Review

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Within his means Apponyi worked ardently to promote the cause of revision after 1918 until the end of his life in 1933. The basic tenets of his revisionist concept, corresponding to those which most (semi-) official circles also represented, comprised the program of reconciliation in internal political and economic affairs and their wise administration in order to "command the respect and sympathy of the civilized world," and, on this basis, to realize the revision of the treaty through peaceful means only.

Apponyi, aware as he was of the postwar political realities and the basic principles of contemporary US foreign policy, projected some popular expectations toward the USA in terms of America's power to secure favorable peace terms for Hungary as well as to alter the postwar settlement. In a 1919 pamphlet, "The American Peace and Hungary," seeking to appeal to the Paris peace negotiations, Apponyi courted the Americans by stating his belief, or rather his hope, that "America [was] in honor bound to uphold" the principles proclaimed by President Wilson "against the spirit of imperialism which seem[ed] to have only changed sides." "America's participation in the war," Apponyi said, has been announced to the world as for international justice, brotherhood, permanent peace and disarmament. It is a moral impossibility tha[t] announcements of such purport should afterwards prove mere humbug, as they certainly would, should America consent to international settlements wrought with iniquity and bequeathing to future generations the legacy of hatred, unrest and permanent militarism. There are symptoms indicative of aberrations in the peace policy of the entente, which would give the lie to Wilson's principles. We trust America will not tolerate such indignity.

Apponyi wrote the essay at Christmas 1918. By then the fact that Wilson's original Fourteen Points no longer provided the basis for the armistice and the peace talks in terms of Hungary's future had already been communicated to Foreign Minister Gyula Andrássy, and the dismemberment of the Monarchy was a foregone conclusion. It is very unlikely that Apponyi did not know about it.

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Forrás: Mathey Éva: Chasing a Mirage: Hungarian Revisionist Search for us Support to Dismantle the Trianon Peace Treaty, 1920-1938