760F.62/642: Telegram
The Minister in Czechoslovakia (Carr) to the Secretary of State
[Received September 1—2:45 p.m.]
174. I have just been informed by one closely associated with the Sudeten moderates that last week the intransigent attitude of the more radical Sudetens created virtual panic among the Czech negotiators. Beneš took charge of the negotiations, received Kundt and others and gave them an outline of the plan reported in my telegram 173, September 1, noon. The German Chargé here flew to Berlin and returned with approval of Sudeten continuance of negotiations. If this plan should not prove successful my informant says Runciman will propose a plan of his own which would involve a division of the historic provinces of Bohemia and Moravia-Silesia into some 23 gaue or cantons, each with local self-government in a form not yet defined. The experts who have worked with my informant in drafting the plan in collaboration with members of the Runciman mission say that the plan will not work, will be enormously expensive, will create innumerable differences among the members of the population over the districting and will require at least a year to put it into operation. If eventually proposed, notwithstanding its imperfections, it will be because of Runciman’s conviction that nothing less will be acceptable to the Germans. My informant said that it is believed that if proposed the plan would make Great Britain responsible for eventual solution of the Sudeten question especially as it includes a proposal for a British loan of perhaps a billion crowns which conceivably might go to the relief of the Sudeten areas.