The Mixture as Before

Last week Communist action in Czechoslovakia clicked into the same tragic, repetitive pattern the world had seen in Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania. It began to unfold a fortnight ago when bombs, disguised as perfume boxes, were mailed to Czechoslovakia's Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk, currently his country's U.N. delegate, to President Eduard Benes and others. Curiously enough, the bombs were intercepted without so much as a pop. Communists claimed that Benes and Masaryk had mailed the bombs to themselves. Others shrugged them off as a crank's prank.

But not Slovakia's Communist-directed Commissioner of Interior Mikulas Ferjencik. He smelled a conspiracy, and began cramming Bratislava's jails with suspected conspirators. At first, few Czechs in Prague seemed to realize that Slovakia was just the place for a conspiracy, because the Slovakian democratic Party was the biggest singly stumbling block to absolute Communist power in Czechoslovakia. But last week they came to with a jerk. Ferjencik named as the bomb plot's' ringleaders the two general secretaries of the Slovak Democratic Party. They were Jan Kempny and Milos Bugar--both Catholics, both members of the Czechoslovak Parliament. All at once it was terribly clear that, if these two were disposed of, the Slovak Democratic Party would be so demoralized that it would cease to be a force in Czechoslovakian politics.

There were still some hurdles for Fer-jencik to take. Kempny and Bugar could not be jailed until they were stripped of parliamentary immunity. This Ferjencik called upon the National Coalition to do. The Communist coalition members could be counted on to agree. The non-Communist majority in the Government was up a tree. If they gave in, they would play into Communist hands. If they did not, they would precipitate a political split which would help nobody but the Communists.

Last week only Communist Prime Minister Element Gottwald eyed the future tranquilly. Said he: "It is necessary in the interests of the Czechoslovak people and state for the Communists to obtain an absolute majority, and it is likely and possible. I am sure that developments in our country will lead to the formation of one working-class party."

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