The very foundation of the 14 Wilsonian Principles was that people have an unalien able right to determine their own destiny. Yet at Trianon the application of self- determination and the use of plebiscites in drawing the new borders was totally disregarded. When the recommendations of one of the delegates to the Peace Conference, those of Field Marshall Ian Smith, to hold plebiscites in Transylvania, Slovakia, Ruthenia, Croatia and Slavonia were rejected, he was correct in declaring: A plebiscite refused is a plebiscite taken. By not allowing plebiscites, the dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the redistribution of her 48 million citizens resulted in the creation of 16 million oppressed ethnic minorities. These were not emigrants who voluntarily left their old country, but people who never in their life moved from their home towns and became foreigners, just because Clémenceau and Benes decided to redraw the borders around them.

When the Wends and Slovenes of the Muraköz protested their separation from Hungary, when the Ruthenians expressed their desire to remain part of the kingdom which they shared for a thousand years, when the Swabians of the Banat protested their annexation into Romania and Yugoslavia (Vojvodina), the answer of Clémenceau was always the same: no, no and no. There was only one exception to the arbitrary drawing of the new borders (mostly by Eduard Benes), there was only a single case where President Wilson's principle of self-determination prevailed: It was in the case of the city of Sopron, which was allowed to hold a plebiscite and voted by a majority of 65% to remain part of Hungary and not to join Austria.