Extract from the House of Commons Official Report on the British Recognition of Slovakia, 15 May 1939

Description

A typed heading reading "Extract from House of Commons Official Report, May 15, 1939" mounted at the top of a foolscap sheet, below which is pasted a printed clipping of the relevant Parliamentary exchange. Mr. Arthur Henderson asked the Prime Minister whether it was the policy of His Majesty's Government to recognise Slovakia as an independent State; the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Mr. R. A. Butler, replied that His Majesty's Consul at Bratislava had, in order to facilitate the conduct of normal business, sought and obtained recognition from the Slovak Government as His Majesty's Consul for Slovakia, and that the Slovak Government had been informed that this step amounted to de facto recognition. In a supplementary question, Henderson asked whether the Government were satisfied that the Slovak Government were independent of political control from other quarters, and Lieutenant-Commander Fletcher pointedly asked whether His Majesty's Government proposed to recognise the de facto annexation of Italy by Germany. The sheet is creased horizontally from folding, with light foxing and a small loss at the upper left corner. The exchange records Britain's pragmatic accommodation of the German-sponsored Slovak State established after the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, only months before the outbreak of the Second World War.