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

Editors' forewod

XVII at an early stage of the work that a division either according to countries or according to subject-matter would encounter insurmountable difficulties on account of the confusion of the issues involved as uell as the multiplicity of instrumentalities concerned. It appeared best to adopt a chronological order which has the advantages, first, of giving a, so-to-speak, day by day record and, second, precludes conclusively any accusation that the documents were grouped with any design to influence the interpretation which might be put upon them. The Editors hope that the obvious disadvantages of chronological organization have, at least in part, been overcome by cross-reference to related documents ; and, further, by the detailed subject and name indices which are appended at the end of the volume. In preparing the material for publication, no document reproduced in original language was changed or altered by the Editors except for grammatical ortographical errors. As far as translations are concerned, attention was paid to giving as true and precise a translation as possible — even at the occasional sacrifice of stylistic form. With this aim in view, quotations in French or German contained in the original Hungarian document have not been translated. The only alterations which the Editors deemed permissible were the adoption of a uniform form for the dating of the documents, the substitution of initials for some personal names of no particular significance, the abbreviation of the concluding phrases and — in view of the full information contained in the title of each document — the omission of the address and the signature.

1 1 Since the words „Yugoslavia" and „Yugoslav" was widely used already in Peace Conference documents to designate the South-Slav State and its population, this more convenient term has been adopted throughout this collection, althcujh that State, formed at the end of the war from Serbia, Montenegro and parts of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, was known officially as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovens (S. H. S. Kingdom), until 1929 when its name was changed to Yugoslavia.