Trianon 100 - Ader: Hungary 'belongs not only to the past but to the future, too'

The Hungarian nation "belongs not only to the past but to the future, too", President Janos Ader said in Parliament on Thursday, at a commemoration marking the centenary of the post-WW1 Trianon Peace Treaty. "Many think that Hungary belongs to the past, but I would like to believe that it belongs to the future," the president said, quoting 19th century Hungarian politician Istvan Szechenyi. "After a hundred years, tormented by two world wars and Trianon, and by economic crises; with over 40 years of a communist detour and a failed revolution behind us ... here we are, we are alive," the president said in his address. Hungary's geographical borders were changed in 1920 but "nobody can deprive us of the right to maintain the nation's spiritual boundaries", Ader said. A hundred years ago, a humiliated Hungary was mourning the loss of two-thirds of its territory and the shrinking of its population from 18 million to 7.5 million, Ader noted.