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

Documents

1920 173 No. 150. 1122/pol. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Count Somssich, to the Interallied Military Mission in Budapest. BUDAPEST, February 27, 1920. In pursuance of my Note No. 1086 of February 26,

1 I have the honour to inform you that the reports coming to my hand from Hungarian officials complain without end of the atrocities committed by the Yugoslav authorities — military and civil alike. I beg to call your particular attention to the following case: In the town of Pécs, the Hungarian Government is maintaining a children's home; the mother-tongue of the inmates being, with very slight exception, Hungarian. The county of Baranya, again, is keeping up an orphanage for the children of public employees of the county. One day, Mr. Rajic, Yugoslav Commissioner for Pécs, gave orders for the transfer of all the boys bearing Slav names in the children's home, to the town of Szabadka, seven pupils of the orphanage having been selected to share this fate. According to an article in the „Baranski Glasnik", more than a thousand children are to be taken to Szabadka. I must emphatically protest against this action which is nothing but abduction on a large scale. All these children, though bearing Slav names, are unquestionably Hungarian subjects. At all events, there is no reason to support such procedure, neither is Mr. Rajic, I think, empowered to display his autocratic will, and in Pécs too, a town that in terms of the Peace Treaty remains within the Hungarian boundary. Mr. Rajic seemingly started this action on his own accord, for it is hardly conceivable that the Belgrade Government could give any such instructions. I may point out that the parents and the guardians of the children are very upset, and objecting to this treatment and ask for the intervention of the Hungarian Government. On this occasion I cannot leave unmentioned the doings and dealings of the Yugoslav troops — this undisciplined and looting 1 Supra, Doc. No. 148.