But all Europe is still uncertain and the ground is so movable that any new construction threatens ruin. Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey, cannot live under the conditions imposed on them by the treaties. But the new States for the most part are themselves in a sufficiently serious position.
With the exception of Finland all the other States which have arisen on the ruins of the Russian Empire are in serious difficulty. If Esthonia and Lithuania are in a fairly tolerable situation Lettonia is in real ruin, and hunger and tuberculosis rule almost everywhere, as in many districts of Poland and Russia. At Riga hunger and sickness have caused enormous losses amongst the population. Recently 15,000 children were in an extremely serious physical and mental condition. In a single dispensary, of 663 children who were brought for treatment 151 were under-nourished, 229 were scrofulous, 66 anaemic, and 217 suffering from rickets. The data published in England and the United States and those of the Red Cross of Geneva are terrible.
Even with the greatest imagination it is difficult to think how Hungary and Austria can live and carry out, even in the smallest degree, the obligations imposed by the treaties. By a moral paradox, besides living they must indemnify the victors, according to the Treaties of St. Germain and the Trianon, for all the damages which the War has brought on themselves and which the victors have suffered.
Hungary has undergone the greatest occupation of her territories and her wealth. This poor great country, which saved both civilization and Christianity, has been treated with a bitterness which nothing can explain except the desire of greed of those surrounding her, and the fact that the weaker people, seeing the stronger overcome, wish and insist that she shall be reduced to impotence. Nothing, in fact, can justify the measures of violence and the depredations committed in Magyar territory. What was the Rumanian occupation of Hungary: a systematic rapine and the systematic destruction for a long time hidden, and the stern reproach which Lloyd George addressed in London to the Premier of Rumania was perfectly justified. After the War everyone wanted some sacrifice from Hungary, and no one dared to say a word of peace or goodwill for her. When I tried it was too late. The victors hated Hungary for her proud defence. The adherents of Socialism do not love her because she had to resist, under more than difficult conditions, internal and external Bolshevism. The international financiers hate her because of the violences committed against the Jews. So Hungary suffers all the injustices without defence, all the miseries without help, and all the intrigues without resistance.
Before the War Hungary had an area almost equal to that of Italy, 282,870 square kilometres, with a population of 18,264,533 inhabitants. The Treaty of Trianon reduced her territory to 91,114 kilometres—that is, 32.3 per cent.—and the population to 7,481,954, or 41 per cent. It was not sufficient to cut off from Hungary the populations which were not ethnically Magyar. Without any reason 1,084,447 Magyars have been handed over to Czeko-Slovakia, 457,597 to Jugo-Slavia, 1,704,851 to Rumania. Also other nuclei of population have been detached without reason.
Amongst all the belligerents Hungary perhaps is the country which in comparison with the population has had the greatest number of dead; the monarchy of the Habsburgs knew that they could count on the bravery of the Magyars, and they sent them to massacre in all the most bloody battles. So the little people gave over 500,000 dead and an enormous number of injured and sick.
The territories taken from Hungary represent two-thirds of her mineral wealth; the production of three million quintali (300,000 tons) of gold and silver is entirely lost; the great production of salt is also lost to her (about 250,000 tons). The production of iron ore is reduced by 19 per cent., of anthracite by 14 per cent., of lignite by 70 per cent.; of the 2,029 factories, hardly 1,241 have remained to Hungary; more than three-quarters of the magnificent railway wealth has been given away.
Hungary at the same time has lost her greater resources in agriculture and cattle breeding.
The capital, henceforth, too large for a too small state, carries on amidst the greatest difficulties, and there congregate the most pitiable of the Transylvanian refugees and those from other lost regions.
The demographic structure of Hungary, which up to a few years ago was excellent, is now threatening. The mortality among the children and the mortality from tuberculosis have become alarming. At Budapest, even after the War, the number of deaths surpasses the number of births. The statistics published by Dr. Ferenczi prove that the number of children afflicted with rickets and tuberculosis reaches in Budapest the terrific figure of 250,000 in a population of about two millions. It is said that practically all the new-born in recent years, partly through the privations of the mothers and partly from the lack of milk, are tuberculous.