nturies in spite of the many differences amongst nations,
Count Apponyi showed how important it was for Europe to have a solid
Hungary against the spread of Bolshevism and violence.

You can say [added Apponyi] that against all these reasons there is
only one--victory, the right of victory. We know it, gentlemen; we are
sufficient realists in politics to count on this factor. We know what
we owe to victory and we are ready to pay the price of our defeat. But
should this be the sole principle of construction: that force alone
should be the basis of what you would build, that force alone should
be the base of the new building, that material force alone should be
the power to hold up those constructions which fall whilst you are
trying to build them? The future of Europe would then be sad, and we
cannot believe it. We do not find all that in the mentality of the
victorious nations; we do not find it in the declarations in which you
have defined the principles for which you have fought, and the objects
of the War which you have proposed to yourselves.

And after having referred to the traditions of the past, Count Apponyi
added:

We have faith in the sincerity of the principles which you have
proclaimed: it would be doing you injustice to think otherwise. We
have faith in the moral forces with which you have wished to identify
your cause. And all that I wish to hope, gentlemen, is that the glory
of your arms may be surpassed by the glory of the peace which you will
give to the world.

The Hungarian delegation was simply heard; but the treaty, which had
been previously prepared and was the natural consequence of the Treaty
of Versailles, was in no way modified.

An examination of the Treaty of Trianon is superfluous. By a stroke
of irony the financial and economic clauses inflict the most serious
burdens on a country which had lost almost everything: which has lost
the greatest number of men proportionately in the War, which since
the War has had two revolutions, which for four months suffered the
sackings of Bolshevism--led by Bela Kun and the worst elements of
revolutionary political crime--and, finally, has suffered a Rumanian
occupation, which was worse almost than the revolutions or Bolshevism.

It is impossible to say which of the peace treaties imposed on the
conquered is lasting and which is the least supportable: after the
Treaty of Versailles, all the treaties have had the same tendency and
the same conforma