Masaryk's Suicide Seen

The suicide of Jan Masaryk leaves the Czech people with only Edward Bones as a symbol of their nation's affinity with the West, F. O. Matthiessen, professor of History and Literature, said yesterday, but it is too early to gauge how much force the aged and ailing President will be able to exert.

Possessing the human touch, Masaryk was always strongly identified with national independence and international democracy, Matthiessen explained.

Matthiessen, who spent three months in Czechoslovakia at the end of last year, declared that Masaryk's suicide would "make the balance between East and West immeasurably more difficulty to maintain."

At the same time Clemens Heller 2G, executive secretary of the Salzburg Seminar, mourned the passing of Masaryk, who, he said, was "the first man to given the Seminar concrete shape, the first who cared about its development."

Masaryk was instrumental in getting Czech students into the Seminar last year, Heller said, asserting that "we'll still try to get Czech students this year."

Matthiessen's Statement

Matthiessen released the following statement:

"The suicide of Jan Masaryk is a great blow to those who hope that Czechoslovakia can continue to fuse elements from the East and the West.

"Only yesterday I had learned with great relief that Professor Jan Kosak, a strong National Socialist, is not only still Dean of the Philosophical Faculty of Charles University, but has also been a key figure in organizing the action committees. This would indicate that these committees, which have been described in our press as though they were composed solely of Communists, are apparently much more broadly representative.

"But Masaryk's suicide would appear to deny these hopes, and to indicate an increasing tension between the Coming-form and the Truman doctrine. In this country we can still relieve that tension by rejecting the Truman doctrine. Masaryk himself, second to none in his advocacy of international democracy at the United Nations, recognized the folly of that doctrine."