We at Triple R were among the first to hail the breakup of that misbegotten whelp of Versailles: the "country" called Yugoslavia. The inherent lie of such a country is now exposed to all the world, and the phony "nation" of Yugoslavia is gone forevermore. Now we must add another hosanna: the impending collapse of the other grotesque product of Versailles tyranny: the "nation" called Czechoslovakia.

How beloved that "nation" always was, in respectable circles, in the New York Times, the Council of Foreign Relations, among all the right-thinkers and uplifters, all the certified experts that float back and forth from the CFR to the state department to various foreign policy think-tanks! At Versailles, the English, the French, and the Wilson administration set up the phony "nation" of Czechoslovakia, carved out of the beaten Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I. And just as Yugoslavia was a mask for Serb tyranny over other ethnic nationalities, so Czechoslovakia was a cover for despotism of the Czechs over other nationalities in the area: specifically, over the Sudeten Germans, Poles in the Teschen area, Hungarians in Southern Slovakia, the "Carpatho-Ruthenians" in the eastern tail (actually western Ukrainians), and in particular, the Slovaks in the eastern part of the country, west of the Carpatho-Ruthenian tail.

The difference is that the Serbs were never as incredibly beloved in the New York Times, CFR et al., as were the Czechs, and their virtually canonized leader, Dr. Tomas Mazaryk. And just as the Croat desire for independence and freedom from Serb oppression was (and still is) denounced in the Western Establishment press as "Nazi," so too the Slovak desire for independence and getting out from under the Czechs was attacked similarly.

There were other similarities. Whereas the Czechs are part Protestant, part Catholic, and secularist in their old ruling elite, the Slovaks were solidly Catholic – as are the Croats. And when Germany occupied these countries during World War II, it granted independence to Slovakia, under Monsignor Tiso, as they did to the Croat Ustashi government. Both small countries were quasi-puppets of the Germans, although Tiso was far more independent of the Nazis. In both cases, the Germans trusted neither the Serbs nor the Czechs, and hence kept them under protectorates or under direct occupation.

After World War II, Soviet occupation drove out the Sudeten Germans, in quasi-genocidal fashion; Poland kept Teschen; and Carpatho-Ruthenia was, sensibly, incorporated into Ukraine. This left the Czechs, Slovaks, and some Hungarians, with the Czechs continuing to dominate under Communism.

But now, with the collapse of Communism and the advent of national freedom, the Slovaks, at long last, are demanding their freedom from Czech rule; such trivia as changing the name to include a hyphen; "Czecho-Slovakia," proved scarcely enough to satisfy Slovak demands.

The difference is that the Czechs are not Serbs, and also that the Czechs now have probably the most genuinely free-market government in all of Eastern Europe; hence, the Czechs are setting an example for all such ethnic struggles by having the sense of justice, and the simple magnanimity, to take national self-determination seriously, and to agree, ruefully but respecting the Slovaks' wishes, to let the Slovaks go. Let secessionists depart: would that all attempts at secession, including that of the South in 1861, been treated the same way!

So, farewell Czechoslovakia, what took you so long? And welcome to the family of nations, Slovakia and Czechia!