Current Literature THE TREATY OF TRIANON
By Count Bethlen
It is regrettable that all Hungariah revisionist propaganda is not as clear and moderate as that contained in Cot nt Bethlen's book (Longmans, 10s. 6d.). It is a well-docu- mented case for the enlargement of Hungary's boundaries. Many of his statements are, of course, open to debate. Ins suggestion, for instance, that those who framed the Peace conditions ignored the mission of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and consequently they did not believe in it," takes no account of the fact that at the time of the Peace Treaty there was no Austro-Hungarian monarchy in which to believe. The institution was in pieces and all the allied statesmen could be expected to do was to give them some coherent organization based on the considerations of race and language and the expressed desires of the people concerned. Count Bethlen, too, does not face up to the consequences of revision. Boundaries can only be adjusted at some other country's expense. There is undoubtedly a strong case against the Rumanian seizure of certain parts of Transylvania, but it is hardly likely to appear in the same light to Rumanians as it does to Hungarians. Indeed, the present reviewer was assured in the highest -quarters when he was in Rumania last autumn that to remove the Rumanian frontier even five miles backwards meant war. There is the same attitude in Yugo-Slavia and Czechoslovakia. Admittedly the Little Entente depends for its continuance on the support of France, but there appears little evidence for Count Bethlen's statement that even France is beginning to realize that she cannot continue eternally to play the role of the gendarme in order to maintain an unjust order of things in the Danube basin." For all that the arguments that Count Bethlen propounds for the revision of Hungary's boundaries are difficult to refute. But how is that revision to be brought about ? The strengthening of the clauses in the constitution of the League of Nations relating to the revision of treaties is a reform dangerously overdue.
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