Papers and Documents relating to the Foreign Relations of Hungary, Volume 1, 1919–1920 (Budapest, 1939)

Appendix III. Parliamentary debates

99° were unable to leave Hungary after the war broke out. Instead, the peace treaty treated us as cruelly as our nationals who were caught in Allied countries at the outbreak of war. I shall not try the patience of the House with the enumeration of statistical data. The whole world knows that Hungary was the greatest loser in this war. But I should like to refer to certain events which occurred after we signed the peace treaty. On the basis of certain promises made to us, we had some concrete expectations. I never over-estimated these promises, my expectations were far less optimistic than those of this believing nation. Yet these promises have not been fulfilled even to the extent that I thought they might. I admit that some of these promises concern the future. Although I am disappointed, I am unwilling to relinquish the hope that they will be honoured. I hold Europe responsible for their fulfilment, for otherwise this nation can no longer have confidence in law and justice. I need not dwell upon what happens if the confidence of a whole nation is shaken . . . Before returning to the peace treaty, I should like to refer to an accusation levelled against Hungary . . . This concerns the minority clauses of the peace treaty and I should like to emphasize that it was not Hungary's fault —• or, at least, it was not exclusively Hungary's fault — that the necessary measures concerning minorities were not always carried out. There were defects in the administrative machinery; many shortcomings were due to such defects and not to any tendency against minorities. We have always recognized and we recognize today the right of every individual, of every minority group to their language, customs and religion. The enjoyment of these rights will be fully guaranteed, as it has been heretofore, to the few minority groups remaining within dismembered Hungary. These rights can and should be qualified only to the extent that the practical necessity of the State's existence and life demands — a practical necessity recognized by everybody and concerning which a distinguished British publicist, Sir Thomas Bartley, recently expressed the view that without its recognition, the United States would have become another Macedonia . . . In dismembered Hungary there are scarcely any minority groups left. Hungary, on the basis of its own law, can and will extend to them far greater protection than that provided for in the peace treaty. We intend to carry out integrally the letter and the spirit of Statute No. XXXII of 1868 concerning minorities and to build out our laws along the lines of that statute.