I wish here to question the view held of Czecho-Slovakia by many Western observers. According to this, the Czechs do well to let the Federation dissolve. Without the brake applied from Bratislava, we are told, they will be able to press forward with their economic reforms, and soon join with the other nations of Western Europe as an equal partner.

As for the Slovaks, they have no future but to live in an impoverished police state, shunned by investors and menaced by their more powerful neighbours.

This view, I think, is false. It relies too much on the short term economic prospects of the two nations. It ignores their longer term standing in the new European balance of power.

If we look to Slovakia, we see every chance of great hardship and ethnic unrest. Having some experience of the country, I now laugh at the more lurid claims regarding Meciar and his colleagues. They are nor closet Stalinists, nor even criminals. Far worse in modern Europe, though, they know nothing of how to manage an economy; and their nationalist rhetoric will hold them from acting as sensibly as they might wish once economic crisis has opened the faultline running jaggedly north of the Danube between Slovak majority and Hungarian minority.

Yet, this being said, Slovakia can expect no worse. It will not become another Yugoslavia. Its southern regions will not be invaded by Hungary. For Germany now has sufficient interest - and will soon have sufficient power - to ensure that Central Europe remains a stable marketplace. And, inexperienced though it currently is, given the time in office that it will surely enjoy, the Slovak Government will eventually learn - or be compelled to practise - better methods of economic management.

The real problem will be faced by the Czechs. Certainly, their living standards will rise faster. Probably, they will enter the European Community before any of the other former Soviet peoples. Even so, the long term survival of a nation is not always to be measured in terms of present economic success.

Of the foreign investment now going into the Czechlands, more than 75 per cent comes from Germany. Of the foreign tourists now pouring into Prague and the other Czech towns, more than 50 per cent are German. German is the foreign language most frequently spoken by Czechs. In a recent poll, 65 per cent of Czech parents expressed a wish for their children to have a German education.

Coming from France or America, this kind of cultural and economic invasion would be of now great significance. But in this case, it comes from an immediate neighbour that surrounds on at least two sides, and which has an old and never fully surrendered claim on the Czechlands as parts of the Greater German Reich. We seem to be watching as the Czechs abandon the fruits of 150 years of national self-defence.

As a part of Czecho-Slovakia, the Czechs are the western extremity of a Slav bloc that contains Russia and the Ukraine. They can also appeal to a half century tradition of border fixity which, however smashed down in the north-east and south-east, remains inviolate at the heart of Europe. As Czechlanders, they will be transformed into a small Slav island in a Teutonic sea. Even if the Germans prefer never again to make territorial claims - and why bother fighting for what can so readily be bought? - they will be better placed to demand, among much else, compensation for property taken from their nationals in the confiscations made before 1948.

The current belief in Prague, that the newly risen power of Germany will somehow be checked by the Western Allies, is an idle dream. Without Soviet tanks there to face down, the American Government has more interest in the ozone hole than in Central Europe. And Britain and France are to all intents and purposes already German satellites themselves. Even less now than in 1938 will they lift a finger in defence of the Czechs.

In conclusion, I will agree with those Westerners who call Vaclav Klaus one of the greatest economists ever to run a country. But I see no wisdom in his apparent policy on the national question. Ruled by him, the Czechs will see dramatic increases in their standard of living. But is the price of this to be the Germanisation of their grand children? What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world but lose his soul?