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

Documents

1920 221 No. 209. 5 i/res. pol. The Secretary General of the Hungarian Peace Delegation, Mr. Praznovszky, to the President of the Hungarian Peace Delegation, Count Apponyi. [TRANSLATION] No. 270/pol. NEUILLY, April 7, 1920. According to confidential information, the conditions of the Hungarian peace were completed a few days ago. Due to the fact that no decision has yet been taken as to when the peace conditions will be given to us, persons familiar with the internal affairs of the Peace Conference conclude that the Hungarian question will be further discussed at the San Remo conference. I am reliably informed that the delegates and particularly the representatives of the western Powers are frightfully bored by the whole Peace Conference. They feel increasingly that they have gotten into a labyrinth from which they cannot find a way out and that they have created in the peace treaties a great number of new international problems which they will not know how to solve. One of these problems, and perhaps the principal one, is of course the Hungarian question. Especially since we presented our notes and memoranda they have begun to realize that the Hungarian question should be examined from many angles for which they have neither time nor patience. Our experience with an American journalist is rather characteristic. When he came for information, we proceeded to give him statistics, maps and other data. Instead of taking them, he stated frankly that it would be too much to assume that the Americans would be willing to devote days and hours to the study of statistical data, maps and arguments concerning a matter so remote as Hungary's case. He suggested that the American public could never be interested in these details ; one or two catchwords would be much more effective than a whole volume of notes and information. From this contact with the American journalist, we learned something : that the Hungarian question interests the western European Powers about as much as we Hungarians would be interested in Portugal. If a Portuguese should come to Budapest with a mass of memoranda and maps, he would find, among our politicians and diplomats, scarcely a person who could devote days to the study of some question interesting Portugal. Perhaps