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

Documents

1920 was settled and Popescu's successor, Colonel Oprescu, has now been in Budapest for some time, but no Rumanian diplomatic representative has come to Budapest as yet. Instead, a few days ago, statements were published in the newspapers that Rumania could not send a diplomatic representative to Budapest because the Hungarian Government failed to carry out an agreement concluded with Rumania concerning the exchange of political prisoners and an offer made in this connection by the Rumanian Government has been left unanswered for two months by the Hungarian Government. I may say that the truth is the exact reverse of this allegation. Four days after the receipt of the Rumanian offer on September ist, the Hungarian Government signified, through the representative of France in Budapest,

1 its acceptance of the offer

2; our reply asked only that the Rumanian Government designate by name the persons whose delivery it claims because the offer did not contain precise information as to persons. We have received up to the present no reply from the Rumanian Government to this inquiry. Scarcely was this campaign launched when the Rumanians manufactured still a third excuse: demonstrations were organized both in Transylvania and in the old kingdom of Rumania, protesting against alleged Hungarian atrocities committed against Rumanian minorities. It was said that a diplomatic messenger was blinded; that the eyes of a medical student, by the name of T. M., were put out and his body thrown in the Danube; that several persons (specifically, C. M., a business school student, 'and a Lieutenant C.) were sentenced to death; etc. etc. The only incident known to us involving a Rumanian messenger is the following: a Rumanian engineer passing through Hungary as a diplomatic messenger was discovered in an attempt to smuggle out of the country a considerable amount of foreign currency concealed in his personal luggage. All that happened to him was that he was taken back to the frontier; proceedings were not even instituted against him. There is a medical student, T. M., residing in Budapest; but he himself called at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and requested that the rumours spread about him in the Rumanian newspapers be denied since he is 1 Fouchet. 2 Supra, Doc. No. 622.