AUSTRIA HUNGARY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 433, 18 January 1933, Page 6

AUSTRIA HUNGARY

VERSAILLES TREATY ROTARIAN COHEN CONDEMNS PARTITilON OF EMPIRE VALUE OF ROTARY" Very interesting insight into the condition of the former Austrian empire was given by Mr. Maurice Cohen to the Rotorua Rotary Club at its luncheon on Monday. Mr. Cohen who has spent the past four years in world travel told Rotarians that in his opinion the dismemberment of the Austrian-Hungarian empire was one of the blots of the Versailles Treaty. In olden days the Austro-Hungar-ian Empire had stood as one of the bulwarks of Europe against the hordes of Mahometanism, and -it was the armies of the Empire which had saved Christianity to Europe. In his opinion the disintegration of

Austria and Hungary was one oi tne worst things that could have happened to Europe and civilisation !ySpeaking of the Rotary movement in the Central Empire, Mr. Cohen paid a tribute to the spirit in which he had been received by the Rotary Club of Vienna and spoke of the high quality of the personnel of the Rotarians of that city. He mentioned that the citizens of Austria and Hungary were perhaps the most highly educated in the world, nobody's education being considered good unless he or she could speak three languages in addition to his own. He himself had addressed the Vienna Rotary Club in English and had been listene.d to with attention by from two to three hundred people three-quart-ers of whom spoke and understood

English as well as he did. The Britishers were very welcome in Hungary, in fact it might be said that Lord Rothermere was regarded as the unerowned king of Hungary and wherever he went in that country he found that Britishers were treated as honoured friends. I There was another side to the picture he said, due to the working of the Versailles Treaty by which millions of Austrians and Hungarians who were actually intensely patriotic found themselves by an arbitrary ruling, by a stroke of the pen across the map of Europe turned into Czeehs. He believed that this constituted a real menace to the world's peaee. Close at hand was the Soviet Republic and there was always the danger of Sovietistic doctrines permeating a people who had lost their nationality. He hoped that someone would arise far-seeing enough to right the great wrong done by the treaty of Versailles and weld this once great Empire again into a united whole. After briefly touching upon the Belgian and'German mentalities Mr. Cohen spoke of the great good done by Rotary in the cementing of the friendships of the world and advanced the view that by its means much of the misunderstandings of the. past might be avoided in the future.