The Lessons Of An 80 Year Old Tragedy

Father R. P. Gratry: "Every nation's homeland is sacred. If you destroy one of them, you mutilate the entire human race."

On the 4th of June is the 80th anniversary of the Treaty of Trianon, the peace treaty which in 1920 mutilated and dismembered an ancient European nation: the kingdom of Hungary. At Trianon Hungary was deprived 63.6% of her inhabitants and 71.5% of her territory. This essay has three parts. I will first discuss the history of Hungary through the end of World War One, culminating in the Treaty. Next I will outline the Treaty, its architects, goals and consequences. I then will discuss Hungary's guilt and the events of the last 80 years to show, that just as Nazism was not born in Germany but in Versailles, so the tragedy of Bosnia and Kosovo (and others yet to occur) can all be traced back to Trianon. I conclude by outlining a concept which would reconstitute the Danubian Basin and could stabilize the whole of Central Europe.