English Translation

24 - 9 - was in fermentation. In short, the problematic nature of the Czechoslo-Wak state in its entirety was becoming increasingly apparent. The fractures became apparent everywhere. The possibility of a break-up from the inside as well as from the Austrian one. It found an expression in the autonic front, which formed in the Prague Palace. Beneš himself speaks in his Oknourkut even more detail about the "different fronts that he would have inside, the German, Slovak, etc." But above all it was the third circumstance that, in my view, reduced the value of the negotiations for the domestic solution from the outset to a minimum. Namely the basic line and attitude of the then president. He was the decisive factor in the state through his former long-standing ministry, his present office and the powers that transferred to him outside of that of the State Defense Act. A responsible leadership of the ethnic group had to allow itself to determine the actual last aspects of this pactor as clearly as possible, to determine its position and attitude, for example by the Bismarckian proposition, that politics was essentially in the art of seeing as precisely as possible in advance how a given person would behave under certain conditions. From such considerations it was quite clear to me that the main purpose of the negotiations was for the President to gain, delay and, even in the event of the inevitability of any internal political compensation, to provide him with so much talk that hardly more than one optical solution came out. In reality, that was my firm commitment, he deliberately avoided every serious attempt to compensate, rather headed for completely different goals. Therefore, the mistrust of all government promises mentioned by Lord Runciman has experienced a maximum increase towards this man. The fundamental attitude of the then President, his whole ideological attitude, the line he had taken since the peace conference, both internally and externally, vis-à-vis Germanism, did not allow us to expect anything from the results of negotiations, which were not just his '7-7'.