Hungarian historians have planned a series of four volumes which will cover almost all the French official documents relating to East Central European policy between October 1918 and 1932. The documents will be published in the original French versions.
Most of the material, taken from the archives of the Quai d'Orsay, the French Ministry of War, and the Nanterre Archives have not been published previously. It consists mainly of reports, instructions, and aide mémoires by top military and political leaders, as well as the files of leading bodies of the Allied and Associated Powers and their committees - all invaluable historical sources.
Volumes One and Two show convincingly that the Allied and Associated Powers had no preconceived plan for new power arrangements to fill the vacuum created in the Carpathian Basin. The principal aim of the peacemakers was to materialize their own security objectives. It also emerges clearly that a succession of contingent steps led to Trianon. There was no inevitability in the actual course of events.
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Jules Laroche expounded the notion that if proper allowance were made for Magyarized Romanians and Magyarized Jews who declared themselves to be Hungarians, the demographic figures would have to be altered accordingly. What is more, he added, the urban population chose national allegiance in keeping with its interests. Thus, if the Hungarian Nagyvárad becomes the Romanian Oradea, there will be more Romanianized Hungarians than there are Magyarized Romanians at the time of the changes. Allen Leeper, British member of the Committee on Romanian and Yugoslav Affairs, declared Hungarian vital statistics to be false, and repeated the arguments of his French colleague. Charles Seymour, however, argued that, bearing all that in mind, there would still be around 160,000 Hungarians as against 50,000 Romanians in Nagyvárad. Leeper declared, however, that in his opinion there would be no great offence against the principle of national self-determination if the towns, with their large Hungarian majorities, were allotted to Romania. He admitted that there were areas where the Hungarian majorities would be large even after the Hungarian statistics were properly adjusted, but the British delegation still insisted that such areas be allotted to Romania for economic reasons. Leeper wanted to allot Szatmárnémeti to Slovakia, together with the railway line. He thought the Hungarian inhabitants might prove dangerous to Romania, but the economic argument carried the day.
Then Representative Clive Day of the U.S. pointed out that the carving up of the region into small states would obviously lead to a carving up of the railway lines as well, these small states would therefore have to come to an agreement on their use. This forced the French to make the real argument explicit. "The security of the Romanian frontier will not be assured if the Hungarians at the same time control both the Debrecen-Békéscsaba and the Szatmárnémeti-Nagyvárad lines." As Laroche put it, the existence of Romania was a strategic issue which demanded guarantees, even if Romania and Hungary were not at war. "If the Germans were in conflict with the Poles or the Czechoslovaks, the Allies would be obliged, in order to reinforce these states, to count on the goodwill of Hungary, and they would run the risk of experiencing the greatest difficulties." That is why as many railway lines as possible were needed between Hungary and Romania, or Poland and Slovakia. Leeper argued that if the triangle on the northeastern part of the line, which the Americans wanted to give to Hungary, did not become part of Romania, then the line of communications between Romania and Czechoslovakia would be broken (I/185). The railway lines allotted to Romania had to be linked up with the international rail network of the Allies (I/225).
The eastern line of French defense was thus complete. Thanks to north-south and east-west railway lines in the hands of allies and friendly countries, through Slovakia, Poland, Romania, and the future Yugoslavia, the deployment of forces against either Germany or Russia was no problem. In the context of such strategic considerations, the ethnic carving-up of the region was of secondary importance. On questions of detail, what mattered was which country was reckoned an ally. It should be said, however, that Romania's assurance of complete autonomy to national minorities in local government, education, and culture found its way into the record.
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