1919 Парис буюу дэлхийг өөрчилсан 6 сар 1-р хэсэг

smoother and more defensible border. These, Beneš claimed in private conversations, were not his demands; he was being pushed, he regretted, by nationalists such as his colleague Kramář.523 At Czechoslovakia’s tail in the east, Beneš asked for the largely Ukrainian-speaking territory on the south side of the Carpathians on the grounds that the locals, largely Ruthenians, were very like the Slovaks. It would be unkind, he felt, to leave them under Hungarian rule when Czechoslovakia was prepared to take them under its wing. (Conveniently, Ruthenian immigrants in the United States had voted for joining Czechoslovakia.) Adding in that piece of territory would also give Czechoslovakia a border with Rumania, a friendly state.524 He had a couple of further requests, suggestions really. There were some Slavs living in the southern part of Germany, just east of Dresden, who had begged Czechoslovakia to protect them. This was essentially a moral question and he left it to the Peace Conference.

Then there was Czechoslovakia’s need for friends, surrounded as it was on three sides by Germans and Hungarians. Perhaps there could be a corridor of land running southward between Austria and Hungary to link his country with Yugoslavia. “Very audacious and indefensible,” was Lloyd George’s view. The corridor, which never materialized, reflected Masaryk’s old dreams of a Slav federation.

The Poles, Yugoslavs and Czechoslovaks, Beneš assured the French, were all aware of how much they had in common. Although a dispute over the territory of Teschen was already removing Poland from that happy equation, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were to remain on friendly terms.525 The Czechs had many arguments to back their claims: their glorious past, their deep love of freedom, their sober, industrious virtues. They stood against Bolshevism when the lesser peoples around them were succumbing. They were at the same time the most advanced part of the Slavs and a bastion of Western civilization. His people, claimed Beneš, had always felt a special mission to defend democracy against the German menace. “Hence the fanatical devotion of the Czechs which had been noticed by all in this war.” The Czech demands were modest and reasonable. “The