Paris Peace Conf. 184.01102/22
Professor A. C. Coolidge to the Commission to Negotiate Peace
[Received January 28.]
Geographic and economic unity of Hungary.
Sirs: I have the honor to report that in support of their statements that the kingdom of Hungary forms a natural geographic and economic unity to a greater extent than any other state in Europe except Great Britain the Hungarians point to the following facts. The Hungarian state is made up of the basin of the middle Danube and its tributaries and of the surrounding hills and mountains. On the north, east and much of the south the frontiers of the wild Carpathians and of the Transylvanian Alps are about as good as could be desired. In the south until the loss of Croatia and Slavonia it has also been excellent. On the west, too, it is satisfactory. Hungary consists of flat, fertile plains and of the highlands about them. All the rivers (with some slight exceptions in Transylvania) ultimately flow into the Danube, which is thus the central artery reached by many tributaries. This great common river system now more than ever needs treatment as a whole. For instance, the Danube and its tributaries are subject to sudden rise and fall. What is needed is an elaborate storage system by which water should be preserved some times in one part, some times in another, and then used later in such measure as circumstances may require; but for such a system central management is necessary.
The Hungarian plains are rich, flat lands, which in former times were a natural resort of nomad or pastoral peoples like the Magyars, and the Huns and Avars before them. Today they are chiefly devoted to agriculture and produce fine crops, although these often suffer severely from drought. The Piedmont or region of the lower hills seems to integrate rather than to separate the plains from the mountains, and it is here that many of the more important cities are to be found, cities which from their very position usually have a population [Page 379] belonging to several nationalities. In the more mountainous regions we find all the forests, all the mineral wealth and all the future considerable possibilities of the development of water-power, of which the war has here as elsewhere shown the need. As the Magyars have been men of the plains in the mountains we find predominating in numbers Slovaks, Ruthenians and Rumanians (except in the Szeckler portion of Transylvania). The Germans have been numerous in the cities and are to be found scattered about in various places, but throughout the whole country the chief landowners have been Magyars, and they claim to have lived on good terms with the peasantry.
Thanks to this diversity in the character of its different regions, Hungary has been from the earliest times a singularly self-sufficing state. The plains have furnished the food, the hills have furnished the wood and the mineral wealth, the Danube and its tributaries have brought the people together. The different parts of the country have been attached to one another by the countless ties that come from having formed parts of the same unity through long ages. With the development of modern industry and communication the unity of the kingdom has been still further strengthened. In recent years mining has been carried on on a much larger scale, and many new manufactories have arisen and thrived. These establishments are to be found in the hill regions, that is, the borderlands, but they have been financed and managed from Budapest, which has grown in the last half century from a comparatively small town into one of the capitals of the world, with a population of nearly a million people before the war. Here is the center for the railroads, the seat of government, the winter home of people from every part of the country, the great focus of national life. Even distant Transylvania is and always has been economically found more closely connected with the central plain into which most of its waters flow than it has with Rumania on the other side of the mountains.
As a final argument the Hungarians point to the historic unity of their state, and say that it could never have been preserved through all the ups and downs of its history of a thousand years, despite the variety of nationalities that have lived in it, if its continuity had not been in the nature of things in obedience to geographic law.
We can understand then what a violent rupture in the economic life of the country has been produced by the occupation, whether temporary or not, of almost the whole Hungarian peripheral by the Czecho-Slovaks, the Rumanians and the Serbians, and in their severing of all relations between the lands they have occupied and the heart of the country. We can appreciate, too, the anguish of people here when they face the possibility of a Hungary reduced to the dimensions of the present unoccupied territory, without wood, without [Page 380] iron, without coal, without manufactories, nothing but an agricultural region and a great city condemned to certain ruin.
I have [etc.]