The Phoenix Land (29 page)

It was the realities of this situation which had made it
possible
, when the Teleki government took office at the beginning of 1921, for approaches to be made to Benes – although, as it turned out, without any positive result.

It was this experience that prompted me, as soon as I took office as foreign minister, to resume the interrupted negotiations with Prague. Since it was I who had initiated this approach, and as the more recently appointed foreign minister of our two
countries
, it was natural that I should be the one who made the first move. After an exchange of telegrams it was agreed that we should meet at Marienbad in the first days of May.

My first action was to study the records of the Bruck talks, which cleared up two issues for me.

The first was the revision of the new borders: the second, the question of the Burgenland. These negotiations had not arrived at any final decision, and so one could only deduce that not only was revision of the new borders still possible but also the price Hungary would have to pay would be a political contract by which Hungary ‘voluntarily’ agreed to renounce some 26,600 square kilometres of her former territory.

As regards the Burgenland, it seemed that Prague had quite different ideas from those incorporated within the draft of the peace treaty. To begin with, she was not at all pleased that Germanic Austria should increase her territory in this way, and secondly it seemed likely that the new Czechoslovakia had the notion of creating some kind of corridor between the northern and the southern Slavs. This had not taken the form of any
concrete
proposition, but the intention was there.

As I recall, I started out on 6 May. It was interesting but painful to travel along the river Vag, through the Kisalföld. I had often visited this part of the country in my youth, as many of my relations and a lot of friends lived in the region. So many old memories came to me then. At Galanta
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, at the parliamentary elections in 1902, I had gone with Mihály Esterházy to support him as he canvassed the electors. We travelled from village to
village
in a long cavalcade of cars. János Hock came with us, having agreed to speak in the districts where there were Hungarian villages. He was paid a substantial fee and, as he was an
accomplished speaker – a star performer, as they would say today – he was extremely useful and earned every penny he was paid. About one third of the electorate in this district was made up of Hungarians and these were all staunch supporters of the 1848 Party
66
. There were some villages where it seemed likely we would be welcomed only with cudgels, and others, quiet and sleepy, where it was difficult even to start addressing the people. We would be greeted with catcalls as soon as we ascended the wooden plank-stands that were to serve as platforms for the speakers. Then some local bigwig would stand up and declare that here they were all true-blue supporters of the Independence Party and away with us as no one wanted to hear what we had to say. Then came the miracle. Hock would utter a few words about Hungarian hospitality and mutual understanding: he argued with nobody, but whenever he was able to get out these few words everyone started to listen. During his speech he would often single out some member of the audience that, with his remarkable perception, he had realized was not very popular in that locality, make a joke or two at his expense, and soon had the entire audience in splits. After that his oratory took wings, and when he had come to an end all the villagers would cheer, and our departure would be like a triumphal march. We only failed in those villages where Hock could not get out those few magic words. There were only one or two, for as a speaker he was a real artist. The opposing candidate was called Kormos
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, and Hock would make amusing jokes about this in each village with
unfailing
dexterity and wit. And the proof of his skill was that he would invent different jokes for each village so that we, his
companions
, should not get bored by repetition of the same speeches.

This memory in particular tied me to Galanta, but there was no corner of the Kisalföld plain which did not hold its special souvenirs for me.

Surány
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– where surely there used to be the best
partridge-shooting
in the world, and where the carriages which were used by the guns carried watermelons to quench their thirst. Diószeg – where I once had to get out of the train at 20 degrees below zero and hire a sled to reach my cousins’ house at Ciffer
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. On the way the snowdrifts were so deep that we had to get out more than ten
times to shovel away the snow. The driver had a sensible
sheepskin
cap, but I had only brought a light hat suitable for shooting and nearly lost my ears from frostbite. Cseklész, Vedröd, Galgóc, Vörösvár and Szomolány – there were sweet memories buried everywhere around me that came to life only when we passed by or I sensed their nearness, as the express train rushed on its way across the fertile plain.

Now everything seemed incandescent. I was surrounded by the lavishness of spring, the cornfields, smooth and rich; the great spreads of sugar beet planted in long, moss-coloured rows; the alfalfa fields already richly burgeoning into leaf. Apple trees in bloom. It was a bitter feeling, for we had lost it all. Then we arrived at Zsolna. It was here that six years before I had seen those long lines of military trains, where they had waited, often for days, filled with strapping young Hungarian soldiers until they were carried off to battle and death. This place too had its memories, and most painful they were
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.

In Marienbad we stayed in a luxury hotel, and I recall
wondering
if it was the one to which King Edward VII would come every year at the beginning of the century when he was spinning the webs of the
entente cordiale
with Clemenceau and Isvolski, the then foreign minister of Russia, and where he smoothed over the differences between England and Russia and he planned, no doubt along with others, the encirclement of the central powers.

Of course, King Edward had been there in the high season, in August when swarms of elegantly-clad guests came to the spa to bathe away their accumulated fat. Now, in May, the resort was almost empty. The countryside is lovely, hilly and covered with pine forests, all well cared for and in that impeccable order imposed by the Austrian system of forestry management: a system taken over by the Czechs and impeccably maintained. There were no fallen trees to be seen, no dried-up or dead trees, crooked and hollow. Every pine was healthy and towered straight as an arrow. The forest started where the hotel garden ended, and we could walk in it for hours, as in a park.

Benes arrived on his special train. He was a small and insignificant-looking man. His whey-coloured eyes had an unusual sheen and were always watchful, like those of a fox. He
spoke pleasantly enough but patronizingly, with more than a touch of condescension, as people who have more than their fair share of good luck so often do. Although Benes must have spoken German, for his country was still part of Austria when he went to school, our discussions were held in French. He was
possessed
of a highly accomplished political vocabulary since he had, on Masaryk’s recommendation, been accepted as a student at the Académie des Sciences Politiques in Paris, where he had obtained his diploma. In spite of his perfect mastery of the French language he was sometimes difficult to understand because at that time, and indeed all the years I was in contact with him, he had a very strong Czech accent. I never heard if this disappeared later.

We discussed by what means we could reduce the tension between our two countries and whether we could find a common platform that would enable us to act together in all the questions concerning the Danube Basin.

I outlined a plan that involved cooperation by the three
countries
of Czechoslovakia, Austria and Hungary, which in central Europe still formed a bastion of the western way of life: a link which, in my opinion, was a good enough reason for all three to understand each other. Knowing how vain Benes was, I made it clear that in this triumvirate the leading role would be his.

As to the Burgenland, it seemed to me that Hungary could settle this directly with Austria, and so that question could come later. Firstly, I suggested that we should get things clear between ourselves. I said that as far as Czechoslovakia and Hungary were concerned there seemed to be two highly important unsolved issues and that, if these were not first settled, Hungarian public opinion would not accept any further
rapprochement
between our two countries … and the government would fall. The first was the future of Hungarian minority groups in Slovensko: the second, the modification of the new Czech-Hungarian border as redrawn by the Treaty of Trianon. It would be vital in this context not only to wipe out the most unjust and unacceptable aspects of the proposed borderlines – such as those at Balassagyarmat, where the Hungarian town’s vineyards now found themselves in Czechoslovakia, and
Sátoraljaújhely, where the border ran between the town and its railway station – but also to take into consideration which districts spoke what language.

As it happened, Hungarian public opinion had not been as outraged by the Hungarian minority’s loss of civil rights in the new Czechoslovakia as it had been by what had been perpetrated by the governments of Yugoslavia and Romania. It was for this reason that I based the need for revision of the frontiers on ethnic grounds alone.

I did not emphasize this, not only because the frontier
questions
had first come up at Bruck but also because I had some good reasons of my own for hoping that we might obtain some profit from reopening the question of the Czechoslovak border.

While in London in January 1920 I had seen hung in the window of the Geographical Society in the Strand a large map bearing the title ‘The Eastern Europe of the Future’, and on it the Czech-Hungarian border clearly showed the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains in Hungarian hands. It seemed certain that what this map showed had come from official sources in Paris, all the more so since Constantinople and the surrounding country on the Bosphorus was shown as belonging to the League of Nations, which the newspapers of the day had reported as being the official Allied proposal and which indeed had been incorporated in the first draft of the Treaty of St Germain. This, however, when presented to the Turks for their signature, met with such a blank refusal from Kemal Ataturk that the matter had to be held over for the Treaty of Lausanne, when the
territory
was left in Turkish hands.

I wanted to buy this map as proof of official intentions, but the shop had been closed and when, after a few days, I was able to return, I was told that that map had been withdrawn and its sale forbidden! An English friend gave me the explanation. The map had originally been drawn in the spring of 1919; when, a little later, the short-lived Communist regime took power in Budapest the highest councils of the Big Five decided that the foothills of the Carpathians could not be left in Hungarian hands lest they offer a route to Western Europe for the Soviets.
Accordingly
they should be re-awarded to Czechoslovakia.

My other private reason was based on some information that I had from a man in contact with the English delegation to the commission charged with preparing the terms of the various treaties. This was particularly relevant to my present talks with Benes. I had been told that before the committee started work on defining the borders of the new Czechoslovakia, the French foreign minister Berthelot had said to Benes: ‘
Demandez
beaucoup
!’ – ‘Ask a lot!’ Berthelot and Benes had been fellow students at the Académie des Sciences Politiques and had always been good friends. As a result, Benes asked for as much as possible, basing his policy on the idea that whatever he asked for was likely to be reduced and because his old friend had said
‘Demandez beaucoup!’
so as to give him room to manoeuvre. Accordingly, he had drawn a line from which he could easily withdraw without giving away anything of true value to his country. This is how so many districts with a preponderant Hungarian population had found themselves on the Czech side of the frontier, for which the Big Five had given their unquestioning approval. And so Masaryk and Benes had obtained far more than they had
originally
hoped for.

Knowing all this, I hoped for an important revision of the border, not quite as much as Hungary was to receive from the first Vienna Award of 1939 but close to it.

Benes did not go quite so far as to envisage the return to Hungary of Losonc or Komárom, but it was made clear that a prerequisite to revision was that Hungary should sign a mutually agreed document accepting the award to Czechoslovakia of those other parts of the Slovensko that were not now under discussion.

This, of course, was self-evident, for it was on this assumption that our talks were based; and if we wanted to maintain normal, indeed friendly, relations with any neighbour it could never be on the basis of an intransigent refusal on our part to accept
established
fact.

Accordingly, my position was simply that we Hungarians would accept the major distribution of territory and renounce our claims, provided always that in return we would receive back enough of our former lands that Hungarian public opinion would consider the talks to have been a success. Without this we
would have achieved nothing; and the essential truth of this statement was at once accepted by Benes.

We also spoke of the region’s economy, but this was of minor importance compared with the revision of the frontier.

All of these discussions were held in a most friendly
atmosphere
, and when we parted I felt that we had at least come closer to solving the major problems. This was confirmed to me by Tahy, our ambassador in Prague, who assured us, after being in contact with Masaryk, that the president was prepared to go even further than his more cautious foreign minister.