House Speaker marks centenary of WWI outbreak

(MTI) – Europe will only have a future if its nation states are based on Christian morals, creative work and fair international cooperation, House Speaker Laszlo Kover said on Monday.

“The war has come to an end in a military sense but not in the mental one. It will not end as long as human dignity and fair treatment of communities — lost a hundred years ago — are not restored,” he said at a commemoration of the centenary of the First World War in the Budapest Opera House.

“In mental terms, the war can only end if we understand that the impoverishment of others cannot be a lasting source for anyone’s welfare and that it is not money but morals that can bond people in the long term,” he said.

Kover noted that the post-WWI peace treaties had promised to guarantee the right of self-determination to all nations, but instead based the new world order on the right of the strong to rule over the weak.

The House speaker said that the post-WWI peace treaties enabled Hungary to regain its independent statehood after 400 years but with a heavy price: it had to relinquish two thirds of the 1,000-year-old homeland and accept that three in ten Hungarians were put under the authority of foreign states as minorities.

“The current injustices and unfair practices ethnic Hungarians abroad are exposed to remind us that there are still Hungarian wounds to be healed,” he said.

Photo: MTI – Tamas Kovacs

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters