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

Editors' forewod

XV document relating to issues of any significance is lacking from this collection. It should be noted that this collection does not contain the entire diplomatic correspondence of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Lack of space precluded specifically the publication of innumerable notes of protest concerning various frontier incidents, acts of violence and arbitrary measures which were made subject of complaints by one or the other Government. The Editors felt compelled to chose only a few typical documents from the great volume of such communications which appeared to be particularly interesting from the point of view of international law. In collecting the materials, the Editors endeavored to eliminate duplications as far as possible. In many instances, the archives contain original instructions from the Minister for Foreign Affairs to diplomatic representatives abroad to make certain communications to the foreign governments to which such representatives were accredited ; inversely, Hungarian diplomatic representatives frequently telegraphed the contents of communications from the governments to which they were accredited in advance before despatching by mail the full text. It appeared to the Editors superfluous to reproduce both the instruction or the advance report and the full text to which these related. Therefore, where the text of the note was available, the Editors printed the communication between a foreign government and a Hungarian diplomatic representative abroad in preference to instructions from the Minister or to a report from a representative. A similar procedure was followed with respect to communications between the Foreign Office and representatives of the Government abroad, where telegraphic instructions and reports frequently preceded more detailed instructions or reports sent by messenger or mail. In such cases, only one of the comminications relating to the subject-matter was printed. In this connection, reference should be made to the fact that communications between the Foreign Office and the Peace Delegation in Paris, included verbatim or in substance in the Diary of the Peace Delegation were not repeated in the main part of the volume. Neither have the various communications of the Peace Delegation to the Peace Conference been included, since all these documents are conveniently collected in The Hungarian Peace Negotiations (4 vols., Budapest, 1921), published by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. The organization of the material thus collected was, perhaps, the most difficult problem which faced the Editors. It became apparent