The Boundaries of Slovakia
The empire of Austria-Hungary broke up suddenly, so suddenly that the Allied commanders operating against it from the south did not know, how to act in a situation radically different from what they had been facing for four years. At the end of October and in the first days of November the Austrian army on the Italian front was routed, the Jugoslavs took over the Austrian navy, the Czechoslovaks carried through a successful revolution, the Hapsburgs abdicated and in Budapest the Royal Hungarian government gave way to the Magyar National Council with Count Karolyi at the head. At that time the Balkan army under the command of French General Franchet d’Esperey had already crossed into Hungary from Serbia, and on November 8, the Austro-Hungarian army command having already surrendered, Franchet d’Esperey concluded an armistice with Count Karolyi. Regardless of the fact that the Austro-Hungarian empire had fallen to pieces and that Magyar National Council could speak only for the Magyars, regardless of the fact that the Allies had recognized the independence of the Czechoslovaks, the armistice granted by the Allied General provided that the new authorities of Budapest were to be left in authority throughout Hungary. Karolyi, taking his stand on this convention, refused to evacuate Slovakia and attempted to drive out by armed force Czechoslovak officials who were gradually taking over the administration of that portion of their new republic lying in Hungary. Serious conflicts broke out between soldiers of the two nations and great cruelties were committed by Magyars against Slovak leaders. The Prague government, being desirous of avoiding war, appealed to the Supreme Allied Command in Paris, and on December 3 Col. Vix, in command of the French garrison in Budapest, called upon Karolyi to withdraw his forces and his officials from Slovak territory. At the same time Col. Vix drew a provisional boundary between territory to be occupied by Czechoslovaks and that remaining to the Magyars. The boundary runs as follows:
Commencing on the Danube at the mouth of the river Morava (March) so as to include in Czechoslovakia the city of Prešpurk or Wilsonville, the line runs along the left bank of the main channel of the Danumber of Magyar settlers included in Slovakia would be about 480,000. A majority nube in a southeastern and then eastern direction, so as to bring into Czechoslovak territory the great Danube Island of Schutt and the ancient city of Komarno. At the mouth of the Ipol the demarcation line leaves the Danube and follows the Ipol in a northerly and northeasterly direction to the neighborhood of the town of Lučenec, thence in a generally eastern direction with a northerly slant past the city of Rimavska Sobota (Rima Szombat) across the counties of Nový Hrad, Gemer, Borsod, Abauj and Zemplin to the mouth of the River Ung as far as its source in the Carpathian mountains near the Uszok pass. For the rest both Slovakia and the entire Czechoslovak republic is delimited by its ancient boundaries as against Galicia, Germany and German Austria.
When the peace conference comes to consider the definitive boundaries of the Czechoslovak republic, it will meet with few difficulties, until it comes to the line which is to separate the Slovaks from the Magyars. While Germans of both Germany and Austria will ask for the separation from the new Slav state of large districts in the north of Silesia, Moravia and Bohemia, and in the west of Bohemia, there is little fear that their demands will be granted, especially as the German minorities concerned are themselves far from anxious to be incorporated into Germany. But when it comes to the southeastern boundary of Czechoslovakia, the statesmen sitting at Paris will not have an easy task. The Magyars are clamoring that the temporary delimitation is unfair to them; they would like to hold all Slovaks under their rule, for they have not yet given up all hopes of maintaining their domination over the Slavs and Latins of Hungary; and in any case they are endeavoring by the most prodigal use of propaganda to cut
