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The Treaty of Trianon reduced her territory to 91,114 kilometres that is, 32.3 per cent. and the population to 7,481,954, or 41 per cent. It was not sufficient to cut off from Hungary the populations which were not ethnically Magyar. Without any reason 1,084,447 Magyars have been handed over to Czeko-Slovakia, 457,597 to Jugo-Slavia, 1,704,851 to Rumania.
According to the accounts of the American Treasury the Allies' War debt is 9,587 millions of dollars: 4,277 millions owing from Great Britain, 2,977 millions from France, 1,648 millions from Italy, 349 millions from Belgium, 187 millions from Russia, 61 millions from Czeko-Slovakia, 26 millions from Serbia, 25 millions from Rumania, and 15 millions from Greece.
Austria-Hungary was composed of eleven peoples. It was split up into a series of States. Austria and Hungary were reduced to small territories and shut up in narrow confines. All the other countries were given to Rumania, to Serbia, or more exactly to the S.H.S. State, to Poland, or else were formed into new States, such as Czeko-Slovakia.
I will speak of the absurd situation which has come about. Czeko-Slovakia and Poland unwillingly indeed fought against the Entente, which has raised them to free and autonomous States; and not only have they no debts to pay, being now in the position of conquerors, or at least allies of the conquerors, but they have, in fact, scarcely any foreign debts.
But also with the intention of hurting Germany and the German peoples, a Czeko-Slovak State was created which has also its own tremendous crisis of nationality. A Czeko-Slovakia with a population of eight to nine million people represented a compact ethnical unity.
As a matter of fact the treaties have taken the greatest possible number of Germans from Austria and of Magyars from Hungary in order to hand them over to Poland, to Czeko-Slovakia, to Rumania and to Jugo-Slavia, namely to populations for the most part inferior to the Germans. Evacuation of Rumania, Serbia and Montenegro.
What is even more serious is that the 4,000,000 Germans are attached to Germany, and, having a superior culture and civilization, will never resign themselves to being placed under the Czeks. Czeko-Slovakia had mineral riches, industrial concerns and solid agriculture, and a culture spread among the people all the conditions for rising rapidly.
At this point the note, in considering questions of justice and of mere utility, becomes distinctly ironical. Having decided to bring to life new States, especially Poland and Czeko-Slovakia, why not give them safe frontiers even if some Germans or Magyars have to be sacrificed? One of Clemenceau's fixed ideas is that criterions of justice must not be applied to Germans.
She cannot unite with Czeko-Slovakia, with Hungary and other countries which have been formed from the Austrian Empire, because that is against the aspirations of the German populations, and it would be the formation anew of that Danube State which, with its numerous contrasts, was one of the essential causes of the War.
The last Austrian budget, for 1921, assigned a sum of seventy-one milliards of crowns for expenses, and this for a poor country with 7,000,000 inhabitants. A detailed examination of the financial situation of Czeko-Slovakia, of Rumania, and of the Serbo-Croat States gives results which are at the least alarming.
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