The Fate of Western Hungary 1918-1921 - Corvinus Library ...

associations and nationalistic-hearted population continually (…) raised caution
against the handing over of the territory. (…) is the Hungarian government had
insisted on its position on not retreating from the A-line, [then] the entire A-line
[the area lying west of it-J.B.] could have been kept, since the Austrians could
have just as easily given it up as they did Sopron, since the losing of Sopron
made their Burgenland idea worthless to them. [Sopron was intended to be the
provincial capital of Burgenland-ed.] (…) Chancellor Schober admitted later, as
did the Hungarian government, that he was forced to go to Venice only because
of the rebels and not because he was forced by the various showy diplomatic
negotiations and tricks. It is possible that Chancellor Schober would have
sought a peaceful arrangement with Hungary with an eye to the future, too,
given the trade dependence, in which Austria’s food supply is dependent on
Hungary but he could not because he found continuous opposition in the
parties, especially the Greater Germany parties, which always demanded that
the entirety of the so-called Burgenland, all the Germans of Burgenland be
attached to Austria and then, essentially, annexed to Germany.
That is why the downward negotiation was so damaging (…) – continued
Count Sigray – whose end result was the retention of Sopron and ceding the
rest of the territory; it was damaging because it did not make use of the
successes of the rebels. (…) [and] return to a previous weaker offer, which did
not make best use of the great successes of the rebels. How much this is so,
Honored House, I wish to prove by the declaration of the Greater Germany
Party, the same party in Austria that always opposed concessions to Hungary,
the Greater Germany party, which, as we shall see, was itself convinced that it
could never gain sway over Western Hungary if the Hungarian government
does not enter into the Venice Protocol. Here, allow me to read a short section
from the December 30 speech in Linz of the president of the Greater Germany
Party, Dr. Dinghoffer, which contains the following passage (he reads): ‘With
regard to the criticism in the matter of Western Hungary, that the Greater
Germany Party did not reject the Venice Protocol from the beginning, we
answer that we did not want to create a government crisis, because otherwise
Austria could not have expected to keep anything of Western Hungary, not
Sopron, nor the other parts of the territory.’ Hence, we can see that the Venice
Protocol, which the government holds up as a prestigious gain, is seen on the
other side, too, as a fortunate solution, and avers that, if the Venice Protocol
had not happened, in that case, it is likely that the Austrians probably would
have got nothing of Western Hungary.” 448
The private edition added the commentary to Count Sigray’s speech: “The
Foreign Minister, Count Miklós Bánffy, replied to the speech but neither he,
nor the head of the government [PM Bethlen] refuted any of the assertions, in
fact, they were forced to admit that the speech essentially covered the truth.
448 Speech of Count Sigray on the resistance in Western Hungary. (Private edition.)
Athenaeum Irodalmi és Nyomdai Részvénytársulat nyomása. Budapest, 1922, pp. 3, 4,
13, 15. (Source: National Assembly minutes. Budapest, 1922, vol. XV)
176