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Contents

I The Allies and the Treaty of Trianon
II In New Slovakia
III The Cabinet Noir and Agent Provocateur
IV Political Significance of the Census
V Citizenship
VI Bogus Demonstrations Against Lord Rothermere
VII Czechising Hungarian Towns
VIII Revolutionary Land Reform
IX Land Reform and the Churches
X Land Reform in Hungary
XI Confiscation and International Law
XII Colonisation
XIII Vandalism
XIV Czech Betrayal of Ruthenians
XV Breeding Bolshevism
XVI Press Censorship
XVII Deceiving the Slovaks
XVIII Economic Consequences of Disruption
XIX Czecho-Slovakia and Local Self-Government
XX Racial Problems in Czecho-Slovakia
XXI Churches under the Minority Treaties
XXII Hungarian Churches Persecuted in Slovakia
XXIII Racial Minorities and Education
XXIV The Confusion of Tongues
XXV Anti-Treaty Excesses in Jugo-Slavia
XXVI Slovaks in Hungary
XXVII Refugees in Hungary
XXVIII Reconstruction, the Suffrage, Education
XXIX Reawakened Hungary
XXX The Guiding Principles of Trianon
XXXI Rectification and the Future

APPENDICES
I Serajevo to Trianon
II Censorship and Confiscation of Slovak and Hungarian Newspapers
III Slovaks and Lord Rothermere
IV Examples of Land Reform in Czechoslovakia
V Cancellation of Citizenship and Expulsion
VI Illegal Treatment of Hungarian Citizens
VII Czecho-Slovak Administrative Reform
VIII Jugo-Slavia
IX Financial Obligations under the Peace Treaties Affecting the Succession States

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Introduction

The tenth anniversary of Armistice Day, ending the Great War, is approaching and South Eastern Europe is still strewn with the same inflammable material which was the cause of the last conflagration. The next decade may decide whether another catastrophe will overwhelm the world - more devastating, more brutalising than the last holocaust of humanity - and seal the doom of Western civilisation. There is, in my opinion, no escape from this grave danger if things are allowed to drift.

Public opinion throughout the world must be educated to realise the peril which menaces mankind. This volume by Sir Robert Donald is the result of several years' study of the situation in Central and South Eastern Europe. Sir Robert is an independent journalist and an experienced investigator. He presents a strong case supported by striking facts, gathered by painstaking inquiries on the spot. His book is a valuable contribution towards the enlightenment of public opinion on the momentous issues raised by the oppression of Minority races and the non-observance of Minority Treaties. His indictment is well documented and his revelations of the treatment, by the governments of Czecho-Slovakia, Rumania and Jugo-Slavia, of Hungarians will be new to many English readers. The conduct of the Checks, whose cynical disregard of Treaty rights and of their own Constitution is described with some detail, is a challenge which must be met.

The author is quite right in devoting special attention to Czecho-Slovakia - the country which I have described as "Europe's powder magazine." The Czechs put forward an audacious claim to be the most cultured people in the Succession States. They play a notable - frequently at Geneva a dominating - part in shaping continental politics and they have been accepted by western countries as the finest flower raised by the Peace Treaties in the gardens of Versailles. The Czechs are extremely sensitive to foreign opinion and make strenuous and, it is said, lavish efforts to cultivate it. The author of this book describes them as heartless and cruel in their treatment of the Hungarian Minority whose ill fate it is to be incorporated in the polyglot State of Czecho-Slovakia. The Czechs treat Minority races worse than they were ever treated themselves in the bad old days before the War. They suffer - like other races in the new States - from the strange misapprehension that two wrongs make a right, and that they are entitled, as a measure of national policy, to deprive racial Minorities of their rights and confiscate their property because in pre-war days, or in remote ages, other dominating or conquering races are alleged to have done the same to their ancestors. To end for ever such outrages inflicted by one race on another was one of the objects for which the Allies poured out their blood and treasure in the Great War. These sacrifices were made to free the oppressed - including the Czechs, whose freedom was won for them by others. In some respects the Magyar Minorities suffer more crying injustices from the Rumanians than they do from the Czechs, and the author includes an account of their illegalities and outrages in his indictment.

It was from a sense of the danger which might at any moment provoke another war in Central Europe that I took up the cause of mutilated Hungary. Of all the Treaties which followed the Great War the Treaty of Trianon is the most indefensible. It has left a festering sore in the heart of Europe which will never heal until existing wrongs are redressed. The Peace Treaties were never intended to be sacrosanct. The experience of nine years has proved that rectification of the frontiers of crippled Hungary is imperative if peace is to be preserved and economic progress assured. We want a new Locarno for Central Europe and the Balkans.

Sir Robert Donald considers that the first thing to be done is to hold an enquiry into the administration of the Minority Treaties, which should be one of the functions of the League of Nations; it is provided for in the Covenant. There are objections to this method. In the first place the League of Nations has a predilection for recognising faits accomplis, however unjust the deeds may have been. An enquiry under its auspices might probably be prejudiced and not free from suspicion. The League Council is on occasion stampeded by a strong man who takes a decided stand, but more often its policy is directed by subtle wire pulling in the background. Moreover, the League would be unspeakably slow in an enquiry of the kind contemplated. Procrastination, as we have seen in the case of the Hungarian optants in Rumania, is the usual course adopted to sidetrack a solution. If an enquiry into the working of the Minority Treaties - which hardly seems necessary, in view of the flagrant way in which they have been broken - is to be undertaken, then I think it should be carried out under the auspices of the great powers (Great Britain, Trance, Italy, and the United States) - whose delegates at Paris were chiefly responsible for the Peace Treaties. Plebiscites should be held under the supervision of the United States and of countries which were neutral in the Great War.

I have pointed out that no reasonable being can contemplate revision of Treaties, involving rectification of frontiers, by force of arms. At the same time, if causes of war are allowed to persist and the will to peace does not dominate public opinion, then an outburst may take place and uncontrollable forces be let loose. Now is the time for readjustment to be taken in hand, for pacific influences to be put into operation.

There are other potent forces which can be brought into play to convince the Governments of the Succession States, who are draining the life blood of the Hungarians within their territory, of their folly. These are economic and financial factors, including the powerful financial houses of London and New York. Together with the League of Nations they should satisfy the new States that it is in their own interests for their stability, progress, and even self-preservation that they should co-operate in removing the potential causes of war. I have already said that "we ought to root up all the dry grass and dead timber of the Treaty of Trianon before some chance spark sets fire to it. Once the conflagration has started it will be too late."

I welcome this volume on "the Tragedy of Trianon" as an important and informative contribution on the gravest of European problems.

Rothermere.

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