C.P.(Gen)Doc.1.Q.11.
Article 22, § 8
Czechoslovakia proposes to add an eighth point to Article 22 as follows:
“As regards Czechoslovakia, Hungary is further bound to return within one year from the signature of the present treaty all material removed from Czechoslovak territory following the Vienna Award, especially the material handed over to her by protocol mainly in the form of locomotives and trucks. In the event of such restitution being impossible, Hungary is bound to pay full valorised compensation for the damage.
As regards Czechoslovakia, Hungary is bound in the year following the entry into force of the present treaty, to bring the present state of affairs, as caused by the Vienna Award, into line with the legal state existing before November 2nd, 1938, and in particular to pay indemnity at suitably adjusted rates for the damage suffered especially in the sphere of public and private insurance and finance.”
Argument.
The new point 8 which it is proposed to add to Article 22 follows from the annulment of the Vienna Award. If this annulment is not to be an empty conception, it is necessary to draw material conclusions from it which consist in bringing the present state of affairs into line with the legal and actual state existing before the Vienna Award. On [Page 732] the basis of this Award the Czechoslovak Republic was forced to hand over by protocol certain Articles in connection with the ceded territory, mainly locomotives and trucks. These Articles were not removed by force or looted, but they had to be handed over under an enforced treaty founded upon the Vienna Award. Thus the return of these Articles does not fall within the conception of normal restitution. This conception of a wider restitution also includes reversion to the former state in matters directly ensuing from the Vienna Award in the sphere of private and public insurance and finance in connection with the enforced transference of deposits and insurance stocks corresponding to the occupied countries.