The cabinets of Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, Hungary and Austria resigned on four successive days last week. Though these four "great falls" followed one another like the toppling of so many tenpins they were in fact unrelated as to cause. A tourist, darting by commercial air routes from one capital to another might well have been present when each cabinet resigned and have satisfied himself as to the cause upon the spot. Such a tourist would perhaps have made entries in his diary about as follows:
Prague, Czechoslovakia. "Alighted at the Kbely aerodrome this morning and motored in through the smoky industrial outskirts to the 'old town.' Saw the Staromestska Radnice (Town Hall) dating from 1381, and the picturesque old Tyn Church, just across the Tyn (Market Place) where the German traders used to come in the 14th Century. So many of them came and got rich that now the Germans control a major portion of the industry of Prague, though they number only about five per cent of its half million population. Remarked to my guide that such a situation must produce a good deal of friction between the Germans and the Czechs.
"He told me that the Cabinet of Premier Cerný—composed mostly of bureaucrats—had been faced with serious opposition from the German and Slovak minorities ever since its formation last March. The Agrarian element of these minorities had been conciliated a few months ago by increasing the grain duties; and now Premier Cerný was about to resign, in order that a Cabinet representative of the whole nation might at last be formed.
"I expressed surprise, and said that I supposed President Masaryk and Foreign Minister Benes, tho 'Allah and his Prophet who founded and built up (TIME, May 5, 1923; June 28, 1926) the Czechoslovakian republic after the War, were so revered by the people that any cabinet of which M. Benes was a member would be stable. I was told that M. Masaryk and M. Benes are indeed above all parties; and that M. Benes would certainly continue as Foreign Minister in the new cabinet; but that it was considered necessary to find a new premier about whom the newly representative cabinet might coalesce.
"Continued my sightseeing through the Joseph-Stadt or ancient ghetto of Prague, noting the synagogue which is said to be one of the oldest in Europe. As we emerged from this quarter and headed for the 'new town' with its handsome streets and palaces, a limousine stopped at the curb in which sat a man who reminded me at first glance of Mussolini.