Endre Csapó : Peace to end Peace

The author of the book is Yves de Daruvar, a noted Frenchman, the son of a Hungarian army officer and a French mother transplanted to and educated in France. He served this country in World War II and was made Knight Commander of the Legion of Honour, and Companion of the Order of Liberation.

In the Introduction to the original French Edition General Ingold, former Grand Chancellor of the Order of Liberation writes:

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:

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... He shed his blood in the desert so that France may rise from the dead in victory; gravely injured, he suffered 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...

The passages referring to the mutilation of Hungary 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 endurance, 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".

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Another quarter of a century has elapsed since Daruvar's book was originally published. We have also arrived at the 75th anniversary of the Treaty of Trianon, and it is to be noted that by this time the historical events have made the drawing up of a programme for the Union of Europe timely. The one third of the 14 million Hungarian people of the Carpathian Basin who still live in captivity outside the state borders, hoped in 1989 that in the spirit of European Union, the persecution would cease and the people of East Central Europe would march finally together into an emerging United Europe in the spirit of reconciliation. Contrary to their hopes, the persecutions have flared up again. Now free of Moscow's control, boiling with intense nationalism, with almost eight decades of experience, the successor states have set about to eliminate the ethnic Hungarians with revived enthusiasm.

Daruvar's book is a treasure-house of quotations, and we have selected only a few of them for this limited-edition booklet:

"Up till 1830", admitted one of the Magyars' most rabid adversaries, "Hungary had been the El Dorado of national equality".(Helfert: <<Die Checo-Slaven>>). And indeed prior to that point in time, in itself only a rough indication, the linguistic and literary rebirth of Hungary's racial minorities, had been enacted within the boundaries of the historic kingdom, not among their racial brethren living outside those frontiers. This did not, however, prevent the neighbouring countries from benefiting by the generosity of Hungarian liberalism. Thus the culture of the various ethnic groups which over the centuries had come to Hungary as settlers or refugees was found to be flourishing more vigourously under the so-called "Hungarian yoke" than it did in its countries of origin, such as Rumania or Serbia. The best Slavonic and Rumanian philologists taught at the University of Buda where there were also printed and published the first literary and scientific works of Serb, Croat and Slovak authors. As for the first book ever to be printed in the Rumanian language it was published in 1544 under the patronage of a Hungarian prince -- a remarkable achievement when one considers that the first Hungarian book was only printed in 1527. This random collection of a few facts suffices to refute the alleged oppression of historic Hungary's national minorities.

Extremist nationalism, unconditionally hostile to the survival of the Kingdom as ultimately to that of the entire Monarchy, had up to World War I been confined to a minute fraction of the middle classes among the national minorities.

In fact, practically up to the beginning of the 19th century, Hungarians and non-Hungarians had lived together in perfect harmony.

It was quite clear that Austria-Hungary and Germany only wanted a limited war with Serbia, while France and Russia, as well as Serbia herself, were pushing for a generalised war which alone, in their view, could serve their interest and satisfy their ambitions. Hence Russia and France alone had, from the very beginning, envisaged and prepared for a general European war. Nothing could be more lapidary than Fabre-Luce's conclusion: "Austria's and Germany's acts made the war possible, those of the Entente rendered it unavoidable". Let it be added that although by now everyone agrees on regarding Hitler as a direct consequence of the first world war (Monseigneur Kaas, Archbishop of Trier used to say that Hitler was not born in Braunau but at Versailles) certain responsibilities for that war were much more far-reaching than is generally appreciated. Fortunately, myths woven entirely of falsehoods do not prove to be an enduring fabric, nor can truths be engineered and decreed as such merely by rights of victory over the vanquished. A fact of the gravest significance was, as Henri Pozzi so rightly reminds us, that "when the vic-tors drew up the conditions of peace at Versailles, St. Germain and Trianon, it was the axiom of Germany's guilt, and that of its ally, Austria-Hungary --the axiom of their sole and exclu-sive war-guilt-- which served as moral justification for the victors' implacable decisions."... (Henri Pozzi: Les Coupables", Paris 1934).

"There can be no doubt that Hungary --or at any rate the overwhelming majority of the Hungarians-- went to war in 1914 in the conviction of fighting for their just cause and with the aim only of preserving what had for a thousand years been recognized as their own. For years, the Hungarians had lived in the full knowledge of Serbia's intention to destroy the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, especially since the latter had annexed Bosnia-Hercegovina. It was also generally known that Russia supported Serbia's aspirations to establishing a Greater Serbia based on the South-Slavonic areas of Austria-Hungary. Once it became evident that Russia had been privy to the Serb conspiracy which contrived the double murder at Sarajevo, their common purpose being to unleash a generalized war in the course of which they might conquer the Slav-inhabited territories of the Monarchy, Hungary resolved to go to war against Russia. Also, the Magyars had never been able to forget that Russia had been the cause of the failure of their war for freedom of 1848--1849, directed against the Habsburgs, and that the Russians had delivered their country to the vengeance of Austrian absolutism." (Jules Altenburger: La Hongrie et la Première Guerre Mondiale, Budapest, 1919).

The treaties of 1919--1920 were in large measure the pro-duct of "the environment in which they had been concluded", as Georges Roux so admirably explained between the two wars. (Georges Roux: Reviser les traités? Paris 1931). Here is the gist of what he stated, confirming and supplementing our affirmation on the subject:

"Having staked their very existence or their liberty, fought 4 to 5 years throwing in their last ounce of strength and made immense sacrifices, the victors --exasperated and resentful to the extreme-- did not feel inclined to exercise fairness, mode-ration and leniency. To keep the morale of their belligerents at the requisite peak of tension, the government had recourse to an intensive propaganda of lies. ... The distortion of truth became the law of self-preservation and hatred a sacred emotion. ... Justifications of morality and idealistic aims were fabricated out of nothing in order to electrify one's own people and demoralize the adversary's. Also, the shining image of a peace concept, motivated not by egoism but exalted ideas, began increasingly to be bandied about. The American inter-vention accentuated that trend, stamping the struggle with the hallmark of disinterestedness and evangelical principles. ... It was in that kind of atmosphere that the Allied and Associated Powers were facing, late in 1918, the collapse of the Central Empires. ... Victory came all of a sudden and almost unex-pectedly. After a long row of failure upon failure, the Allies were ill-prepared for their triumph which consequently went to their heads. And the need to act quickly left them little time for reflection. Within a few months, still in a drunken haze of success, peace was made and a new Europe constructed without any deeper preparation of thought but with unlimited discretionary powers. ... The misuse of victory --continues Georges Roux-- although a mistake in the political sense is an allurement hard to avoid. Germany had not been able to escape from it either in 1871. ... Moreover the victorious powers were tied, hands and feet, by covenants earlier con-cluded between themselves or with their small auxiliaries. ...

"The great empires of peace did not have a first notion of the geography, ethnography or history of the peoples and countries whose fate they had to decide. Wilson, for example, kept muddling up Slovaks and Slovenes. Nor was Lloyd George any better informed. As for Clémenceau, all has long ago been stated about his stupendous ignorance concerning all things not pertaining to a certain romantic view of French history or French domestic politics." (Henri Pozzi: Les Coupables, Paris 1934).

"Czech, Rumanian and Serb diplomats doled out around the green baize table of Trianon heaps of the most superficial, erroneous and tendentious information, distorting facts, engineering statistics and faking the will of the populations con-cerned in remarkably bad faith. Their task, in the performance of which no one excelled more than Edouard Benes, was facilitated by the shameful mediocrity of the Western nego-tiators. ... They simply conceded everything they had been asked for. ... And all the while Mr. Benes continued dishing up the grossest historic, geographical and ethnological absurdities in his quiet, smiling manner, often contradicting himself, without anyone at the Conference daring to object for fear that his crass ignorance might be found out. ... A marvellous game of grab, indeed." ... (Gabriel Gobron: La Hongrie mystérieuse, Paris 1933).

"The Peace Treaty of Trianon was born in an environment particularly ill-suited to the creation of wise and enduring constructions. The great allied statesmen called upon to play the role of arbitrators knew little of those faraway regions of Eastern Europe with which they had to deal. So they left the job to the young claimants themseves, placing their confidence in those gallant Serbs, in the Rumanians, the spoilt adoptive children of France, and chiefly in two Czechs whose influence was considerable at the time the peace treaties were being drafted -- Messrs Benes and Masaryk. ... Friendly connections at the highest level in the allied camp enabled them to help themselves, and their associates, handsomely to the good things they craved." (Georges Roux: Reviser les traités? Paris 1931).

"Out of a hotch-potch of fakes and forgeries, out of a chaos of falsehoods was woven the Treaty of Trianon, lined with a map of absurdities, and the Hungarian plenipotentiaries, unable to make their protest heard, cooped up at the Château de Madrid under police surveillance, with all their communications with the outside world heavily censored, were forced to sign it without any discussion, the swords of our worn-out diplomats pointed at them". (Georges Desbons: La Hongrie aprés le Traité de Trianon, Paris 1933).

One could go on proliferating quotations of that kind indefinitely. David Lloyd George himself pronounced the verdict in a speech at the Guildhall in London, on October 7, 1928, when he admitted that the entire documentation they had been provided with by "some of their allies" during the peace nego-tiations was a bundle of falsehoods and fabrications. They had made their decisions on the basis of fakes. "That terrible accusation which has never been answered --wrote Henri Pozzi-- also spells out the responsibility of the allied negoti-ators. How could it be that they should not have noticed soon the procedures employed by the representatives of Prague, Bucharest and Belgrade, in order to subvert their good faith with those fancy statistics, fake petitions, tricks and lies which made Trianon one of the worst iniquities in diplomatic history." (Henri Pozzi: La Guerre revient, Paris 1933).

Endre Csapó : Peace to end Peace