Paris Peace Conf. 184.01102/23

Professor A. C. Coolidge to the Commission to Negotiate Peace

No. 27

Slovak questions.

Sirs: I have the honor to report that people here are getting exercised over the Czech seizure of northern Hungary, a seizure which has been extended continually until now it includes pretty much the whole region north of the bend in the Danube and is so near Budapest that there have been rumors that the city itself would soon be occupied. It should be remembered as soon as any territory passes into Czech hands it is immediately cut off from communication with the rest of [Page 383] Hungary and, if accounts may be trusted, measures are immediately taken to denationalize it. The Hungarians are very bitter against the Czechs and their proceedings. They maintain that the whole Slovak movement is artificial, that the great majority of the Slovaks have lived on excellent terms with the Magyars and had no desire to be separated from the Hungarian state. They assert too that Slovak is not a dialect of Czech but a separate language akin not only to Czech but the other Slovak tongues and that the Slovaks do not like the Czechs or wish to be joined to them. They are more afraid of losing their own language under the rule of a kindred one than under that of a totally different one such as Magyar. It is asserted that already one thousand Czech school teachers have been sent into the Slovak region.

The Hungarians admit that the Slovaks desire autonomy and privileges for their language which they have not enjoyed in the past. These the Hungarians say (or at least the Liberals) they are now willing to grant and continually declare that they are ready to abide by the decisions of the Slovak people, if the question is fairly put in the form of autonomy with Hungary or union with Bohemia. The Hungarians point triumphantly to President Masaryk’s recent declaration that the Slovak people were not ready for a plebiscite. They say that this shows that he knows perfectly well that the Slovaks do not desire union with Bohemia. They also point out the inconsistent nature of the Czech demands based on the historical and geographical rights in Bohemia, ethnographical ones in the Slovak territory in complete disregard of geography and history (the reference to the Moravian kingdom of 1000 years ago looks almost like a joke) and economical ones in their seizure of purely Hungarian lands north of the Danube. They say that the whole thing is nothing but imperialism in its most naked form and that they cannot believe the allies and especially America can countenance such a violation of the principles of justice and self-determination.

I have [etc.]

Archibald Cart Coolidge