THE TRAGIC FATE of HUNGARY a Country Carved-Up Alive at Trianon

THE TRAGIC FATE OF HUNGARY A Country Carved-up Alive at Trianon YVES DE DARUVAR NEMZETOR Co- Publisher: Alpha Publications ISBN: 0-912404-03-5 Second Edition Printed by Alpha Publications Center Square, Pa. U.S.A. EXTRACTS FROM THE PREFACE TO THE FRENCH EDITION By General Ingold Former Grand Chancellor of the Order of Liberation This book was written by a man dedicated to the upholding of noble causes - the more seemingly hopeless the better. Thus, at the age of 20, he fought from the Fezzan to Tripolitania and from Tunisia to Normandy under General Leclerc's orders. At its darkest hour he elected France his mother country for she seemed mortally wounded, humiliated and beaten. He shed his blood in the desert so that France may rise from the dead in victory; gravely injured he was suffering agonies for years. Today the youngster of 1940, his willpower and intellect forged by the exercise of high functions overseas in the meantime, is going to war once more. But this time he is carrying no arms. It is this book with which he proposes to fight for the honour of "mutilated" Hungary and, faithful to Leclerc's tradition, he attacks. Yves de Daruvar is a knight in shining armour of our days. *** It is not for me to pronounce a comprehensive verdict on this brave, profoundly human and solidly documented book. I will therefore confine myself to the following brief remarks: The passages referring to the mutilation of Hungary (owing to the Treaty of Trianon) are deeply disturbing. They make us think. As a veteran of World War I, I feel in duty bound to quote the words of George Roux whose name will turn up frequently on the pages of this book. "Having staked their liberty, if not their existence, fought for 4-5 years to the very limits of their en- durance, and made enormous sacrifices. the victors did not feel inclined to show mercy", he wrote. No wonder that such resentment hit thousand-year-old Hungary with its full weight. That this should have happened was no doubt an error and a crime. However, victors have rarely practiced clemency throughout the centuries. May this book mark the beginning of a new era of understanding and forgiveness on the eve of inevitable conflicts.. Lyautey, Marshal of France, branded 1914-1918 "a fratricidal war". Enacted fifty years ago, Trianon remains to this day "a fratricidal peace". *** Persons more knowledgeable than myself as concerns Central European affairs could have written a preface of greater historic authority. Yet it was to me that Yves de Daruvar had turned, and I felt it my duty to grant him his request. For our friendship, born while we were campaigning together in the deserts of Africa, still unites us to this very day. There we had enchanting moments, driving hell-for-leather, always northbound - towards France. .. But there had been sad moments also, like that morning on Easter Sunday 1943, when amidst the roar of guns the news spread along our armoured column: "Daruvar badly wounded". FOREWORD As the son of a Hungarian army officer and a French mother, transplanted to and educated in France, in an oblique way owing to the Treaty of Trianon, I had of course heard of the latter early in my life. Subsequently I found the opportunity of studying, and reflecting upon, its consequences. Moreover, as World War II offered me the chance to show my affection for France and my dedication to her cause when her fortunes, in turn, were at their lowest ebb, I now feel both authorized and qualified to reveal to my compatriots - with a heavy heart but none the less firmly - ,an ugly act commited by the victors of the first world war. For much the same as individuals, nations also can perform good actions and sometimes, alas, bad ones too. I have long felt that one day somebody must make a clean breast of it - someone at least morally and emotionally qualified to do so. On the fiftieth anniversary of the Treaty of Trianon, this was the purpose I had in mind in writing this book. Since, on the one hand, I am no professional historian while, on the other hand, I was striving for accuracy and objectivity, my work is almost exclusively based on the notes I made of my copious reading. Hence the numerous quotations for which I beg the reader's indulgence. Yves de DARUVAR Knight Commander of the Legion of Honour Companion of the Order of Liberation Paris, June 1970 TRIANON OR THE P ARTITION OF HUNGARY More than one century ago the great French ecclesiastical orator, Father Gratry sounded this solemn warning from the pulpit of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris: “Every nation's homeland is sacred. If you destroy one of them you mutilate the entire human race. He who wants to kill a people, takes up arms against God himself by attacking the living providential design of history. Our conscience tells us, it is a crime. And history adds, it is a futile crime. Thanks to God, our crimes are not only futile: they are also an unbearable burden, bringing ruin and punishment upon the evildoer” (1) TRANSLATOR'S NOTE Yves de Daruvar's book is a dialogue between his two halvesHungarian and French. It is the expression of grief felt by someone profoundly French at the crime which France, in a true sense his "mother country", has committed against Hungary, the country of his paternal forebears. This book is therefore an intimately personal affair. But as it happens also to be concerned with the mutilation of a nation which has plaid an honourable part in European history, it is of concern to the whole of that which Arnold Toynbee has called "Western Christianity" When I was asked to translate Yves de Daruvar's "Tragic Fate of Hungary" for an English-language readership, suggestions were also made, in varying degrees, that my translation be more or less radically adapted to the tastes and idiosyncrasies of that new and potentially much larger circle of readers to which an English edition would address itself. What it all added up to would have hardly fallen short of an "operation rewrite". This in all humbleness I refused to do. For two reasons. Firstly, I would have risked to adulterate the essential character of this book which is - I repeat - a Frenchman's profoundly felt bitterness at the guilt of a great European nation in viciously maltreating a smaller one. Secondly, by bringing the British and American allies of World War I more to the fore than Yves de Daruvar had intended, one might create the wrong impression that France had after all not been the principal culprit of Hungary's hypocritical vivisection, perpetrated in stark violation of the ethnic principle proclaimed by the Allied and Associated Powers. Therefore this translation incorporates adjustments to the original most sparingly and only in cases where the interests of clarity so required. VICTOR STANKOVICH CHAPTER I MILLENARY HUNGARY ITS GEOGRAPHIC UNITY AND ETHNIC DISPARATENESS Hungary within its contemporary boundaries is the product of the peace treaty dictated to it by the Allied and Associated Powers 50 years ago. It had been signed by the Hungarians, at Trianon in the Park of Versailles under utter duress, on June 4, 1920, and its validity was extended, with a few minor changes, by the Paris Peace Treaty, on February 10, 1947. The Trianon Treaty deprived Hungary of territories which had belonged to it without interruption ever since the Magyars had taken possession of that country, well over a thousand years ago. Thus, with one stroke of the pen, an end had been put to the national and historic, as well as physical and economic unity of Hungary which for the preceding ten centuries had occupied the entire Carpathian basin. Those who wonder what enabled Hungary to hold its own behind the ramparts of its ancient frontiers for so long, what indeed had been the mysterious force which enabled it to reconstitute itself whenever its unity was broken. can only arrive at one conclusion. The answer must be that exceptional geographic unity to which no parallel can be found in any other country of the continent of Europe. Over and above of having represented a historic unity, ten centuries old, the Hungary of yore had been the most perfect geographical entity in Europe. As wrote Elisee Reclus, way back in 1878: "Hungary presents at the centre of our continent an oval of lowlands of almost regular shape surrounded by a mountain enclosure. Whatever the future grouping of its populations, the nation established within the immense arena encircled by the Carpathians will always have the greatest influence upon the territory conquered and defended by it. From north-west to east THE TRAGIC FATE OF 16 HUNGARY and south. the Hungarian basin is everywhere clearly circumscribed by hills and mountains." (2) To which Payot added: "Hungary is a marvellous geographic entity. All its component parts are so mutually complementary that neither of them could be severed without doing harm to the rest." Finally, Louis Eisenmann himself wrote in 1904: "Hungary's territory is endowed with a powerful geographical unity. indeed a geographical framework which conveys the impression of solidity, precision, abundance and unity. It explains how that natural region lent itself to becoming at once the territory of a State and how its central plain had been destined to be its centre of gravity." (3) The physical map of Central Europe alone demonstrates more convincingly than words could do that essential unity of the ancient kingdom of Hungary which hits the eye at first glance.

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