Papers and Documents relating to the Foreign Relations of Hungary, Volume 2, 1921 (Budapest, 1946)

Editor's foreword In English

XVI was so ric hin political events as to involve such an augmentation of the material that it was beyond the powers of one editor alone to get it ready in a single year. The editor would however like to take this opportunity of expressing his gratitude to his collaborator who, although he took part in the preparation of the material, could not participate in nor share responsibility for the publication. In spite of a careful selection of the material, it proved to be so extensive that its publication in a single volume was technically impracticable, so that this volume only contains the documents relating to the months from January to August 1921. Those referring to September to December are ready for publication in a volume of similar size, and it is hoped that they will appear within a few months. As the work was prolonged into the war, technical obstacles to publication of another nature also arose, so that the printing of this volume could only be begun at the end of 1943. It was on the point of completion when the Germans occupied Hungary, on March 19

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h, 1944, and one of the first actions of the Sztójay Government was to stop work on it, since they could not, by printing the book, appear to assume that any other country than Germany would have a say in the post war settlement. At the time the editor was already out of the country and, being unwilling to collaborate with the policy of the puppet-government under the German occupation, he left the Hungarian diplomatic service. It is partly due to this fact, and partly to other fortunate circumstances, that the material for 1921 could be kept in a safe place abroad, and that the pages already set up survived the war and the siege of Budapest and, with a little additional work, could be rearranged and printed. The method employed in the first volume has been followed in the arrangement of the second. As however reviewers remarked on the absence of a list of documents in the first, on the ground that even the most carefully-prepared index cannot make up for its omission, the second volume differs from the first in that a list of documents has been included, and this will also be included in any future editions of the first. There is no index of subjects at the end of this volume, but it will be given in the third and cover the whole year 1921. The third volume too will contain the parliamentary material for the whole year 1921. In collating the material for publication, the same consideration has been borne in mind as in the first volume : to make available