Paris Peace Conf. 184.01102/110½
Professor A. C. Coolidge to the Commission to Negotiate Peace
[Received February 24.]
Sirs: I have the honor to report that I was visited today by three representatives of the German-speaking population of western Hungary, who came to express the desires of the people of their section to belong in the future to Austria and not to Hungary.
They repeated the arguments which I have already set forth in my report No. 49 of January 29th, and to which I beg leave to refer. They declared that this territory had been inhabited by Germans before the Magyars came into Hungary at all and that it had always been united by close ties with the German-Austrian territory to the west of it. Especially in recent years it has furnished much food to the city of Vienna, and Vienna in the poverty stricken condition of the new Austrian state, which has but little fertile land, is more than ever dependent upon it. My interlocutors said that the west Hungarian-Germans had always been in much closer touch culturally as well as commercially with Vienna than with Pest, and that there were about 140,000 of them in this city today. When the break-up came there had been a movement in favor of inclusion with Austria but this had been checked by the presence of Hungarian troops.
[Page 394]Of late there have been determined efforts on the part of the government at Pest to Magyarize the region and these efforts have met with some success, as is shown by the maps I enclose herewith.86 Many of the townspeople are Magyar in their sympathies but the mass of the peasantry, I was assured, are anxious for union with Austria.
I inquired how people felt about the new special law for the benefit of the Germans in Hungary, of which I sent a copy in my report. The answer was that it did not go far enough and that people did not trust the Magyar government. The famous law of nationalities of 1868 had been liberal in principle but had never been observed.
The present conditions in the region are deplorable. It is held by Hungarian troops, who use their arms on very slight provocation. I asked if it was not the headquarters of smuggling operations on a large scale. The reply was that this was inevitable under the present circumstances, and that it could only be stopped by an arrangement between the two governments which, however, the Hungarians had so far refused to conclude.
Finally came the familiar request for an occupation by a small number of Allied troops, in order to secure life and liberty at the present time, and to insure a free plebiscite when the time comes for the inhabitants to decide to what country they wish to belong; especially as, in view of the well-known Magyar methods of conducting elections, no honest vote could be taken under Hungarian rule.
I have [etc.]
- Not attached to file copy of this document.↩