czechoslovak's economy brought about by the coalition government, a government consisting of four parties, Social Democrat, National Socialist, not in the Hitler meaning of National Socialist, by the way, People's Catholic and Communist, with the latter holding a plurality in the number of seats. Mr. Popanick said that these changes such as nationalization of heavy industries while retaining free enterprise in most of the lesser categories were for the good of the country, and though they were at variance with American practice, need not alienate the friendship of Americans. We hope that America will understand us. We are trying to reshape our national, our economic life. We are trying to do it for the best of our people, of all of them, and we are set to succeed. As an American interested in prospects for one world, I shared with other Americans in that country a sense of pride in the example of a scientific body working there at the time. This was the medical mission of the Unitarian Service Committee, a group of outstanding American doctors who had volunteered to bring to the Czech people some of the techniques and drugs from which they had been cut off during the long Nazi occupation. These doctors, working without compensation and taking time away from their practices at home, lectured to medical faculties of universities, performed operations and conducted clinics. It was a gesture of goodwill which had the full cooperation of our State Department, and it was not lost on the Czechs. One of several appreciative articles to appear in the Czech press was entitled, This is what international relations ought to be. Mixed in with the warm sentiment toward America of the Czechs we met, was a genuine love of Franklin Roosevelt. And typical of its expression was a statement by Bretislav Prokowska, President of the Czech Society for International Relations. We met in his office, and the noise is that of traffic in the street below. As the people of United States of America concerns, I would only have this wish. They should be all in their feelings to our country. In this manner, as the late President Roosevelt was, we know very well that Roosevelt was one of the best friends of our country. And if there hasn't been the personality of Roosevelt, I don't know how this last war had finished. This reverence for the memory of Roosevelt was shared by most of the Czechs we met, including the first citizen of the country, President Edward Benish. We went to see him one day in the Presidential Palace. The appointment was made informally through our friend Kugelman at the American Embassy. No pass was required. Nobody challenged us at the gate. If there were guards about, I didn't see any. Somebody had forgotten to tell the President that I was bringing along a wire recorder. Moreover, he had never been recorded in this manner, not even for the Czech radio, and so a matter of precedence was involved. But he brushed all this aside. After a few pleasantries, we plunged right into the interview. I asked Mr. Benish point blank whether he thought there were irreconcilable differences between East and West. I don't think so. On the contrary, I was always the man who tried to persuade that there is no fundamental difference and especially that they are not the reasons for any conflict between the East and the West. I then asked Mr. Benish whether he looked upon his country as a bridge between the U.S. and the USSR. Well, my formula is a little different. I don't say we are a bridge. I say we are not between the East and the West, although it is sometimes said so. I say that we are between the Russians and the Germans. On the West, we are surrounded by the Germans. In the East, we are the neighbors of Russia, of Soviet Russia. And I say if any possibility of a reconstruction of Germany will erase again, and if Germany will come again to the power, or if somebody, either from the East or from the West, would use Germany again to reconstruct them and use their power against somebody, they would be the first always to be attacked by the Germans. I was anxious to find out what the president thought of Czechoslovakia's progress in recovering from the war, so I asked him... Mr. President, before my arrival in Prague, I was told by a number of people that Czechoslovakia was making the most rapid recovery and the best adjustment to international conditions of any country in Europe. Is this true? And if so, to what do you attribute it? According to my view, it is true. There reasons are rather complicated and numerous. First of all, we have not been devastated by the war in such a degree as many of the European countries were. Second, the German occupation has strengthened the morale of Czechoslovakia. The third reason was that we have felt that in Norway we have contributed to the general disaster of the world and of Czechoslovakia. As you know, according to my view, the war began with Munich. The president then emphasized the importance of remembering what Munich had meant to his country. I must emphasize that if America and if the public opinion in America there's one small imagine of what meant Munich for a small nation. Again and again, this plea was made by Czechs of all walks of life. In effect, they all said, please tell Americans not to forget what happened at Munich and the circumstances under which it could happen again. Tell them to try to understand that our attitude toward foreign policy and home economy is different from theirs because our experience was different. The last interview we had in Czechoslovakia was with Professor J.B. Kozak, lecturer in political philosophy at Charles University in Prague. He criticized both the American and Russian definitions of democracy and went on to state the Czech position. In the United States, too much of equality has been sacrificed to liberties. In the Soviet Union, maybe too many liberties have been sacrificed to the ideal of equality. For the time being, we must trace the emphasis on the freedom from want and the freedom from fear. You will understand this, but we are determined to implement all the four freedoms. We shall do so in this country. Take my word for that. The professor said he knew America well, having spent some years in this country, including a period on the faculty at Oberlin College. Out of what he had observed of world affairs since he had last been in the United States, he posed three questions to Americans at large. They were these. President Roosevelt, whom I loved very much, and said that the only thing we must fear is fear. How many of you Americans? My second question. I would start from a similar statement. Persons we should distrust are those who sow distrust. How many of you trust those who are sowing this international distrust? My third question. Do you still believe that free enterprise, I mean without any government or interference, can prevent or solve economic depressions? Are you sure that you are going to have no more economic depression? Of economics in Czechoslovakia, Professor Kozak explained that in carrying out the nationalization of heavy industries, the coalition government had performed a practically painless operation because it meant cutting these industries loose from the tentacles of German financial control and did not therefore dislocate Czech interests. He credited the new government with having brought the Czechs very far, very quickly. And of course, things are improving by leaps and bounds in this country. It is one of the happy islands in Europe as you have probably found out yourself. The professor was not alone in agreeing with foreign observers that Czechoslovakia had made rapid recovery. Amid the general austerity, confusion and devastation abounding in Europe, these people seemed confident of where they were going and had a definite sense of progress. I recalled what Minister Popanik had said. We are moving. We are set to succeed. And of what a coal miner named Spadnik had said in Kladno, Spadnik who had worked in the same mines for 33 years, I asked him... How do you feel about the recent nationalization of the mines? Instead, the work of all our miners is much more enthusiastic because we all feel we are working on our own. And what the President himself had said of the condition of his country one short year after the liberation. You can see in the streets of Prague everybody is working. Everybody is enthusiastic. There is a very great elan, a very great enthusiasm spirit for the work. And all they knew that they are working for a new liberty and for a new independence. This, from the country which such a short time ago was dismembered at Munich and later invaded by the invincible Wehrmacht. This, from little Czechoslovakia, which was to have been an obedient province of the greater Germany for the next thousand years. The thousand years of the fascist millennium. Nine years ago, Czechoslovakia stood at the crossroads of war. Today, perhaps, it stands in the position of a bridge at the crossroads of peace. To many of her people, the way to the future is the middle way, the way they are traveling. A way which reconciles socialism and private enterprise by running them side by side. From where they are standing, looking toward the horizons ringed by Russians, Germans, Poles, Romanians and Hungarians, with a monument to the Red Army on one street and an American flag and flowers on another, they believe this way of theirs is a shortcut to the grand concourse called One World. You have been listening to Norman Corwin, first winner of the Wendell-Wilkie One World Flight Award, in the sixth of a series of broadcasts based on his recent 37,000 mile global tour. All recorded voices heard on this broadcast were transcribed in Czechoslovakia. Next week at this time, One World Flight visits Italy. Tonight's musical score was composed and directed by Alexander Semmler. Guy Della Ciapo was associate director. This is Lee Vines and this is CBS The Columbia Broadcasting System.