Papers and Documents relating to the Foreign Relations of Hungary, Volume 1, 1919–1920 (Budapest, 1939)
Appendix III. Parliamentary debates
957 gátion 1 by the President of the Peace Conference. 2 Two versions of this Accompanying Letter have appeared in the press but, as it was noted in advance, neither were altogether authentic as published because they were communicated by telegraph. The importance of this Accompanying Letter should be weighed from three angles: first, from the point of view of its tone; second, the concessions and improvements over the original draft of the treaty; and, finally, its reasoning in regard to those provisions of the treaty which were left unaltered. As far as it is possible in this grave situation, I find some relief in the fact that the tone of the Accompanying Letter is quite different from that which was addressed to the Austrian Peace Delegation when the final peace conditions were presented to them. This confirms to some extent what I said before concerning the change of mentality. It is my duty to state this frankly here, especially since I regard this altered tone as a sign of more understanding and as an expression of some good will. It may be due partly to another circumstance, — namely to the fact that the Letter to us was written in an entirely different period, in a period more distant from the war and its mentality than that in which the other two letters were written [accompanying the German and Austrian peace treaties]. But it is also undoubtedly due to the fact that the Hungarian treaty is by far the worst of all the peace treaties; it is far more cruel to the Hungarian nation than the other treaties are to the nations they respectively concern. (Approval.) That is why the courtesy of this Letter becomes, here and there, literally an excuse for the errors committed. The Allies realized those serious mistakes, the „inconveniences" — to quote from the Letter — caused by the boundaries fixed in the treaty; but they believe that the drawing of frontiers conforming more accurately to ethnic lines would create even greater inconveniences. In other words, they clearly admitted that the drawing of frontiers according to the fundamental principles on which the treaties were to be based would be even harder. (Commotion.) I find a certain amount of satisfaction in this admission because we knew and stated this very fact in advance and thus this admission justifies to a considerable extent the past and present position of Hungary. It is peculiar that starting from this premise, the Accompanying Letter does not compare the ethnic or near-ethnic but rather the historic boundaries with the boundaries determined in the peace treaty. It further argues that if the Allies had to choose between the two, they would 1 Count Apponyi. 2 Millerand.
