Magyar külpolitika, 1930 (11. évfolyam, 1-7. szám)

1930 / 4. szám - Next War in 1937

22 HUNGÁRIA LLOYD September 1930 li is unt over Alsace-Lorraine thai the conflicl will be resumed; to-day there is no party in Germany thai thinks of revenge. Nol even the Aüstrian „Anschluss" will be the igniting spark. A conflicl is unavoidablo because Germany is unable to support a population ni' <iu tnilliöns on an area narrowed down and pay the reparations demamlcd. Winston Churchill accepts the calculation thai by the time Germany will cease to pay répa ration two-thirds of the Germán national assets will belong 1o America. Can anyone believe thai Germany will wait until thai bappensl Ts it not rather probable thai as a new generation, in no way responsible for the past, grows u]) Germany's readiness to pay will decreasel After aU, Francé passes on only half of the reparation sums to America in war-interest; the other hall' is used Eor armaments — Germán rnoney againsl Germany. At presenl the Germán parties are fighting among themselves as to the distribution of the crushing burdens, lmt it is easy to foresee the time when, a new inflation threatening, they will unité against common danger. That movement however, will mean a repudiation of the Peace of Versailles. The days of the „Erfrillungs" policy are numbered, and — against their will — the French helped to basten approaching events when, in June, by evacuating the Rheinlands, they gave Germany a free hand again. For even were Germany attempting the impossible to accept as definite even its eastern boundary. Poland would never do so. In its present formation Poland, instead of being a bridge, is a barrier between the Germán and the Russian Titans; the Danzig Corridor, a wedge inserted into the body of Germany. Laeking natural boundaries and exposed easl and west to too strong influencos, Poland cannot acquiesee in what, from a military point of view, is an impossible situation, and, however mad it may sound, aspires to a further accession of area, in the direction of the sea, at the expense of Eastern Prussia. To escape the inovitable Poland takes refuge in an offensive policy. Let us not forget: that country has suffered dismemberment three times, and in history there is no such thing as chance. But the fate of Europe, unbalanced, will he sealed by the immoderately enlarged Balkans, which from Saloniki to Danzig have swallowed up the whole of Central Europe. Under the polished skin of the League of Nations the European apple is rotten at the cofe. On the area of three past Empires twelve minor States were created or reconstructed by the peace treaties. One hundred millión people, a quarter of the population of Europe, live there in hopeless confusion, on an area twice as large as thai of Germany and Francé together. It was not the principle, which desired to secure independence to the lesser nations, thai was at fault, but the way it was put into practice. The diverse peoples living together were never given the chance of reconciling conflicting interests, of making voluntary compromises, and of insuring by mutual consent a state of equipoise ancl peace likely to last. Instead of that the new order was based on the promises contained in the secrel convention signed in London in 1915, and on the French t roops occupying Central Europe at Ihat time, whose strategic considerations did i" no way sérve the vitai interests of the peoples in question. An ignorance of the very intricate state of affairs in Central Europe, thó weai iness caused by the war, and indifference only added to the mistakes. And so, in obedience to military dictates, new Central Europe was horn, with sonie nations having bittori off more (hun they can chew and othere crippled beyond the possibility of further existence. In Yugoslavia the Serbs try to rule over the more highly civilised minorities (36 per cent. over 64 per cent.), but having no intellectual or economic ascendancy, they resort to the most savage methods of military dictatorship. In the same way, for the seven millión Czechs a geographical monstrosity was carved, with a population of 14 tnilliöns which, though laeking many advantages of the old Aüstrian Monarchy, has inherited all its worries. At the same time, 14 millión Hungarians were assigned a territory with only 8 millión souls. A thousand-years-old historical and geographical unit, which had been the rampart of Europe, was divided in four in an unnatural manner. Against the vvishes of its population, 72 per cent. of the Hungárián territories were placed undor the sovereignty of inferior races, and, to ma ke the helplessness of a brave people complete, they were disarmed and the new boundary was drawn only 20 miles distant from the capital, so that Czech cannon might be able to lay waste Budapest at any moment. * On the whole, in this part of Europe, where each country alone is too small to hold its own in the economic world-competition, the peace dictates, instead of creating the needful co-operation, have engendered a lust for supremacy, and the past ten years have ripened the bittér fruit. Impoverishment is universal and political differences have torn asunder an economic cohesion manv centuries old. The Austro-Hungarian M. narchy, once an economic unit, has been cul up by 4,000 miles of new — often pi'ohibitory — Customs frontiers; the natural exchange of industrial and agricultural products between the different parts has stopped, and systematic economic co-operation has been replaced by the policy of hostile isolation. The world-wide economic erisis hastens the inevitable collapse. It is characteristic of conditions that in those new Balkans each country lives in a state of strained relations with almost all its neighbours, as though all the inhahitants of those parts were malevolently disposed, whereas they are simply unfortunate, living in an intolerable situation which has been forced upon them. The badly drawn frontiers have alsó Lncreased the number of national minorities, which compfise thirty millions of the population (30 per cent. of the whole), and without their consent placed them under the rule of, for the most part, inferior races. Their situation is all the more intolerable, because here political oppression always involves economic exploitation. Complaints are no longer heard from that re-