Plums for Nazis

Ernst Kundt, youthful firebrand and spokesman in Prague of Sudeten Nazi Fuhrer Konrad Henlein, did his best last week to provoke a complete break with Czechoslovak Premier Dr. Milan Hodza. "I put on record," announced Spokesman Kundt, "that the Government's proposals and ours are irreconcilable. They are based on absolutely contradictory ideas."

At this point, Viscount Runciman, British mediator who has been hoping to drag out negotiations until autumn, took action. Viscount Runciman had been 15 days in Czechoslovakia without meeting Konrad Henlein, who thought his prestige would be enhanced if he made the British lord call on him. This, the Viscount had refused to do, but in last week's emergency Lord Runciman consented to motor from Prague into the Sudeten Nazi territory and meet Herr Henlein in the castle of Prince Max von Hohenlohe, whose lands extend right up to the German frontier.

Prince Max, although ardently pro-German, keeps his fingers crossed, has a passport which makes him a subject of the Principality of Liechtenstein. Last week he mobilized his villagers, his gamekeepers, his servants and his toddling infants, all of whom gave the Nazi salute as Lord Runciman arrived in formal black jacket, wing collar and black bat tie. Herr Henlein turned up in brown tweed coat, grey flannel slacks and white shoes. Present was the German agent known as "Princess Steffi," who generally operates in London. There she has been hostess to Herr Henlein and to Adolf Hitler's personal agent, Captain Wiedemann (TIME, Aug. 1). From the castle windows the conferees could see the Sudeten Mountains and the German frontier, patrolled unceasingly before their eyes by fighting planes of Czechoslovakia and the Reich. The meeting lasted from 12:30 to 5:45.

Diplomatic rumor had it that "Henlein showed himself most intransigent." But shortly thereafter Herr Henlein assembled his lieutenants in the Hotel Veimar in Marienbad. There he outlined the Sudeten demands anew, clarified along lines suggested by Lord Runciman. Meanwhile, to make the clamorous Henlein minority perhaps less intransigent, Premier Hodza soon after announced he would give choice political plums to Sudeten Germans by appointing them to seven large postmasterships, a district public works superintendency, two district governorships, more jobs in the railroad administration.

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