I cannot conceive any greater cause of future
war than that the German people, who have certainly proved themselves
one of the most vigorous and powerful races in the world, should be
surrounded by a number of small states, many of them consisting of
people who have never previously set up a stable government for
themselves, but each of them containing large masses of Germans
clamouring for reunion with their native land. The proposal of the
Polish Commission that we should place 2,100,000 Germans under the
control of a people of a different religion and which has never proved
its capacity for stable self-government throughout its history, must,
in my judgment, lead sooner or later to a new war in the East of
Europe. What I have said about the Germans is equally true about the
Magyars. There will never be peace in South-Eastern Europe if every
little state now coming into being is to have a large Magyar Irredenta
within its borders.
I would therefore take as a guiding principle of the peace that as
far as is humanly possible the different races should be allocated
to their motherlands, and that this human criterion should have
precedence over considerations of strategy or economics or
communications, which can usually be adjusted by other means.
Pages:
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147