Papp's Potatoes

Each little country of Eastern Europe hates & fears the next. Last week Bishop Papp of Miskolcz in Hungary obtained a carload of potatoes, consigned them to starving persons of his faith in Ruthenia, which is part of Czechoslovakia, sat back and waited for Ruthenian thanks, which failed to arrive.

Instead Bishop Papp received irate notice that his potatoes are barred from Czechoslovakia by the Czechoslovak Government, which will not permit its starving Ruthenians to accept them even as a gift. That Ruthenians are starving their Deputies in the Czechoslovak Chamber have asserted again & again. The last time this blighted province was up for debate, Ruthenian Deputy Kurtyak shouted, "You smug people here in Prague don't realize that 15,000 Ruthenian children are on the brink of starving to death. For God's sake help our children if you wont help us!"

The President of Czechoslovakia is famed snowy-crested Professor Thomas Garrigue Masaryk. During the War he played adroitly on U. S. sympathies, pictured poignantly the hardships of his people, persuaded the Peace Conference to entrust to Czechoslovak stewardship numerous minority peoples like the Ruthenians. Last week the aged President and "Father of his Country" seemed to agree with Prague bureaucrats that it would be dangerous to let Bishop Papp feed the Ruthenians.

President Masaryk did nothing. Ihe potatoes stayed in Hungary. An official protest by the Hungarian Legation was pigeonholed at the office of famed Czechoslovakian Foreign Minister Edvard Benes.

Abruptly and without explanation President Hoover cabled Abraham C. Ratshesky, U. S. Minister in Czechoslovakia to hurry to Washington "on an official mission."

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