Hungary and Democracy
Date: 2026-05-16T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: World War; 1914-1918 -- Territorial questions -- Hungary; Hungarians -- Czechoslovakia; Hungary -- Politics and government -- 20th century; Hungary -- Nationality

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Title: Hungary and Democracy

Author: Cecil J. C. Street

Author of introduction, etc.: T. P. O'Connor

Release date: May 16, 2026 [eBook #78696]

Language: English

Original publication: London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1923

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HUNGARY AND DEMOCRACY ***

HUNGARY AND
DEMOCRACY

THE STORY OF
THE NATIONS
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HUNGARY AND
DEMOCRACY

By C. J. C. STREET
WITH A FOREWORD BY
T. P. O’CONNOR

T. FISHER UNWIN LTD
LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE

First published in 1923

(All rights reserved)

FOREWORD

There is no more dangerous centre of future disturbance, if not of a new war, than the regions which include Hungary and its immediate neighbours. For the moment there is in Hungary herself the domination of a reactionary and somewhat militaristic party; and this party is lending encouragement, secret or open, to just the kind of movements that want to stir up war. The materials for this campaign exist mainly in the transfer of some of the population of the Old Hungary to the New States that have come into existence. With this transfer, a large body of Magyars have been placed under the control of men of another race; the numbers are formidable: 800,000 under the Rumanians, 636,000 under the Czechoslovakians, and 100,000 under the control of Yugo-Slavia.

That such a transfer of allegiance should be bitter to a proud race like the Magyars is intelligible; one can sympathize up to a certain point with them. But the answer to the complaint must be found in their own inexcusable and almost incredible persecution of those other races, while they held omnipotent sway over not only the Magyar but many other races. The Magyar ascendancy had nothing like it in the modern world outside, perhaps, the Orange regime in the six counties of Ulster; suffice it to say that there is no form of ascendancy which was not carried out ruthlessly and deliberately; jerrymandering, incredible under-representation in the Parliament; relentless suppression of the language and the schools of those other races; with now and then the exercise of brute force to prevent the expression of opinion, and occasionally this suppression in blood. To ask any of these now emancipated peoples to go back to such servitude would be at once unjust and impossible.

It is a misfortune of these Magyar peoples who have been transferred that geography has so intermingled them with the majorities of the other races and new kingdoms, that you could no more separate them from their present habitations than cut out the heart of a body and expect it still to live. These Magyars have the right to the liberties of every minority—even though they themselves never respected these liberties in others; liberty as to language and school and Church—and any of the new Governments which now rule them will fall under the disapproval of all liberal thinkers in the world if they do not live up to this obligation.

The writer of this book is a man trained in observation, has visited these regions, and gives the results of his investigations in what appears to me a fair and impartial spirit; and I recommend the perusal of his pages as the best guide to the problems of this storm-tossed centre; and as a useful antidote to the agitation which is being carried on in this country against the new kingdoms by the British reactionaries who naturally throw their sympathies to the side of reaction elsewhere.

March, 1923.

T. P. O’CONNOR.

INTRODUCTION

The downfall of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy has resulted in a redistribution of territory among the States of Europe. The old Kingdom of Bohemia has been united with the Slovak districts of the former Hungary to form the Czechoslovak Republic, Serbia has absorbed the territories of her Yugoslav kindred, Italy has regained the Italian districts of the former Austria, Poland has been re-united after a partition lasting more than a hundred years, Rumania has been awarded the care of her Transylvanian brethren. As a consequence of this redistribution, Austria and Hungary, the partners of the former Dual Monarchy, have shrunk to a fraction of their former size.

In these circumstances it is inevitable that complaints as to the justice of the new frontiers should be heard. To the casual observer it might seem that Austria and Hungary have suffered for their defeat in the war by the dismemberment of their territories, the usual fate of vanquished nations. Hungary to-day covers an area of approximately 33,000 square miles, and has a population of about seven and a half millions. The Kingdom of Hungary before the war covered an area of about 125,000 square miles, and had a population of about twenty millions. The disparity seems enormous, and at first glance would seem to display the savage vengeance of her enemies, an act of far greater ruthlessness than the tearing of Alsace-Lorraine from France in 1871. Had Hungary been a homogeneous nation, this would indeed be the truth. But, in fact, the former Hungary was never homogeneous, and was inhabited by races of widely divergent aims and culture. It was no policy of vengeance that inspired the partition of Hungary, but the operation of the principles of self-determination in the interests of the component races of the former Kingdom.

Present-day Hungary is that part of the former kingdom in which the Magyars are in the majority. Before the War the Magyars laid claim to the whole of the territory ruled by them, regardless of the fact that their yoke was bitterly resented by the non-Magyar nationalities. It is perhaps natural that they should protest against the dismemberment of this territory, and should make every endeavour to present a case for the restitution to them of their former frontiers. Attempts are being made throughout Europe and America to represent the Magyar race as the victims of injustice, with the ultimate object of influencing some future readjustment of the Peace Treaties in their favour. With this end in view the Magyars have embarked upon an intensive campaign of propaganda, the methods of which vary with the section of the community it is desired to influence. This propaganda starts from the assumption that Hungary is and always has been a democratic country. Upon these premises the argument is built up that Hungary, the traditional friend of the Allies, has been unjustly treated, that her division was contrary to the principles of self-determination, and that her continued existence within her present boundaries is impossible. The only rightful and expedient course is therefore to restore her to her former state.

The object of the present book is to adduce the facts necessary for a dispassionate examination of the arguments of the Magyar propagandists. It is, of course, impossible to reply to each of the Magyar contentions in detail; the most that can be done is to give some idea of the form in which they are presented. A single instance must suffice. A periodical entitled Chains is published at Oxford, and describes itself as “The Organ of the Oxford League for Hungarian Self-Determination.” The following is an extract from the Editorial in its issue of March 16, 1922: “It is fundamentally wrong to suppose that the accident which placed Hungary by the side of our enemies is sufficient to warrant our silent acquiescence in the destruction of the economic and political stability of a country whose ideals have so nearly approximated to our own for centuries past.” In the same issue Lord Newton contributes an article on “Hungary under the Trianon Treaty.” Extracts from this article are as follows: “Why was Hungary treated with such vindictive ferocity?” “The rewards of the Succession States were, except in the case of Serbia, out of all proportion to their services during the War, and unfortunately for the Hungarians were made chiefly at their expense.” “It is customary to exact territory from a conquered enemy; there was, therefore, nothing surprising in the fact that Hungary was forced to surrender territory to States against which she had fought.”

Now let us examine the above dispassionately. In the first place the editors speak of the “accident” which placed Hungary by the side of our enemies. What was this accident? The clamour for war in July 1914 was nowhere louder than in Hungary; it was no accident which precipitated the Magyars into war with France and Russia, but hatred of those countries on account of their support of Serbia. The contemporary Magyar Press is sufficient proof of this. “What have the French, the English and the Russians in common except spiritual decadence and moral infamy, the only ties which bind them? Their ideal is the brutal force of superior numbers.... Light struggles against darkness, human dignity against slavery, the inspiration of the soul against the brutishness of masses, idealism against barbarity and against a perversity which wears the mask of a false culture” (Pester Lloyd, September 19, 1914). “In the true sense of the word we are confronted with an alliance of ruffians; Russia wishes to steal territories from the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy both on her own account and on that of Serbia; France wishes to steal from Germany Alsace-Lorraine and more besides; as for England, she wishes to steal from Germany her economic powers and her commerce” (Az Ujsag, February 4, 1915). During the whole period of the War the Magyar Press poured out a torrent of abuse against the nations at war with Hungary. There is no trace among its pages of any accidental participation on Hungary’s part.

Again, the editors of Chains speak of Hungary as a country “whose ideals have so nearly approximated to our own for centuries past.” I leave my readers to judge by the light of the facts adduced in the following chapters how far this assumption is justified. To those who wish to pursue the subject further, I recommend Dr. Seton-Watson’s Racial Problems in Hungary, published in 1908 (now, unfortunately, out of print).

Lord Newton, as will be seen from the quotations from his article given above, bases his arguments upon the assumption that Hungary was dismembered solely to reward her enemies. This is the first and principal contention of the discontented Magyars of to-day. Their second contention is that the transfer of the nationalities to the jurisdiction of other States was contrary to their own wishes, and that those States are not capable of governing their new subjects with the same justice and impartiality as they enjoyed under Magyar rule. In order to examine the truth of this contention it will be necessary to investigate the conditions under which the new nationalities existed before the transfer and their position at the present day. Finally, the Magyars complain that their racial minorities in the States surrounding Hungary are oppressed and denied adequate representation in the Government of those States, while the national minorities still remaining in Hungary are treated with the greatest consideration. The status of these various minorities will therefore require investigation.

In the past the Magyars have regarded the non-Magyar nationalities within their borders as of inferior culture. In the article already quoted, Lord Newton treats the superiority of the Magyars as a fact established beyond question. “Millions of Hungarians have been transferred,” he says, “without any opportunity of expressing their wishes, to alien States of an inferior civilisation.” This is in exact accordance with the public utterances of the most prominent Magyar statesmen in the past.

The present book is in no way inspired by hostility towards the Magyar race, nor is it intended to create a prejudice against that race among its readers. It is merely an attempt to supply the necessary data for a fair examination of the arguments of the Magyars, and incidentally to trace the relations between present-day Hungary and democracy in the true sense of the word. If the Magyars can prove their case, there are adequate grounds for their appeal for a revision of the Treaty of Trianon. If the partition of Hungary was inspired by motives of revenge; if the nationalities of the former Hungarian Kingdom are indeed misgoverned and oppressed by States to which they yield a reluctant obedience, while in those States the Magyar minorities suffer political persecution, it would undoubtedly be in the interests of the world at large that Hungary should be restored to her former frontiers. But, on the other hand, if it appears that all these contentions on behalf of the Magyars are inspired by the imperialism of a reactionary and oligarchic people, which has for centuries been accustomed to treat non-Magyar nationalities within its borders as hewers of wood and drawers of water, and whose pride is wounded by the emancipation of those nationalities, the reactionary tendencies of Magyar aims will be exposed and the motives of their complaints revealed.

The Magyar attitude at the present day may be exemplified by a quotation from an interview accorded by Admiral Horthy to a representative of the Chicago Tribune on October 19, 1922. “Admiral Horthy received me in the colossal castle formerly occupied by Emperor Francis Joseph at the top of the ridge overlooking the Danube,” reports the interviewer. “When I asked the possibility of Hungary paying £300,000,000 (as reparations), he snapped back, ‘We cannot pay £3. You cannot change Nature and make rivers run uphill over mountains just by shifting frontiers,’ said the Regent, his eyes glancing at the map of Transylvania. ‘That territory drains Hungary economically, commercially, morally.’”

It is impossible within the compass of such a book as this to give more than a bare summary of events and facts, but I have endeavoured throughout to give references to sources whence fuller information may be obtained. In general it may be remarked that an excellent summary of Hungarian history is contained in Professor Alison Phillips’s article in the Encyclopædia Britannica, and that Dr. Seton-Watson’s Racial Problems in Hungary is a mine of information on the subject of the Magyar treatment of the nationalities up to the year 1908.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER | | PAGE
| FOREWORD | 5
| INTRODUCTION | 7
I. | HUNGARY BEFORE THE WAR | 13
II. | THE NATIONALITIES AND THE MAGYARS | 33
III. | REPRESENTATION AND JUSTICE | 52
IV. | EDUCATION | 72
V. | WAR, REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION | 92
VI. | HUNGARY AND HER NEIGHBOURS | 111
VII. | THE MINORITIES IN HUNGARY TO-DAY | 128
VIII. | THE MAGYAR MINORITIES IN THE NEW STATES | 147
IX. | MAGYAR PROPAGANDA | 160
X. | HUNGARY’S ATTITUDE TO-DAY | 183
XI. | HUNGARY AND DEMOCRACY | 198
| INDEX | 205

Hungary and Democracy

CHAPTER I
HUNGARY BEFORE THE WAR

It is beyond the scope of this book to deal, however briefly, with the history of Hungary before the famous Ausgleich, or Compromise, of 1867. This Compromise determined the status of Hungary as a modern State, independent to all intents and purposes, but linked with Austria under a common monarchy. It is sufficient for our present purposes to point out that this link in no way prejudiced the freedom of Hungary to manage her own internal affairs; it is no exaggeration to say that her domestic policy was as unfettered by it as that of England or America. The treatment of the Slovaks and Rumanians by the Magyars was in no way influenced by Austrian legislation, although it was undoubtedly affected by the example of the Austrians in their dealings with the Czechs. The Magyars, owing to the measures which they took for their own supremacy, were dominant in an independent Hungary, and up to the outbreak of war in 1914 the internal policy of the Hungarian nation was governed by the will of the Magyar race.

The population of Hungary at the time of the Compromise, according to the official Hungarian census of 1869, was 13,579,000, of which 6,027,000 were of Magyar nationality, and 7,552,000 of other nationalities. From this it will be seen that the Magyars were in a minority, forming as they did 44·4 per cent. of the total. But in consequence of the agreement between the Magyars and the Hapsburg Monarchy, the former, although forming a minority upon the territory which they occupied, contrived to become the sole directors of the State. At the same period, Hungary was composed of the same territories as in 1914. These were Hungary proper, Transylvania and Croatia-Slavonia. In the first the population was preponderatingly Magyar, in the remaining two various nationalities were closely intermingled. It is and always has been impossible to draw definite lines of demarcation between the different races. The most that can be done is to indicate roughly the areas in which any given race forms the majority of the population. In order to give a general idea of the geographical distribution of the various races included in the former kingdom, it may be said that the Magyars formed the majority of the population of the central and western districts, the Serbs and Croats the south-western corner from the Drave to the Adriatic, the Rumanians the eastern and south-eastern portions, the Ruthenes the north-east, and the Slovaks the north-west and north. The Germans were distributed in compact colonies throughout Hungary proper and Transylvania, with their greatest strength in the western frontier between Hungary and Austria, and the Szekels, allied to the Magyars, formed a compact block in the extreme east of Transylvania.

It will be seen from this rough description that the Magyars occupied the hub of the wheel while the other races were situated about its rim. Further, each of these outlying nationalities were in close contact with their kindred in other countries, with whom they naturally sought union, if not definitely political at first, at least cultural. They had interests beyond the frontiers of Hungary which drew them away from, rather than towards, the Magyars of the centre. They felt that they were parts of living nationalities, each with its own national characteristics, rather than the remains of defunct races of which the inevitable destiny was absorption in a Magyar Hungary. But, given judicious treatment, there was no reason why this feeling should have evinced itself in disloyalty to the country in which they were included. Had the Magyars possessed the gift of good government there was no reason why even such a polyglot country as Hungary should not have developed into a contented State. But the Magyars have always regarded themselves as a superior and noble race created by God to rule over the subject races. A Magyar, Erno Baloghy, in his book published in Budapest in 1908 entitled Magyar Culture and the Nationalities, says: “Our Nationalities cannot substitute any other culture for the Magyar, for there is not and cannot be a special Serb, Rumanian or Slovak culture.” This remark is merely typical of other utterances, both written and verbal.

The result of this attitude on the part of the Magyars has been to alienate the nationalities, and to force them still further away from the centre. Where capable and tactful treatment would almost certainly have bound them by links of common policy and interest to the Magyar nucleus, coercion and irritation have driven them to look for their political future beyond the borders of the State. Through the Compromise the Magyars obtained complete control over their domestic affairs, and they utilised this control to embitter the nationalities with whom they might have lived in perfect harmony.

The first important event which followed the Compromise was the “Law of Nationalities,” which was adopted by the Hungarian Parliament on December 1, 1868. This law is a most remarkable document, and had it ever been administered in the spirit of its preamble, and the letter of its provisions, it might very possibly have solved the whole problem of racial difference in Hungary.[1]

The principal provisions of the law deal with the language to be employed in Courts of Justice, Schools, Churches and Institutions. In general, the provisions ensure that any Hungarian subject can employ his native tongue in the course of his dealings with the State or with his fellow subjects. In the case of schools, the wording of the law is peculiarly definite. “Since, from the standpoint of general culture and well-being, the success of public instruction is one of the highest aims of the State also, the State is, therefore, bound to ensure that citizens living together in considerable numbers, of whatever nationality, shall be able to obtain instruction in the neighbourhood in their mother-tongue, up to the point where the higher academic education begins.”

The manner in which this law was administered will be dealt with in a subsequent chapter. For the moment it is only necessary to state that it was never enforced. One after another prominent Magyar politicians admitted in Parliament that the law was a dead letter, or that it was impossible to fulfil its provisions owing to the fact that those whose duty it was to administer it were almost exclusively Magyars ignorant of any other language but their own. The most striking commentary on the Magyar outlook upon the law after forty years’ experience of its operation was contained in a leading article in the Budapesti Hirlap, a leading Hungarian newspaper, of April 3, 1908. Speaking of the provision already quoted with regard to schools, the writer points out that the educational stipulations cannot be carried out, “because the necessary teaching staff who could teach in a foreign tongue and also the necessary customers are wanting.” The Magyar organ, it will be noticed, uses the adjective “foreign” to describe the languages spoken by more than half the population of Hungary, and is apparently unaware of the existence of that half. It is interesting to compare this statement with the official Hungarian statistics of population for the year 1900, which show that out of a total civil population whose mother-tongue was not Magyar, of 8,132,740 only 1,365,764, or 16·8 per cent., could speak Magyar.

The next incident of importance was the Electoral Law of 1874, which is one of the most curious perversions of franchise which it is possible to imagine. Under the provisions of this law, the qualifications for the vote are extraordinarily complicated, and are such as to restrict the voters to the propertied and official classes.[2] Only 6 per cent. of the population enjoyed the vote under the law, and care was taken that of these the majority should be Magyar. Not content with this partial measure, the Magyars introduced a special franchise for Transylvania, so ingeniously contrived that the majority of voters in the province should be composed of the Szekels of Magyar sympathies, while the Rumanian element, which forms the majority of the population, was almost excluded. In fact, it was estimated that of the population of Transylvania not more than 3·2 per cent. were enfranchised.

The Electoral Law was mainly the work of Coloman Tisza, who controlled the policy of Hungary for some eighteen years. “Tisza’s aim was to convert the old polyglot Hungarian kingdom into a homogeneous Magyar State, and the methods which he employed—notably the enforced Magyarisation of the subject races, which formed part of the reformed educational system introduced by him—certainly did not err on the side of moderation.”[3] This process of Magyarisation, as it came to be called, will be dealt with more fully in a subsequent chapter. For the moment it will be sufficient to give a short sketch of the Hungarian educational system.

Until 1867 education in Hungary had been entirely in the hands of the Churches of various denominations, with very slight superintendence by the Government. To show the great diversity of religious belief in Hungary proper, excluding Croatia-Slavonia, where the population was about 70 per cent. Roman Catholic, 25 per cent. Orthodox, and 5 per cent. various, and where an entirely different system of education prevailed, the statistics given on the following page may be quoted.

It must be borne in mind that in many instances nationality and religious faith overlap. The Serbians are mostly Greek Orthodox (Greek Catholic); the Ruthenians are Uniat Greeks (Greek Oriental); the Rumanians are either Greek Orthodox or Greek Uniats; many Slovaks are Lutherans; the only other Lutherans being the Germans in Transylvania and in the Spis (Zsepes) country in Slovakia. The Calvinists are composed mostly of Magyars, so that in the country the Lutherans are designated as the “German Church” and the Calvinists as the “Hungarian Church.” The Unitarians are all Magyars. Only to the Roman Catholic Church belong several nationalities.

| 1869. | 1900.
Religion. | Number. | Per Cent. | Number. | Per Cent.
Roman Catholic | 6,215,251 | 45·8 | 8,136,108 | 48·7
Greek Catholic | 1,583,043 | 11·7 | 1,830,815 | 10·9
Greek Oriental | 2,067,778 | 15·2 | 2,187,242 | 13·1
Lutheran | 1,096,184 | 8·0 | 1,250,285 | 7·5
Calvinist | 2,017,391 | 14·9 | 2,409,975 | 14·4
Unitarian | 54,345 | 0·4 | 67,988 | 0·4
Jewish | 542,257 | 4·0 | 826,222 | 4·9
Other Sects | 2,880 | — | 12,939 | —

“In 1869 there were only 13,646 primary schools in existence, or one to every 995 inhabitants; and of these hardly any were fully equipped with the necessary teaching appliances. Many of the buildings were overcrowded, insanitary or even too dilapidated for use; 1,598 communes were without a school of any kind, and of the total number of children liable to attend under the new Act, barely 48 per cent. actually attended.”[4] It was obvious that in these circumstances it was the duty of the State to interest itself in the matter of education and to supplement the efforts of the denominations by the establishment of national schools or by subsidising the existing religious organisations. This duty was emphasised by the census of 1869, which revealed that 63 per cent. of the population was entirely illiterate.

The result was the Primary Education Act introduced in 1868 by the Minister of Education, Baron Eötvös. The main provisions of this Act were compulsory education between the ages of six and twelve, and the obligation imposed upon the communes of erecting schools where no denominational school already existed, and where at least thirty children were not otherwise provided for. This Act was amended by the educational policy of Count Apponyi in 1907, which was frankly Magyarising in its tendencies. The results of this policy were that for the period 1913-14 Hungary (excluding Croatia-Slavonia) contained 16,929 elementary schools, with 35,253 teachers and 1,971,141 pupils. The number of Magyar elementary schools was 13,608 with 29,963 teachers and 1,666,270 pupils. The number of pupils according to native language was 1,107,497 speaking Magyar and 256,020 speaking Slovak, a proportion of 4·3 to 1, which is approximately the proportion of Magyars to Slovaks in the population of the country. According to official Hungarian statistics 214,267 of the Slovak pupils were allocated to Hungarian elementary schools, that is to say schools where Magyar was used exclusively in imparting instruction. The number of purely Slovak elementary schools was 365, with 42,186 pupils. In other words, while the proportion of Slovak pupils was 19 per cent. of the total speaking Magyar or Slovak, only a little over 3 per cent. of these were receiving education in their mother-tongue. But this is not even yet a complete presentment of the state of national education. Under the Apponyi Act the law provided the Government with a decisive voice in the control of all the denominational schools, irrespective of whether they received a Government grant or not. The Minister of Education might, and in practice almost invariably did, arrange the hours of instruction in Magyar (which was a compulsory subject in all schools) in such a manner that little time was left for instruction in other subjects. As a result, in elementary schools which were officially designated as Slovak, German, Rumanian or Serbian, the Magyar language was cultivated to such a degree that these schools differed but little from purely Magyar schools, instruction in the Magyar language being carried on for four-fifths of the time, leaving only one-fifth for the teaching of other subjects, which might be carried on in the pupils’ mother-tongue.

As a natural consequence the educational results were very unsatisfactory, and the number of illiterates was very large. The average percentage of people who could read and write had certainly risen to 63 throughout the entire area, but the increase was mainly in the Magyar districts. In the Slovak districts the percentages were not nearly so favourable. In the district of Saris it was only 48·6, and in the Uzgorod (Ungvar) district only 43·5. In 1913 there were 32,700 Slovak children, including those who by law were supposed to attend continuation schools, who were not registered in any school at all.

These figures are extremely interesting, as demonstrating the practical working of the alleged equality of nationalities in pre-War Hungary. The results of Magyar policy were in effect to deny adequate education to those unwilling to abandon their native tongue and accept teaching in Magyar. It must not be supposed that this policy was inspired by the idea that the other languages spoken within the borders of Hungary were moribund languages, whose abandonment would be of benefit to civilisation. The exact opposite is indeed the case, and it may safely be stated that but for the artificial efforts made to keep it alive, Magyar as a modern tongue would gradually disappear. The proscribed languages were those spoken by millions, and were in no case confined to Hungarian territory. It was rather fear of a spreading of these languages, and with them the national ideals of their users, that inspired the Magyar legislators. They believed that they could overcome the centrifugal tendencies of the nationalities by a policy of forcing them to abandon the tongues with which they conversed with their brethren beyond the frontiers, and grafting on them in the place of these tongues the Magyar language, and with it the Magyar culture and ideals. Subjection rather than alliance was the formula which was to secure the union of Hungary, or, as one of the most prominent of the Magyar politicians, Coloman Tisza, put it, the so-called subject nationalities must be taught to “be silent and pay.” A Magyar writer, Bela Grünwald, in a work entitled The Highlands, is refreshingly frank on the subject. “The secondary school is like a huge machine, at one end of which the Slovak youths are thrown in by hundreds and at the other end of which they come out Magyars.”

Enough has been said already to give the reader a rough idea of the Magyar policy with regard to the nationalities. It may be summarised by the statement that the Magyars, while on the surface passing legislation which seemed to demonstrate the perfect equality which prevailed in Hungary between the constituent nationalities, in the administration of the law took every precaution that the nationalities should be subordinated to the Magyar race. Before the War, as well as at the present time, Magyar publicists made every effort to spread throughout the world the fable of the liberty enjoyed by the nationalities which composed the realms of the Crown of St. Stephen. Both nationalities and citizens, according to them, enjoyed the most complete freedom. Hungary was the true home of democracy, a modern Utopia. How far they succeeded in imposing upon their hearers is proved by the words already quoted: “a country whose ideals have so nearly approximated to our own for centuries past.” The ideal of the English-speaking races has been true freedom and equality of all citizens in the eyes of the State. The legislation and the administration of Hungary have been directly opposed to this ideal. Is it possible to make any comparison between the franchise of England or America and that of a country where until recently only 6 per cent. of the population was entitled to the vote? Or between the educational systems of these nations and one which, at the beginning of the War, had so far succeeded that a third of the population of the country was utterly illiterate?

Far from being the home of democracy, Hungary was, and, as will be seen later, still is the stronghold of an oligarchy comparable only with that of Venice before the Napoleonic era. The Magyar spirit has always been reactionary and oppressive. It would almost seem that a true Magyar is unable to realise that other nationalities have rights in the political sense, or that their love of their own language, customs, history or culture is due to anything but the most deplorable ignorance. It is quite certain, from the perusal of the utterances of Magyar spokesmen or the leading articles of Magyar journals, that the rank and file of the Magyar race honestly believed that the “subject nationalities,” as they habitually speak of the Slovaks, Serbs and Rumanians, would be far better off as the helots of the Magyars than as their equals. But, unfortunately, the nationalities did not see eye to eye with their would-be masters. They exhibited an incomprehensible desire to follow their national bents, and an equally incomprehensible dislike of the idea of incorporation in the Magyar race. They were consequently accused, almost tearfully, of ingratitude, of thrusting aside the hand which endeavoured to lead them to higher planes of existence and culture.

As a matter of fact, the Magyars have always been incapable of dealing with the problem presented to them. If, instead of a policy of coercion, they had followed the advice of St. Stephen of Hungary, they might have welded the constituent parts of the nation into a homogeneous whole. “Treat the new-comers well,” he writes to his son Emmerich, at a time when he was insisting upon the advantages which would accrue to his country from the immigration from the West, to which he had himself opened his kingdom. “Hold them in honour, for they bring fresh knowledge and arms into the country; they are an ornament and support of the throne, for a country where only one language and one custom prevails is weak and fragile.” Enlightened advice, more easily attributable to a statesman of the twentieth than to a monarch of the eleventh century. Almost every modern nation has at one time or another in its history been confronted with the problem of absorbing into a unanimous State the different nationalities inhabiting its territories. History proves that it is only by a policy of give and take on the part of each of these nationalities that the desired end can be reached. Any attempt by one of them to employ force in the subjugation of the rest, even though the former may be in an overwhelming majority, leads inevitably to failure. Scotland and Ireland are cases in point. Towards the former, England, once she abandoned her policy of aggression, adopted an attitude based upon natural alliance. The alliance led by easy stages to union, and union to so close an association that at the present day Scotch and English are politically indistinguishable. Towards Ireland, England maintained the policy of aggression until it was too late, with the result that union was proved to be unwelcome, and the Irish nation has chosen for itself an independent position in the Empire.

It is useless to speculate now how far the Magyars might have changed the centrifugal tendencies of the other nationalities, which originated in the first place in geographical position, into a centripetal tendency founded upon mutual interest. It is possible that the racial tendencies of the nationalities are so divergent from those of the Magyars that the attempt would have been unsuccessful. But it is obvious to any student of even the most limited history that a race which formed the minority of the population of the country could not hope to bend the majority to cheerful acceptance of its will by the employment of coercion. That the Magyars should have contemplated such an enterprise shows them to be alien in thought to the democratic nations of the modern world. It is enough for them that they claim a moral superiority; let other races fail to recognise it at their peril!

Count Czernin, a former Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister, has placed on record his opinion of the Magyar outlook. “One is forced to ask oneself what the Magyars understand by ‘nation.’ If we apply the term to the inhabitants of Hungary, we see that the Magyar race forms only 40 per cent. of them, that is to say, that it is in a minority. By what right do the Magyars employ as synonymous the expressions ‘nation’ and ‘Magyar State’? The opinion of the majority in Hungary—that is to say, the real will of the nation—is never expressed; which is due not only to the nature of the Hungarian suffrage, set up with a view to favouring the Magyar minority, but far more to the intimidation, unique in Europe, to which all anti-Magyar opinions are subjected. In addition to the nationalities, humiliated, oppressed, and reduced to silence, there exists in Hungary, even among the Magyars themselves, a number of people of all classes and in every station in life who do not approve of this policy. However, any protests would involve such measures of repression on the part of the Government, the courts of justice and the authorities, that these people dare not express openly what their conscience urges, that their submission is only due to force. Hungarian elections are proverbial in Europe, and the manœuvres of which the Prime Minister Banffy availed himself when they were held, the unheard-of terrorism which he employed, are still fresh in the memories of all of us.”

This utterance may be compared with Count Apponyi’s description of Hungary as the “island of liberty” on the occasion of his visit to America in 1911, and with the proud declaration of the Hungarian newspaper Budapesti Hirlap on June 20, 1917: “We proclaim in the face of the whole world that on no part of the earth’s surface are the problems of nationality treated with greater patience, loyalty, and humane liberality than in Hungary.”

This astonishing declaration followed the words of Count Tisza, who, on January 24th of the same year, in the course of a speech in the Hungarian Chamber had said, amid loud cheers: “I am confident that I am expressing the opinion of the whole House, without distinction of parties, when I say that public opinion throughout Hungary respects the principle of nationality, that the public opinion of the Magyar race desires the free development and the prosperity of the nationalities.” It must be remembered that these declarations were made under the influence of war-time conditions, when every nation was doing its best to justify itself in the eyes of its neighbours. In the less strenuous days of peace there had been certain Magyars, more honest or less hypocritical than most of their fellow-countrymen, who did not scruple to employ the German doctrine of necessity in justification of their treatment of the nationalities. For instance, a certain Dr. Rez, a professor in the University of Kolozsvar, had stated publicly in the Budapesti Hirlap of May 26, 1910: “Our object is to establish the supremacy of the Magyars: there is no sense in concealing the fact. Let us say openly that we do not desire equality of right, because political equality and political supremacy are contradictory conceptions. Supremacy is inequality, it is the domination of one race over another.”

The ethnological problems of Hungary have been extremely well set out by Gustave Beksics, an eminent Magyar publicist, in his book Nemzeti Akcio, which was published in 1912. “There is fought a confused and bloodless struggle, sustained by social and economic means, in which the Magyars must be victorious or perish. The Magyars would fain spread over the whole country, or, in other words, secure a decisive majority over the other nationalities, in such a way as to reduce them to relative insignificance, lest the non-Magyar races spread over the country in their turn, stimulating their national consciences and their culture in opposition to the Magyars, and so the idea of a Magyar State fall into oblivion. This must be the end of the underlying motive of our national struggle: the motive of a Magyar entity, political and social. Thus, in the near future, Hungary must either be transformed into a natural State, or she must cease to exist as a State in her present form.”[5]

The Magyars, obsessed by their national ideal of making Hungary a Magyar State at the expense of the other nationalities, had already, in the years before the War, realised that the task of suppressing the non-Magyar races was beyond their unaided strength, and they had therefore sought help from abroad. They knew that they could not count entirely upon their union with Austria, for the German element in that country was itself engaged in a desperate struggle for supremacy with the non-German races, of which the principal was the Czech, closely related by origin and language with the Slovaks. The Magyars therefore centred their hopes in Berlin, believing that German aspirations to world-sovereignty coincided with their own ends.

It will be necessary to conclude this chapter with a brief survey of Magyar foreign policy prior to the War. Gambetta styled the Magyars “jingo barbarians.” Bismarck said that their policy was a compound of lawyer-like sophistry and of hussar-like arrogance. It may be added that they displayed the unforgiving temperament of a Corsican. It is possible to trace throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century the national desire for revenge for the defeat of Villagos, in 1849, where the Hungarian armies, commanded by Gorgei, in revolt against Austria, were defeated by the Russians, who had been called in by the Emperor. Their anger was directed rather against the Russians, the leaders of an imaginary “Pan-Slav” movement which had for its supposed object the union of the Slavs throughout Europe in opposition to the Magyarising tendencies evinced in Hungary. It must be remembered that all Hungarian policy was directed by the Magyars, and that the other races had no voice in it. The consequence was that the Magyars consistently opposed the Slav races and all other nations suspected of being friendly or allied to them. This is, in fact, the key-note of Hungarian foreign policy. After the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1909, the Magyars intrigued at Vienna and elsewhere in favour of war against Serbia. Things reached so advanced a stage that a manifesto was already drawn up and even approved by the Emperor, ready for issue to the Austro-Hungarian Army. This manifesto called upon the troops, relying upon their prowess, for which they were famous, to punish the insolence of the Serb nation. The men at the helm of the Magyar State were already dreaming of a war against Russia, to which the Serbian war was to be but a prelude, and for this reason they inclined towards Germany, which they had hitherto hated cordially, as the motherland of the German nationals within their borders, who showed a powerful resistance to the Magyarisation of their districts. So violent had been this hatred that in 1879, after the alliance between Andrassy and Bismarck, Coloman Tisza had been compelled to deny it for fear of the disturbances which threatened to arise throughout the country. But desire for vengeance proved stronger than this old antagonism, and from this time the Magyars became devoted friends of the Germans.[6]

Long before the War, the Magyar circles in Hungary did their best to incite the Empire to war against the Serbs, the Russians and the French. The conclusion of the Entente between England and France was sufficient to destroy the traditional friendship, to which the Magyars are so fond of referring, between Hungary and the Anglo-Saxon races. Henceforth, England was regarded as a possible enemy. The Magyar newspapers habitually launched violent attacks against the countries suspected of friendship towards the Russians and Serbs, and extolled German policy and German aims. It was not to be expected that the Germans in their turn would remain insensible of the advantages to be gained from this change of heart on the part of the Magyars, although it would seem that its significance was lost upon the other nations of Europe. On September 21, 1897, the Kaiser took advantage of a visit to Budapest to make a characteristic speech on the subject of Magyar foreign policy. It was not the speech of a mere political ally, desirous of making the most of a momentary identity of interests, and ready to abandon his friends as soon as that identity ceased. It was the speech of a ruler convinced that the political ambitions of the Germans and of the Magyars were inseparably bound together and complementary to one another.

The nations of Western Europe seemed not to have realised the change of policy which had taken place in Hungary since the days of Kossuth. In France it was believed that the taste exhibited by the Magyars for French fashions, literature and art was a sign of friendship towards France. In England it was similarly believed that their passion for racing, moulded upon the English model, was a proof of political solidarity with that country. In America the persuasive words of Apponyi convinced his hearers that Hungary was shaping a democratic policy on the lines of the great Republic. Not one of these nations seemed to be aware that for half a century Hungarian policy had gravitated towards Berlin, and had chosen Germany as her political and military ally. Western Europe anticipated a Magyar revolution against the bonds that held Hungary to Austria, and this illusion was encouraged and exploited by the Magyars in order to hide their true intentions. Kossuth, the leader of the Revolution of 1848-49, was regarded as the modern champion of independence and liberty, rights so dear to the hearts of all democracies. But the Western nations seem to have overlooked the fact that while Kossuth struggled against the centralism of Austria and the policy of Metternich, he concurred in the Magyar policy of coercion of the Slovaks, the Serbs, the Croats and the Rumanians. He wished to centralise Hungary for the benefit of the Magyars, and he, the champion of right, refused to listen to the appeals for justice made by the non-Magyar nationalities, for the granting of that justice would have sounded the knell of the domination of Hungary by the Magyar race. The change in the attitude of Hungary towards Austria passed almost unnoticed in the West. As soon as Vienna abandoned her policy of centralisation of Hungary in the interests of the Germans, and resigned the Kingdom of St. Stephen to the Magyars, the latter abandoned their revolt against Austria. Had this tendency been noticed and understood, there could have been no surprise at the part played by Hungary during the War. It was no “accidental” enmity towards the Entente Powers that animated the Magyars, but a definite antagonism founded upon self-interest. They were persuaded that their interests were identical with those of the Germans of Austria, whose supremacy was equally menaced by the national movements and consciousness of their “subject races.” Both Austria and Hungary sheltered their political ambitions under the wings of the German eagle.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] It is too long for full quotation here, but it may be found in full in Racial Problems in Hungary. The preamble is as follows: “Since all citizens of Hungary, according to the principles of the Constitution, form from the political point of view one nation ... the indivisible unitary Hungarian nation ... of which every citizen of the Fatherland is a member, no matter to what nationality he belongs; since, moreover, this equality of right can only exist with reference to the official use of the various languages of the country, and only under special provisions, in so far as is rendered necessary by the unity of the country and the practical possibility of government and administration; the following rules will serve as standard regarding the official use of the various languages, while in all other matters the complete equality of the citizens remains untouched.”

[2] See page 56.

[3] A. N. Bain and W. A. Phillips, Encyclopædia Britannica.

[4] See Seton-Watson, Racial Problems in Hungary.

[5] Even the most fervent admirers of the Magyars do not attempt to deny the repressive policy carried out by them against the nationalities; they attempt no more than to minimise it. “Under the influence of the Jewish Press an excessive nationalism developed in Hungary, which created discord among populations which for a long time had been accustomed to get on fairly well together. There is no doubt that this Magyar Chauvinism had nothing of the brutality which disgraced the Prussian rule in Poland. Never were Serbian or Rumanian children beaten in Hungary for the offence of having said their prayers in their mother-tongue! It was rather the ebullition of a puerile vanity, which manifested itself mainly in irresponsible chatter (bavardages de café), in articles in the newspapers and in oratorical displays. However, if the word ‘oppression’ is too strong to express the attitude of the Magyars towards their nationalities, it must be admitted that they were not treated as equals. Nothing, or next to nothing, was done for their material, intellectual or moral development. The blunder of the Magyars was to regard them with supreme indifference. As someone graphically remarked: ‘The non-Magyar populations do not go on foot, they travel third-class’” (J. and J. Thiraud, Quand Israel est Roi, Paris, Plon-Nourrit et Cie).

[6] See also Magyars et Pangermanistes, Paris, Editions Bossard, 1918.

CHAPTER II
THE NATIONALITIES AND THE MAGYARS

We must now examine the relations between the Magyars and the other nationalities in Hungary rather more closely. At the census of 1910 the official Hungarian Government figures as to distribution of population in nationalities were as follows:—

Nationality. | Number.
Magyars | 10,050,575
Germans | 2,037,435
Slovaks | 1,967,970
Rumanians | 2,949,032
Ruthenes | 472,587
Croats | 1,833,162
Serbs | 1,106,471
Other races | 469,255
| —————
Total | 20,886,487
| —————

It will be advisable to supplement these figures by others, showing the apparent increase in the proportion of Magyar to non-Magyar inhabitants in Hungary, excluding Croatia-Slavonia, where the proportion has remained nearly constant for many years, owing to the peculiar conditions prevailing in that province, which will be mentioned later.

In the table[7] given on page 34 the first column denotes the year of the census from which the data are extracted, the second the total population to the nearest thousand of Hungary, excluding Croatia-Slavonia, the third and fourth the percentages of Magyars and non-Magyars respectively in that population, as returned by the Magyar officials.

Year.

Total Population.

Magyars,
per cent.

Non-Magyars,
per cent.

1787 | 8,003,000 | 29 | 71
1869 | 13,579,000 | 44·4 | 55·6
1890 | 15,163,000 | 48·5 | 51·5
1910 | 18,265,000 | 53·1 | 46·9

At first sight it would appear that the Magyars were to some extent justified in their policy of Magyarisation. The percentage of other races in Hungary was steadily decreasing, while that of the Magyars was increasing correspondingly. They might have argued, as indeed they did, that the other races were effete and moribund, and were rapidly being displaced by the higher and more virile civilisation of the Magyars. But this conclusion is erroneous. It is beyond the bounds of credibility that so rapid an increase in the Magyar percentage could be due to natural causes alone. The non-Magyar races were for the most part an agricultural and pastoral people, with a birth-rate well up to the average. This decrease is all the more remarkable because the Slavs and Rumanians were in occupation of the soil long before the Magyar invasion of 891, and have always been profoundly attached to their mother-tongue and their national traditions. It is also a fact that the percentage of Magyars has only increased since the time when they determined to make Hungary a purely Magyar State.

But the official Hungarian figures, compiled as they were by Magyar enumerators, must be regarded with considerable suspicion. The Magyars, wishing to justify their policy as far as possible in the eyes of the world, made every effort to demonstrate that they possessed a majority in the country. It is notorious that the census officials, acting in accordance with confidential instructions issued by the Government, entered as Magyars large numbers of those Slovaks, Ruthenes, Croats, Serbs and Rumanians who spoke Magyar. Prominent Magyars have admitted as much. Count Apponyi himself, in proposing the health of the chief Censor, who had been in charge of the census, at a banquet at Budapest in 1910, said: “Our honoured colleague combines in himself the poet and apparently the most prosaic statistician. But this incompatibility is only apparent, for having collaborated with him for many years, I know that his acute mind has enabled him to introduce into the figures of his statistics a similar sentiment, to arrange these figures in such a way that the poetry of patriotism is apparent in them at the first glance.” This is probably the most remarkable compliment ever paid to a statistician, more especially to one connected with such a vital matter as a census. It may be suggested that a Government having no axe to grind, would prefer that the “poetry of patriotism” was not so obvious in its official returns. This observation on the part of the man who was at the time Minister of Education is an eloquent proof of the fact that official statistics were shaped to suit the ends of the Magyar race, and that they could not be relied upon to show the true numerical proportion of the various nations included in the realm of St. Stephen.[8]

This tendency in the official figures makes it impossible to gauge the true proportions of the various races. It is certain, however, that the figures shown for the Magyars are too large, while those shown for the non-Magyars are too small. According to Professor Niederle, in his book The Slav Nation, the Slovaks in 1900 numbered 2,600,000, instead of the 1,991,402 returned in the census of that year, while the Ruthenes were some hundred and fifty thousand more numerous than was reported. The Magyar socialist leader, Deszo Bokanyi, declared in a speech delivered at Szeged in August 1917, that there were not more than eight millions of Magyars in Hungary, and that it was even doubtful whether they reached that figure. He added that it was well known that the official statistics gave every opportunity to jobbery.

Another factor which helps to explain the increase in the Magyar percentage shown in the official figures is the emigration from Hungary to America, which was on the increase during the years before the War. The number of emigrants from Hungary in the year 1906 reached the alarming total of 178,170, or approximately 1 per cent. of the total population. Of these emigrants the greater number were of non-Magyar nationality, the Magyar emigrant forming less than one-third of the whole.[9]

Grünwald, in the work already quoted, declares that Magyar policy towards these non-Magyar races. “The awakening of a national conscience among the non-Magyar races constitutes a danger to the Magyar State. The only possible culture in Hungary is the Magyar. It is impracticable to win the Slovaks to the idea of a Magyar State by kindness. The only means which remains to us is to exterminate them utterly. If the Magyars desire to survive, it is necessary that they should strengthen themselves by the assimilation of the non-Magyar races.” So notorious did this policy become throughout Europe that even men like Björnson, the eminent Norwegian poet and publicist, who from his well-known sympathy towards pan-Germanism might have been expected to approve of the parallel pan-Magyarism, were moved to protest against it. In the course of an article contributed to the Neue Freie Presse of Vienna (November 15, 1907), Björnson used the following words:—

“You have certainly read the story of Peter Maupertuis, and of the celebrated proposition which he made to Frederick the Great, of the advice which he gave in order to ensure that the people should speak Latin? The king was to enclose part of the country within an insurmountable wall. This having been done, a large number of young children were to be taken from their parents and immured behind this wall, where they would only hear Latin spoken, nothing but Latin, from morning to night. This extraordinary proposition was fully appreciated at the time by Voltaire, as you know. It is, however, to the Magyars, that original people, that chance has reserved its execution. The Magyars have built this wall; it is the Hungarian frontier, rendered impassable by the famous valour of the Magyars. Teachers exist also, the partisans of Greater Hungary. Armed with book and law, with whip and rifle, these masters introduce Magyar into the schools, a language with which I am not acquainted, but which, I am told, resembles Turkish and is consequently far superior to Latin.

“The motive behind this action is perfectly simple. There are not enough Magyars; the Magyars are in the minority in their own country. They are not very prolific, Heaven knows why. It follows, therefore, that Magyars must be manufactured. This is the chief Hungarian industry. It is a peculiarity of the partisans of Greater Hungary that everything they are or do is the finest in the world. I have recently learnt from a Magyar Government paper that the Slovaks are with regard to the Magyars in the same relation as the Esquimaux are to the Norwegians. But these Esquimaux of Hungary have produced a number of great men, such as Petofi and Kossuth. These Esquimaux of the Great Magyars are thus far superior to the other Esquimaux.”[10]

We may examine the methods of this “chief Hungarian industry,” as Björnson so aptly styled it.

The Slovaks, despite lively opposition on the part of the Magyars, succeeded in establishing three “gymnasia” (secondary classical schools, intended as preparatory to the Universities), and a society for the study of their national literature, the Slovenska Matica. But the existence of these schools was contrary to the policy of the Magyars. They closed the schools in 1874, and a year later, by methods which were acknowledged at the time to be contrary to the principles of justice or equity, they dissolved the Slovenska Matica, confiscating the funds of which it had become possessed. The buildings themselves they turned into Government offices. Since the closing of these establishments the Magyars have been obstinately opposed to the founding of the gymnasia which the Slovaks have desired to establish at their own expense. The Slovaks were therefore deprived of any secondary school in which teaching might be carried out in their mother-tongue. According to the last official census before the War, Slovakia, inhabited by a compact Slovak population, possessed thirty-three establishments of all sorts in which secondary education was imparted, in every one of which Magyar was the language of instruction.

All Slovaks, therefore, who were desirous of availing themselves of secondary educational facilities, were compelled to attend the Magyar secondary schools. The secondary schools, then, were the machinery employed in the factories where the great Hungarian industry was carried on. But even when the Slovak youth had entered the machines, it was subject to persecution. If the Magyar authorities discovered that the Slovak pupils endeavoured to keep up their knowledge of their own language, or were even in possession of books written in Slovak, they were immediately expelled from school.

Nor were the secondary schools the only agencies employed by the Magyars in manufacturing countrymen for themselves. The lot of Slovak elementary school children was no better. Under the Tisza Government, which did not come to an end until May 1917, the elementary schools in the Slovak areas of the country contained 266,107 Slovak pupils, of whom 18,312 only could be accommodated in the so-called Slovak schools, and even in these, in conformity with the Education Act of Count Apponyi, the Magyar language was taught for eighteen hours a week. The total hours of instruction per week in these schools was on the average twenty-four. There were, besides, 978 schools, at which 86,363 Slovak children attended, where the sole language used was Magyar, and 899 schools, attended by 89,299 Slovak children, in the two lowest classes of which the Slovak language was allowed as an auxiliary tongue. Under the Esterhazy Government, which followed that of Tisza, it was ordained that the elementary schools were not to use any language but Magyar, even as an auxiliary, and a little later that Magyar was to be used as the language of instruction even in the Church schools.

But the great Hungarian industry began even before the non-Magyar child reached elementary school age. “The Government fully recognised the value of the primary school as a political instrument, but, possessing a more intimate knowledge of the prevailing educational and administrative chaos than was vouchsafed to the general public, they were tempted to resort to still more drastic measures. Twelve years’ experience had taught them what the common sense of pedagogic specialists had foretold from the beginning—that a language so difficult as the Magyar can only be effectually acquired in a Magyar atmosphere, and that Slav or Rumanian village children, who perhaps only attend school for half the year and during the remaining six months seldom hear a syllable of Magyar spoken around them, are hardly likely to make any real progress in the language, unless the teaching staff is multiplied twenty-fold. An ingenious device was invented to cope with this practical difficulty, which exists even when there is no reluctance on the part of pupils and parents.... In 1891, therefore, a Bill was introduced by Count Csaky for the compulsory erection of Infant Homes (kindergarten and asiles) throughout the country. The ostensible aims of the new law were (a) to place under proper supervision young children whose parents were not in a position to give them personal attention, and (b) to promote their physical development and inculcate habits of cleanliness and intelligence.... Another aim is regarded by Hungarian statesmen as infinitely more important than the reduction of infant mortality and the appalling over-crowding and lack of medical treatment to which the mortality is mainly due. This aim is the Magyarisation of the coming generation of non-Magyars. Lest I should be accused of exaggeration, I prefer to use the inimitable words of an official Hungarian publication.”[11] The publication referred to by Dr. Seton-Watson is L’enseignement en Hongrie, published by the Hungarian Ministry of Religion and Public Instruction in 1900. According to this publication, since 1867 the kindergarten movement had lost more and more its humanitarian character, and its important side became daily more apparent. The provision regarding language made of the question of the teaching of the children a factor in political culture. This circumstance possesses all the more importance as it becomes more and more evident that infancy is the most favourable age for the teaching of the Hungarian (i.e. Magyar) language.... The completely national mission of our establishments for infant teaching is what distinguishes them above all from similar institutions abroad. Such a bare-faced admission is rare even among the cynical declarations of the Magyars.

With the exception of 656,324, who were domiciled in Hungary proper, the Serbs and Croats were mainly to be found in Croatia-Slavonia. In accordance with the Hungarian-Croatian agreement of 1868, which was ratified by the respective Parliaments of Budapest and Zagreb, Croatia-Slavonia was nominally an independent State. “In theory the viceroy, or ban, of Croatia-Slavonia is nominated by the Crown, and enjoys almost unlimited authority over local affairs; in practice the consent of the Crown is purely formal, and the ban is appointed by the Hungarian Premier, who can dismiss him at any moment.... Electors must belong to certain professions or pay a small tax. The privileged members are the heads of the nobility, with the highest ecclesiastics and officials. (These privileged members formed about half of the national assembly, or parliament, of Croatia-Slavonia and were not subject to election, holding their seats ex officio.) As a rule they represent the “Magyarist” section of society, which sympathises with Hungarian policy. The chamber deals with religion, education, justice and certain strictly provincial affairs; but even within this limited sphere, all its important enactments must be countersigned by the minister for Croatia-Slavonia, a member, without portfolio, of the Hungarian Cabinet. At the polls, all votes are given orally, a system which facilitates corruption; the officials who control the elections depend for their livelihood on the ban, usually a Magyarist; and thus, even apart from the privileged members, a majority favourable to Hungary can usually be secured.”[12]

Although the legal status of Croatia-Slavonia was that of a sovereign state, the Magyars never hesitated to violate that sovereignty. The law of 1907 concerning the railways is an example, for by it the Magyars sought to impose their language upon Croatia-Slavonia. The Serbo-Croats protested loudly against this violation of their national rights and of the sacred obligations of the treaty. In reply the Hungarian Government instituted a reign of terror in Croatia-Slavonia under the pretext of pacifying the country. Serbo-Croats were imprisoned on the grounds that they had conspired with Serbia against the Hungarian State. The notorious trial for high treason of fifty-three Serbo-Croats at Zagreb (Agram) in 1907 is a prominent example of Magyar persecution.

Again, it is possible to quote a Magyar authority in condemnation of Magyar policy. Count Joseph von Mailath, a well-known Magyar statesman and a member of the Hungarian House of Magnates, produced a book entitled Rural, Social and Political Hungary, intended as a panegyric of the Magyar national policy. In this book he writes as follows: “I think it preferable to put forward the political side of the Croatian question, for this question is first of all a question of power; the point is above all to know who is the strongest. To maintain the Hungarian character of the railways of the Hungarian State, to assure, if necessary, by force and at a pinch even by fire and sword the supremacy of the Hungarian language on the Croatian lines of these railways, is for Hungary a question of life or death; indeed, we cannot reach our port of Fiume except by passing through Croatia. It is essential that we should be masters of the route to Fiume even if right were not on our side.” In fact, right must give way to expediency where Magyar interests are concerned. Necessity knows no law.

As the Croats and Serbs were more or less segregated in Croatia-Slavonia, so the Rumanians within the domains of the Crown of St. Stephen were concentrated in Transylvania. “The population (of Transylvania) in 1900 numbered 2,456,838. Until 1848 the chief influence and privileges, as well as the only political rights, were divided among the three ‘privileged nations’ of the Hungarians, Szeklers and Saxons. The first are the descendants of the Magyar conquerors. The Szeklers are of disputed origin, but closely akin to the Magyars. The Saxons are the posterity of the German immigrants brought by King Geza II (1141-61) from Flanders and the lower Rhine, to cultivate and repeople his desolated territories.... The Hungarians and Szeklers together number 814,994, and the Saxons 233,019, but by far the most numerous element, though long excluded from power and political equality, is formed by the Rumanians, 1,397,282 in number, who are spread all over the country.... The efforts of the Rumanian inhabitants to secure recognition as a fourth ‘nation,’ and the opposition of the non-Magyar population to a closer union with Hungary, led to troubles early in the nineteenth century, culminating in 1848. In 1849 Transylvania was divided from Hungary by an imperial decree, and became an Austrian crownland; but in 1860 Transylvania became an autonomous province, with a separate Diet, and a high executive power of its own. The Diet assembled in Nagy-Szeben in 1863 decreed the complete separation from Hungary, the union with Austria, and the recognition of the Rumanians as the ‘fourth nation.’ But the Hungarian Government did not recognise this Diet, and the Diet assembled at Kolozsvar in 1865, in which the Hungarians had the majority, decreed again the union with Hungary. By the Compromise of 1867 Austria granted the union of Transylvania with Hungary, which was completed in 1868. Transylvania lost every vestige of autonomy, and was fully and completely incorporated with Hungary. Since that time the Magyarisation of the Principality has steadily been carried through, in spite of the bitter protests and discontent of both Saxons and Rumanians. A Hungarian university was founded at Kolozsvar in 1872; and Hungarian is recognised as the official language.”[13]

A single example must serve to show the methods which the Magyars employed in their treatment of the Rumanian population. In 1892, the Rumanian National Party addressed a petition to the king. This document called in question the legality of the annexation of Transylvania to Hungary. It also set out the grievances of the Rumanians against the Magyars. The Hungarian Government refused the Rumanian deputation the right to approach the king, but the National Party published the text of the petition. This action roused the ire of the Magyars, who prosecuted the authors of the document and those who were concerned in its publication, accusing them of “inciting to revolution against the Magyar race.” As a result of these prosecutions, fifty Rumanians were condemned to terms of imprisonment varying from two to five years. Their sole crime had been that they had taken the liberty of drawing attention to their grievances against the Magyars, and had declared the facts of their oppression by the dominant race.

In the attempt to extirpate the national existence of the Rumanians of Transylvania, the Magyars followed their usual policy of depriving them of educational facilities. Alarmed by the sympathy shown for Rumania during the War, the Government ordered the closing of the Rumanian normal schools in Transylvania. Some days later, Count Apponyi, then Minister of Education, issued the following circular with reference to the schools maintained by the Greek Orthodox Church: “In view of the maintenance of the security of the Magyar State and the Magyar nation, the Minister of Education has decided to convert all the Rumanian national schools in the counties bordering on Rumania into Magyar Government schools, in order to put an end to the anti-Magyar movement originating in neighbouring Rumania. This result can be achieved if the Rumanian schools pass into the hands of the Magyar Government. The Minister finds himself compelled to take this step in consequence of the fact that at the time of the invasion of Transylvania by the Rumanians, many teachers and pupils displayed signs of hostility towards the Magyar State.”

Referring to this circular, one of the Rumanian newspapers published in Transylvania remarked that the Minister of Education was profoundly mistaken if he supposed that the conversion of Rumanian schools into Magyar schools would in any way affect the patriotic spirit of the Rumanians. Liberty rather than oppression would foster the spirit of patriotism. The Budapesti Hirlap stigmatised the remark of the newspaper in question as unheard-of insolence. “It is liberty which gave the Rumanians the opportunity for their traitorous conduct, which, in its turn, provoked the ministerial edict.” The Budapesti Hirlap went on to express the hope that Count Apponyi would devote all his energies to the carrying out of his edict, with the object of putting an end to the anti-Magyar agitation which menaced the existence of the Magyar State.

It will be convenient to conclude this chapter with a short account of the relations between the nationalities of Hungary up to the time of the Ausgleich. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, when the Turks were almost entirely driven from Hungarian soil, Hungary was inhabited by scarcely two million people, of whom scarcely half a million were of Magyar nationality. Thus the Magyars, forming only a quarter of the population, were not in a position to play the leading part in the country. The Austrian administration, which always retained the decisive vote in the internal affairs of Hungary, was not disposed to favour the Magyars beyond the other nationalities. It was only in the reign of Charles VI (1685-1740) that the Hungarian administration was set up and Hungarian courts were allowed. In the eighteenth century Latin had not ceased to be the official language of all the Hungarian nationalities. The Magyar tongue, being then only in the first stages of its literary development, could not have replaced it, even had the Magyars been capable of exercising the preponderating influence in the country. In the fifteenth century attempts had been made at the time of the Hussite struggle to make use of it as a written language; its development was encouraged by the Reformation in the sixteenth century. But these revivals were followed in the seventeenth century by a period of decline. Only in Transylvania did the Magyar tongue achieve any success, where as early as 1565 it was already the language of several of the county assemblies. But when the Hapsburg dynasty acquired Transylvania at the end of the seventeenth century Magyar was no longer encouraged as an official language, and Latin was again introduced as the language of legislation and administration.

The renaissance of the Magyar language did not begin until the reign of Maria Theresa. But in spite of the brilliant beginnings of a new Magyar culture, whole blocks of the population remained strangers to Magyar ideals. It was not until the “uncrowned king,” Joseph II, directed the Hungarian administration in 1784 to use German in lieu of Latin that the national conscience of the Hungarian nobility was aroused. The Magyar tongue began to regain its ascendancy, Latin gradually lost its hold, and the use of the Magyar crept into the administration of the State and into the courts of justice. In 1840 Magyar had become the sole official language of the Government and the Diet, to the exclusion of all the other national languages of Hungary. Magyar jingoism, not content with the successes achieved in Hungary itself, endeavoured to enforce its language even on the Croats, notwithstanding the special position occupied by the latter.

The Magyars developed rapidly a presumptuous arrogance and a brutal tyranny. They alone were the chosen race; the non-Magyars, and especially the Slovaks, might think themselves fortunate in being allowed to merge themselves into the noble Magyar nation. Tot nem ember, the Slovak is not a man, was the common expression of Magyar pride, which Count Szechenyi, “the noblest of the Magyars,” inveighed against in a lecture before the Hungarian Academy. “I do not know a single Magyar” he said, “who, though his hair be white as snow or his face lined by experience or by the struggle of life, who does not at once become an irresponsible madman, or at least a man without conscience, devoid of the feelings of honour or justice, as soon as our nationality or our language is in question. In such moments our compatriots lose their mental balance, the most far-seeing become blind, and the most reasonable forget the everlasting commandment, ‘Do unto others as you would they should do unto you.’”

But Szechenyi’s words fell on deaf ears. The Magyars lost all sense of proportion, and alienated the other nationalities by suppressing their native tongues and replacing them by their own. Although Magyarisation made rapid strides, it seemed to the Jingoes that its progress was still too slow. They desired to Magyarise the whole country in the course of a few years, a desire which evinced itself in outbursts of indignation against the Throne, whose occupants endeavoured to moderate their fanatical zeal, and who, in the beginning at least, took the non-Magyar nations under the wing of their feeble protection. By 1848 the Magyar crusade reached its height. The pusillanimous king and all his entourage with him abandoned their efforts in the face of the insatiable greed of the Magyars. On April 11th of that year the new constitutional laws were sanctioned, giving Hungary her independence and dividing the monarchy into two halves. The new Constitution dealt a blow at all the non-Magyar nationalities, especially the Croats, whose country became a mere province of Hungary. A desperate struggle began between the nationalities and the Magyars, leading to the Magyar revolt against Vienna. It was only in July 1849 that Kossuth declared himself willing to sanction the law guaranteeing their free development to all Hungarian nations. The battle of Villagos and the capitulation of Gorgei put an end to the revolution, and an era of Germanism began throughout the whole monarchy, strangling every nationality except the Germans. The Magyars rid themselves gradually of their unhealthy megalomania. When Kossuth was exiled in 1859 he endeavoured to found on alien soil a confederation of the three Danubian States—Hungary, Serbia and Moldavia—with Wallachia, thus showing a different outlook towards those nations from the one he had assumed the year before. The Magyars were to be reconciled with the Serbs and Rumanians, and all citizens, irrespective of their nationality or religion, were to enjoy equal rights and liberties. This was the attitude of a representative Magyar at a time when the Magyar race was undergoing political eclipse.

The policy of absolutism brought the monarchy to the verge of ruin, and led to the disastrous war in Italy. Following the defeats sustained in 1859, the Court of Vienna sought new means of retrieving its position. It was decided to admit the people to a share in the deliberations of the Empire, and after a short time negotiations were set on foot in both Hungary and Croatia. These negotiations were hastened by the Austrian defeat at the hands of the Prussians at Königgrätz in 1866. The skill of Beust composed the quarrel between the Magyars and the Crown, and recommended the division of the monarchy into two autonomous halves. The Germans of Austria and the Magyars of Hungary were to have equal rights of aggrandisement at the expense of the other nationalities. Each was to be allowed elbow room in his own country in order to deal with its internal affairs. The Germans were to have the right to oppress the non-German races of Cisleithania, while the Magyars were to exercise the same right towards the non-Magyar nations of Transleithania. Dualism was agreed to, and the monarchy assumed the form it retained until the end of the War.

Beust and the Emperor Francis Joseph had perpetrated a glaring act of injustice towards the subject nationalities. Two nations alone profited by the new regime of Dualism. They alone could enjoy liberty in the spheres of politics, economics and culture, while the other nations were relegated to the rank of their vassals. The Hungarian nationalities were delivered to the mercies of the Magyars, and heavy as had been the German yoke, the nationalities soon discovered that that of the Magyars was far heavier. In an instant the Magyars cast off the mask of liberalism and showed themselves once more in their true rôle of brutal oppressors. The Law of Nationalities of 1868 was passed indeed, but only to serve as a veil for their true policy, but they never fulfilled the least of its promises, which they violated from the very inception of Dualism. But their persecution of the nationalities only reached its height during the administration of Coloman Tisza.

From the time that he assumed office, it was as though the Law of Nationalities had never existed. “For the Hungarians the very existence of the State was menaced while the Magyars were not in the majority and so long as the other nations were not assimilated, willy-nilly. To this end they devised every expedient to spread the Magyar element and to wipe out the other nations. On this principle everything worked to build up the Magyar State; the Hungarian Government and administrative officials, the Church, Members of Parliament, newspapers, societies, schools, kindergartens, the intellectuals and particularly the Jews. The Administration played the chief part in this policy of Magyarisation, having in its power means which no other organisation possessed. In spite of the law all non-Magyar languages were suppressed in the courts and the administration, in State undertakings such as railways, posts and telegraphs, in the schools, and in the very churches and religious houses. The Government pushed its reforming tendencies so far that it refused to tolerate even the Slovak secondary schools maintained by religious associations.”[14]

The methods by which this Magyarisation was carried out will be dealt with in greater detail in the following chapters.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] Extracted from evidence adduced before the League of Nations, September 1922.

[8] See also Magyars et Pangermanistes.

[9] See also Racial Problems in Hungary.

[10] For a collection of Björnson’s letters and articles dealing with Hungary, see Björnson et Apponyi, by E. Lederer, Prague, 1921.

[11] Racial Problems in Hungary.

[12] K. G. Jayne, Enc. Brit.

[13] Enc. Brit.

[14] Dr. Kadlec, Les Magyars et la République Tchécoslovaque, 1921.

CHAPTER III
REPRESENTATION AND JUSTICE

In order that the full scope of Magyarisation may be understood, a short summary of the principal Magyarising provisions of the laws of Hungary is given. This summary is by no means complete, but it is sufficient to give some idea of the legal aspect of the industry.

Paragraph 7 of the law of 1792 states that the Magyar language will form a branch of study regularly taught in the schools, and that every Hungarian subject must learn Magyar, as in the future only those knowing this language will be employed in the public services.

Paragraph 14 of the law of 1805 introduces Magyar as the official language of the Royal Hungarian Chancery, and ordains that the political authorities are to make use of it in their dealings with the municipalities. Only the departmental (local) bodies are left to decide for themselves whether they wish to use it in their own affairs and before the courts and Government authorities.

Paragraph 8 of the law of 1830 decides that the Prefectures are to use Magyar. The provision that candidates for the public services must know Magyar is repeated.

Paragraph 3 of the law of 1836 proclaims the Magyar wording and version of the laws as authoritative. This language becomes the official one in the Royal tribunals, and ecclesiastical authorities are instructed to keep the parish registers in Magyar.

Paragraph 6 of the law of 1840 declares Magyar to be the official language to be used in representations made by the Houses of Parliament to the Crown, in the law courts, in the business of the prefectures and in parish registers throughout the country. All priests must know Magyar. A knowledge of Magyar must extend to military matters.

Paragraph 2 of the law of 1844 prescribes that all decrees and regulations of the Royal Chancery and all legislation are to be drawn up in Magyar, and that all parliamentary debates are to be carried on in Magyar, except in the case of speeches by Croatian deputies ignorant of the language. This latter concession, however, is to hold good only for a period of six years.

Paragraph 5 of the law of 1848 proclaims Magyar as the sole diplomatic and legislative language in Hungary. By virtue of this proclamation, nobody who is ignorant of Magyar can become a deputy. Paragraph 16 of the same law declares that Magyar is the official language for all parts of the country.

Paragraph 42 of the law of 1870 relating to the establishment of municipalities decides that one-half of the departmental (county) assemblies is to consist of those who, being entitled to a personal vote, pay the most taxes. In order that the non-Magyars, however they may be qualified, should be effectively barred from office, it is stipulated that for the committee of candidature, consisting of six members, the assembly itself should nominate three members and the prefect the other three; further, that on this committee the president, who shall be the prefect himself, shall have the casting vote in case the voting should be equal. It is thus assured that the committee cannot nominate any individual as a candidate against the will of the prefect.

Paragraph 18 of the law of 1886 grants the president of a local area, in his capacity as presiding officer at municipal elections, the right of submitting as candidate for mayor, district attorney and medical officer “anyone whom he regards as worthy” of these offices. As only one candidate may be submitted for any vacancy, the submission of a candidate is equivalent to his election.

The law of 1874 relating to the changes introduced into the regulations for parliamentary elections entrusts the committee drawing up the lists of voters with the task of fixing the rating limit which is to be the qualification of the vote.

Paragraph 18 of the law of 1879 relating to elementary schools declares Magyar to be a compulsory subject throughout the elementary schools of Hungary.

The law of 1898 decrees the Magyarisation of all place names in Hungary.

We may deal with the various methods of Magyarisation suggested by the above summary in turn, considering first the means employed by the Magyars to prevent adequate representation of the non-Magyar races in the county assemblies and the national parliament.

The basis of the local government of the country has always been the county system. Under this system, which was introduced by St. Stephen and endures in all essentials to the present day, the county, municipal and communal assemblies were entrusted with a very large share in the administration. In 1886 the laws governing the election and duties were revised. The membership of the county assemblies varied according to the population of the county from 120 to 600, only half of whom were elected. Half of the seats on the assembly were awarded automatically to those members of the community who paid most taxes, in other words to the great landowners, whose support for the Magyar nation and ideal could be taken for granted. In the nature of things they were Magyars themselves, and opposed to any measures which might alleviate the lot of the peasant class or the nationalities. Having thus secured the adequate representation of the oligarchical party, the law proceeded to announce a so-called democratic franchise for the election of the remainder of the members. But this franchise was no more than the absurd and complicated parliamentary franchise of Hungary.

But in order to assure that the privileged class should in all cases have a clear majority, it was ordained that the county officials should be ex-officio members of the assembly. These officials were indeed elected by the assembly itself, if the word election can be applied to their appointment. The candidates for these posts are nominated by the president of the assembly, who was, of course, invariably a faithful Magyar, and the members of the assembly, as the elective body, were only permitted to record votes in favour of the candidates. Further, no opposition candidates might be nominated, so that nomination of a candidate was equivalent to his election. The result was that the privileged members with the support of the officials were always assured of a majority in the assembly. Few better examples of the undemocratic nature of the Magyar administration could be supplied.

The same principles were applied in the case of municipal and communal assemblies. The Magyar working and peasant classes as well as the members of the nationalities were thus denied all participation in the government of the country, and it was easy to pass any oppressive measures which might be indicated from the Magyar circles of the central Government. The system had the further advantage from the Magyar point of view that it ensured that all local officials should be of Magyar birth and proclivities, or else Magyarised members of the racial minorities. So effective was it in this direction that one of the most serious problems of the new States after the War was the disposal of the Magyar officials with which their new territories were littered.

The parliamentary franchise has already been touched upon. According to the law of 1874, the qualification for the vote was as follows:—

(a) Property qualification. 1. In free towns, owners of houses which contain three dwellings paying house tax, and owners of land paying taxes on a direct income of 32 crowns. 2. In country districts, owners of a quarter urbarial session (about 14 acres) or its equivalent. Owing to special provisions of the law, this qualification varies in different counties. 3. Owners of houses whose house tax was imposed on a basis of 210 crowns of clear income.

(b) Taxation qualification. 1. Merchants, manufacturers or town artisans, paying taxes on income of at least 210 crowns. 2. In boroughs, those who pay taxes for at least one apprentice. 3. Those paying State taxes on a direct income of at least 210 crowns. 4. Those paying income tax on 210 crowns income in Class I, on 1,400 crowns in Class II, or in the case of officials on 1,000 crowns in Class II.

(c) Professional and official qualification. All members of the Hungarian Academy, academy artists, professors, doctors, veterinary surgeons, engineers, chemists, foresters, public and communal notaries, advocates, clergy, schoolmasters.

(d) Ancestral qualification. All those possessing the franchise previous to 1848. (In 1905, 32,712 persons still voted by right of ancient privileges.)

Remarkable as this franchise was, it contains even more remarkable exceptions. For instance, not only are servants in the widest sense of the word excepted, but also all apprentices and agricultural labourers. “The proletariat has no share in political life, and if it has not been found possible to exclude the non-Magyar races entirely from the franchise, numerous devices have been successfully employed for the past forty years to keep them from the polls or to prevent them from electing men of their own nationality.... The constituencies have been cut up in the most arbitrary fashion, in defiance of geography, population and nationality, but with the one great object of favouring the Magyar element.”[15]

In consequence of the agreement between the Hapsburgs and the Magyars, the latter, although forming a minority upon the territory which they occupied, contrived to become the sole possessors of State authority. In practice the non-Magyar nationalities were excluded from any appreciable share in Hungarian legislation. In Hungary the nobility alone had the power of decision, and from the beginning of the “constitutional” era they made it impossible, with the help of armed power, to elect representatives of the non-Magyar peoples to parliament. How the Slovaks were represented in the Hungarian parliament can be judged by the following figures: In the 58 electoral areas of Hungary, inhabited almost entirely or for the greater part by Slovaks, there were elected:—

Date. | Magyar Deputies. | Slovak Deputies.
1865 | 58 | 0
1869 | 58 | 0
1872 | 56 | 2
1875 | 58 | 0
1878 | 58 | 0
1881 | 58 | 0

From the latter year onwards the Slovak political parties, seeing that their efforts were useless against the electoral machinations of the Magyars, adopted an attitude of passivity, which they maintained until 1901, making till then no attempt to secure the election of candidates. From then the numbers elected were as follows:—

Date. | Magyar Deputies. | Slovak Deputies.
1901 | 54 | 4

Of these four deputies, two were sentenced to one year’s imprisonment each for having advocated an unauthorised policy in his election speeches.

Date. | Magyar Deputies. | Slovak Deputies.
1905 | 56 | 2
1907 | 51 | 7

Of these seven deputies, one was forced to resign his seat by the ecclesiastical authorities, another was deprived of his seat for having advocated an unauthorised policy in his election addresses, and two others were sentenced to a year’s imprisonment each for the same offence.

Date. | Magyar Deputies. | Slovak Deputies.
1910 | 56 | 2

During the elections which took place after the Slovak parties had decided to resume their activities, the list of the candidates and voters sentenced for “crimes” in connection with these elections is most instructive. In 1904 a candidate of the name of Veselovsky was sent to prison for a year and fined 1,000 crowns for alleged incitement to revolt in his election addresses. One of his supporters was sent to prison for five days for shouting “Long live our candidate Veselovsky!” In the previous year a candidate was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment and a fine of 1,000 crowns for “incitement to revolt,” another to five months and 500 crowns for the same offence. The brother of the latter, a doctor, was imprisoned for two months and fined 200 crowns for the crime of “political activity at election meetings by recommending his brother to the voters!” Another supporter, a Protestant clergyman, was sentenced at the same time to three months and 300 crowns, also for “political activity at election meetings.”

“Violence or excesses during elections” is another favourite crime with which non-Magyar voters were charged. In 1905, 31 farmers were awarded sentences aggregating a year and ten months for this offence. In the next year the figure rose to 56 and the aggregate sentences to five and a half years. In 1907 the figures were about the same.

The utmost endeavours were made by the authorities to prevent the non-Magyar electors recording their votes. The constituencies and polling stations were so arranged that the Magyar communities were assured of easy access to the poll, while the non-Magyar communities had to travel great distances. It was no uncommon trick for the local authorities to declare roads and bridges unsafe for traffic on the day of the election, or for all the horses in non-Magyar districts to be placed under veterinary supervision and forbidden to move outside the commune. As soon as the elections were safely over, these restrictions were removed. There was no time fixed for the closing of the poll; this was left to the discretion of the returning officer, who was always an official of safe Magyar views. This was most convenient, for if the Magyars voted early, the poll could be closed before the non-Magyars had a chance of arriving, whilst if any important section of the Magyars were delayed, the poll could be held open until they had arrived. In order to silence complaints, the Magyar newspapers published alarming stories of intimidation by groups of non-Magyar voters, which had rendered it necessary for the returning officer to protect the Magyars. This in spite of the fact that an election was the signal for what was practically a mobilisation of the Austro-Hungarian Army, which was called in to maintain order, and naturally maintained it in the direction indicated by the authorities. In the elections of 1910, according to an official report only 194 battalions of infantry and 114 squadrons of cavalry were employed for this purpose!

The famous “Memorandum” which the Rumanian party in Transylvania attempted to present to the Emperor in 1892, and for which it was persecuted in typically Magyar fashion, contained a reference to the methods by which elections were conducted. It asserted that a non-Magyar citizen could only take part in an election at the peril of his personal safety, and that his attempts to record his vote practically resulted in a civil war against the nationalities. The troops and gendarmerie used every means of force and injustice to keep the non-Magyar electors from the polls, and instances of their brutality during the elections were so frequent as almost to pass without remark.

It was the endeavour of the officials in charge of the registers to manipulate them in such a way that even when the opposition voter reached the polling booth he more often than not discovered that he was disqualified. The voting lists were drawn up exclusively in Magyar, which made it easy to insert false particulars without the knowledge of voters of subject nationalities. For instance, the voter’s age, address or calling might be incorrectly entered, so that when he appeared he did not answer to the description entered on the list. Further, there was no secret ballot; voters were compelled to declare aloud before the returning officer, and incidentally before various other officials seated with him in the booth, the name of the candidate for whom they wished to vote. If they voted thus for the opposition candidate they became at once marked men, upon whom the eyes of the local officials were directed, and the latter took the first opportunity of trumping up against them some charge which involved a fine or imprisonment. It thus required considerable courage for a Slovak or Rumanian voter to vote for a non-Magyar candidate, or even for a Magyar peasant to vote against the wishes discreetly conveyed to him by the representatives of the Government party.

The voter could not even be sure that the returning officer would record his vote correctly. A nominee of each candidate was present in the polling booth, but the returning officer had power to eject any of these representatives on the most trivial excuse. In such cases, while a substitute was being procured the returning officer had ample leisure to transfer votes from the candidate he represented to the one officially favoured. Again, it is the Magyar custom to describe an individual by his surname followed by his Christian name. Should a voter declare his intention to vote for John Smith, to anglicise the position, he was promptly told there was no such candidate, and sent away before he had time to correct his mistake and describe the candidate as Smith, John.

Complaint was worse than useless, as it merely branded the originator of the complaint as disaffected and opposed to the Magyar nation. The officials whose duty it was to deal with the complaint were those in whose hands the control of the election lay. The following letter, written by a departmental returning officer to his subordinate at Ipolysag, a district of mixed Magyars and Slovaks, during the elections of 1881, explains the official attitude.

“I am sending you the 400 florins asked for; I know that you need them. But in order that I may be able to keep my accounts in order, I ask you to make a detailed note of it, and always to sign receipts. In matters of this sort I like to be methodical, for I have seen and I still see what harm has been done by the contrary procedure. Keep a careful list of the opposing side, and admit only 10 out of every 100 of them to the urns. That is the chief thing. Those who do not like it can complain. But no concessions!”

The letter was signed by the prefect himself, and his reference to complaints is interesting, seeing that he himself administered the appeal tribunal which heard such complaints.

Björnson published an article dealing with the electoral conditions in Hungary in the Courrier Européen of February 25, 1908, part of which is well worthy of translation here.

“I belong to a free and independent nation, and in Norway no more than in any other secondary nation is electoral fraud known. To falsify the votes of the people would be in our eyes as grave a crime as to poison the water they drank. Falsify votes! What sort of chambers could be thus elected? And what laws would these chambers pass? And what sort of morality would those who carried out these laws possess? Yet that which we look upon in our political life as the worst of calamities is the constant practice of the Hungarian aristocracy.

“It is impossible for me to explain in a few words the electoral system of Hungary. It is involved in inextricable confusion. But I can safely affirm that the electoral law of Hungary of 1848, partially recast in 1874, is an unjust act committed for an unjust end. If this be thought too severe, let us no longer consider the law, but the electoral organisations which result from it. According to these arrangements, 5,161 electors in Hungarian Rumania are distributed in twelve districts, to elect twelve—12—Magyar representatives, but 5,275 electors are concentrated in a single district to elect a single—1—Rumanian representative!

“As though this unjust organisation did not sufficiently assure the end aimed at, the law contains a provision by which a candidate can be proposed by ten electors and elected by acclamation before the mass of the electors have had time to arrive. This is how things happen. The poll is set up in a place to which access is as convenient as possible for the Magyars, and as inconvenient as possible for the Rumanians. Voting begins at 9 o’clock, and within the space of half an hour there is time to propose a candidate and to elect him by acclamation. The law contains other similar provisions which are nothing but traps. I shall not mention them, I shall merely state that Magyars alone are appointed to supervise the elections!

“And the elections themselves! I think of the districts where the Magyar aristocracy is afraid of not securing a majority. I have been sent a description of the elections in a country where the great majority of the electors were German. But for all that the deputy elected was a Magyar. People were so far from daring to go and vote that they barricaded their doors.”

The representation of non-Magyar nationalities in Hungary before the War has been shown to have been farcical. The Magyar system was completely oligarchical and utterly opposed to any idea of democracy. Its tendency was to treat the non-Magyar as a foreigner, and as far as possible to deny him any facility for the expression of his rights. It would be possible to quote instance after instance of corruption in elections and of the disqualification and imprisonment of deputies once they were elected, but space will not permit of it. The way in which the electoral system was made to serve the interests of Magyarisation has been described first, for representation is the first principle of a democratic nation. It will now be necessary to investigate the prostitution of justice for the same ends.

Under sections 7 and 8 of the Law of Nationalities, every Hungarian subject is permitted to employ his mother-tongue before his local courts, and has a choice of languages in those courts where his own is not officially employed. But in the latter case the judge is compelled to take the necessary measures, including the use of an interpreter if necessary, to ensure that the parties concerned can follow the proceedings, particularly the verdict. But these provisions were flatly disregarded. Summonses were issued, trials conducted, and verdicts issued in Magyar, even in districts where hardly any of the general population, and certainly none of the litigants, understood that language. This was merely another means of compulsion used towards the racial minorities to employ Magyar as their natural language. A Slovak or a Rumanian who remained ignorant of Magyar found himself to all intents and purposes an outlaw; he was at the mercy of anyone who chose to proceed against him on the flimsiest excuse. He could understand neither the basis of the charge nor the case against him, nor would the court listen to his defence. Finally, when the case had gone against him by default, he was ignorant of the sentence inflicted upon him. The judge entirely disregarded his right to an interpreter; if he wished for such a luxury, he was compelled to pay the man’s fees himself, which in a trial of any length were entirely beyond the means of a man of the peasant or labouring class.

Nor was the language question the only slur upon Hungarian so-called justice. The judges themselves were the constant recipients of communications from the central Government on the subject of the conduct of the cases before them. They were very carefully selected from that class of the community which could be trusted to employ its influence in favour of the Magyar ruling class and against the lower classes and the nationalities. They were bidden to employ every resource of justice to suppress “class war,” which in Hungary meant any protest by the nationalities or the Magyar peasant or labouring classes against the intolerant rule of the landed classes. In the eyes of the Magyar rulers justice was merely a convenient handmaiden to the sacred principles of oligarchy, and the purveyors of this justice were expected to act in accordance with this idea. In the rare cases where judges were non-Magyar, care was taken to appoint them to courts distant from the districts inhabited by their fellow nationals. In 1910, of 2,633 judges and official lawyers in Hungary, 2,601 were Magyar, 31 were German, and 1 was Slovak. The latter was kept in Budapest, well under the eye of the Minister of Justice. This practice ensured that the judge would be unable to conduct a case in the language of the racial minorities, even had he wished to do so. There was yet another means by which judicial procedure could be used as an instrument against those who had become unpopular with the authorities, either from their democratic tendencies or because they sympathised with the aspirations of the nationalities. They had only to be accused of inciting to class war or of conduct to the prejudice of the Magyar nation and arrested. There was no difficulty in delaying the trial for a year or more; it was rare in Hungary for a trial to follow an offence with less delay. Then, even if by some carelessness the accused was eventually acquitted, he or she had served quite a useful term of imprisonment, which would act as a salutary warning against the holding of similar views in the future.

It can now be realised how admirably the Magyars had contrived the judicial procedure of Hungary to suit their own ends. The length to which political persecution was carried was so great that any complete description of it would require a book to itself. Echoes of the more sensational political trials even reached the outside world, as, for instance, the trial of Father Hlinka, the Agram trials and the “Memorandum” trial, directed respectively against the Slovak, the Croat and the Rumanian races of Hungary. The most impartial method of obtaining some idea of political persecution in Hungary is to take the leading cases for a single year. This summary was published in a slightly different form by Björnson in März of December 1907.

The year in question extends from the end of August 1906 to the end of August 1907. It must be realised that at that time there was no suggestion of sedition on the part of the non-Magyar nationalities. It has been urged that the Magyars have been engaged in a justifiable attempt to put down smouldering rebellion against the State, that they were taking steps similar to those which must be taken by every nation faced with rebellion. This is utterly untrue. It has even been represented that the non-Magyar nationalities were at this period in the same state of revolution against the State as were the Irish Sinn Feiners against the British power in 1920. Nothing could be further from the truth. It would be far more correct to describe the nationalities as being as peaceful as the Welsh. The political persecution carried out by the Magyars was just as unjustifiable as a similar persecution would have been if carried out by the English against the Welsh, just because they were Welsh.

On August 27, 1906, a master carpenter was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment and a fine of 50 crowns for incitement to disturbance. He had criticised the new amendments to the Education Act, and had declared that it was unreasonable to martyrise the children of non-Magyar parents by forcing them to learn Magyar. On September 24th the Supreme Court of Budapest confirmed the sentence of the editor of a Slovak paper to a month’s imprisonment and a fine of 200 crowns. On October 20th his successor was sentenced to a fine of 500 crowns for defamation of character, which was incurred by his publication of a letter blaming the violence of a Magyar official.

On September 16th two citizens were sentenced to three months’ imprisonment and fines amounting to 1,100 crowns for having ostentatiously left church when a schoolmaster, who had been appointed against the wishes of the parish, began to play the organ.

On November 16th the Slovak deputy and priest, Ferdis Juriga, whose election had been particularly obnoxious to the authorities, was condemned to two years’ imprisonment and a fine of 1,200 crowns for the crime of incitement against the Magyar nationality. He had published two newspaper articles in which he had attacked the Jingoism of the Magyars and had defended himself against charges of unpatriotism. The offence was, of course, merely an excuse; he was less of a menace to the policy of Magyarisation in prison than in parliament.

On December 6th the famous Hlinka sentences were pronounced. As the result of his advocacy of the Slovak cause, Father Hlinka had become a popular figure, and on the occasion of his arrival in the village of Rozsahegy a crowd assembled to meet him. It was dispersed by gendarmes without disorder, but a week later Father Hlinka and a number of other Slovaks were arrested and left for five months in prison without trial. The accused were charged with instigation against the Magyar nationality. Ninety-seven witnesses were summoned for the prosecution and close upon forty for the defence, but of the latter all save four were disallowed by the court. Father Hlinka was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and a fine of 1,500 crowns. One of the other defendants was sentenced to a year and 900 crowns; one to four months and 300 crowns; three to a total of sixteen months and 800 crowns, and the remaining six to three months each and a total of 5,500 crowns.

On January 31, 1907, a man was sentenced to five days’ detention and a fine of 60 crowns for threatening to disturb the peace during an election.

On February 11th the manager of a Slovak paper was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment and a fine of 80 crowns for the crimes of incitement against the Magyar nation and of approval of acts contrary to law. His offence was the publication of an article inviting the prayers of the populace for Juriga, Hlinka and other condemned Slovaks. On the 19th of the same month a contributor to the same paper was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment and a fine of 400 crowns in connection with the same offence. On February 28th and March 27th two other Slovak editors who had ventured to criticise the actions of the Magyars were sentenced, one to two months and 400 crowns, the other to a year and 1,200 crowns.

On April 12th a man was sentenced to fourteen days and 50 crowns for words used in the course of his election speeches.

On April 8th six Slovaks were fined 50 crowns each for having organised a collection to pay the fine of deputy Juriga. On the 19th a man was sentenced to three months and 100 crowns for inciting the people against the Magyars in an article contributed to a Slovak paper.

On April 24th four citizens were sentenced to 34 days’ imprisonment for daring to offer opposition to Magyars who were trying to wreck Slovak political meetings.

On May 1st Hlinka was awarded an additional sentence of one month’s imprisonment and a fine of 500 crowns for criticism of the actions of a Magyar official.

On May 2nd a man and twenty-three women of Zohor were sentenced to imprisonment totalling three years and ten months. They had requested that a priest of the name of Zak should be appointed to the parish. The ecclesiastical authorities had overridden the expressed desire and the right of the parishioners and appointed a well-known advocate of Magyarisation, Imrich Hojsik. No sooner had he been appointed than the women of Zohor drove him out of the commune.

On June 17th four men of Lab were sentenced to three months’ imprisonment each for having shown in their windows, on the occasion of a religious fête, portraits of Juriga.

On June 9th and 10th the local school examinations took place at a Slovak village. The school children decorated the school with flags of the Slav colours in honour of the event. This was interpreted by the Magyar authorities as an attack against the independence of the Hungarian State, and the three masters in charge of the school were sentenced to fifteen days’ imprisonment and a fine of 200 crowns each.

During the same month a printer was sentenced to detention for fourteen days for an article discovered in a newspaper which was printed by him but which circulated entirely beyond Hungarian territory.

On July 15th a man was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment and a fine of 50 crowns for having criticised in public the actions of a Magyarising priest who had denounced certain Slovak journalists from the pulpit.

On July 21st three Czechs were arrested in the village of Lucky, having been denounced by the public notary for the crimes of speaking to the women and children of the place and making inquiries as to the methods of Magyarisation employed in the schools. One of them was detained in custody for four weeks, and was only released on the intervention of the Austrian Minister of Justice.

This extraordinary list will serve to show the measures taken by the Magyar authorities against the men of the non-Magyar nationalities in the name of justice.

But it must be borne in mind that the Magyar system of representation bore hardly on the Magyar lower classes as well as upon the non-Magyar nationalities. Although the lower class Magyar was not submitted to the persecution which was the lot of his non-Magyar neighbours, he was almost equally disenfranchised. Oscar Jaszi, an enlightened and liberal Magyar, in a book written in 1912, said: “The pressure of agrarian feudalism weighs as completely upon the other nationalities as upon the Magyars themselves, and the pressure consists in an Asiatic administration, unjust taxation, bad schools and economic usury of every description. But the oppression of the nationalities is much more serious than that of the Magyars. The Magyar Junker, maddened by nationalist hatred, sees in the non-Magyar peasant even less of a man than in the Magyar peasant.”

The spirit of the Magyar oligarchy has not changed; as will be shown later, it is as opposed to the principle of democracy as it has ever been. The Hungarian Republic of to-day hides the germ of reaction within the husk of hypocritical pretence. To permit any extension of its boundaries would be to surrender anew to despotism nations which after years of suffering have at length escaped from its toils. Sympathy with the tortuous policy of Hungary means sympathy with the forces of reaction and of a feudalism which has long been extinct in all enlightened countries. The Magyar trades upon the revulsion of feeling which all generous nations experience towards a beaten enemy, in order to secure the consent of the world to his schemes for imperilling the existence of the non-Magyar nationalities.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] Racial Problems in Hungary.

CHAPTER IV
EDUCATION

The Magyarisation policy of the Hungarian Government, although, as we have seen, it prevailed in the realms of representation and justice, attained its full development in the educational system of the country. All Magyar claims to consideration before the tribunal of the democratic nations are vitiated by the briefest consideration of their reactionary attitude towards public instruction. In order that this may be fully realised, it will be necessary to devote a whole chapter to the subject of the condition of education in Hungary before the War. It will be demonstrated later that even since the establishment of the Hungarian Republic the treatment of the non-Magyar minorities has been regarded in the same tyrannical manner.

It is, of course, impossible to treat so large a subject adequately in so small a compass. I have only attempted to give a brief sketch of the results that accrued; the reader who desires to pursue the subject in greater detail may be referred to Dr. Seton-Watson’s Racial Problems in Hungary, in which the question is treated in great detail.

According to the official Hungarian statistics for the school year 1908-1909 there were 16,496 elementary schools in Hungary, with 31,817 teachers. Of this number there were only 467 Slovak schools, with 672 teachers. Nevertheless, by the education law of 1906, these schools were transferred into establishments for Magyarisation purposes. In the same way the secondary schools and all the technical schools were entirely Magyar, and from the year 1874 onwards it was impossible for the Slovak student to obtain higher education in his native language. The universities, of course, were also purely Magyar, not only in language, but in spirit and organisation. Slovak pupils at Hungarian secondary schools were not even allowed to speak Slovak among one another, to read Slovak books or newspapers. During the whole of their school career they were compelled to conceal their national sentiments, and those who failed to do so were in danger of expulsion or even judicial persecution. The school authorities made a special point of emphasising all the elements of Magyar culture and Magyar history, while everything with Slovak associations was either ignored or made the subject of derision or belittlement. It is, therefore, not surprising that during the period of their studies the young Slovaks were largely deprived of their national consciousness and, with the exception of a very small percentage, became Magyarised. For the period of 1913-1914 the number of secondary schools in Hungary was 229, with 3,640 teachers and 77,636 pupils. Of these, 64,118 are described as Magyars and only 1,620 as Slovaks. The proportion of pupils of other non-Magyar nationalities was correspondingly small. But when one remembers the convenient habit of Magyar enumerators of designating as Magyars all those upon whom the process of Magyarisation had been carried out, it is safe to estimate the minimum number of students of Slovak nationality as not less than four thousand. This would make the number of Magyarised students originally of Slovak nationality about 2,380, a not improbable figure.

It may be objected that the comparative ease with which the process of Magyarisation succeeded was a proof of its justification, that if education prevailed upon the Slovaks to abandon their nationality so rapidly it was because the Magyar culture displayed to the awakened mind of the Slovak its superiority to the ideals in which he had been brought up. But, as a matter of fact, the very reverse is the case. The more highly the Slovaks were educated, the more clearly they could see that Magyar culture and civilisation owed whatever it possessed to outside and borrowed influences, among which their own were predominant. The true reason for the success of Magyarisation in secondary schools is to be found in the fact that unless the student consented to be Magyarised, outwardly, at all events, his education was a waste of time. As shown below, employment by the State or in the professions was practically closed to him. This was impressed upon him from the first, and he was faced with the alternatives of accepting the imposition of Magyar nationality upon his own or abandoning all hope of remunerative employment.

If it be considered that the process of Magyarisation, which increased in intensity as the student rose to the higher classes of the schools, was carried out with meticulous thoroughness, it is fair to assume that the actual number of Magyarised pupils was higher than that mentioned above. At all events, the number of students with Slovak as their native language at the Hungarian universities in the year 1913-1914 was only 106, and it is therefore obvious that only a small percentage of the Slovak pupils who passed through the ordeal of the Magyarisation machinery succeeded in preserving their nationality. And this, be it remembered, in spite of the sonorous preamble to the law of 1868: “The State is bound to ensure that citizens living together in considerable numbers, of whatever nationality, shall be able to obtain instruction in the neighbourhood in their mother-tongue, up to the point where the higher academic (i.e. university) education begins.”

The training colleges for teachers were entirely Magyarised. There were a few institutions upon whose curriculum the Slovak language figured as a subject of instruction, two hours a week being devoted to it on the so-called “direct” method. But nowhere was the Slovak language cultivated in a scientific manner, and the educational authorities, whose task it was to reorganise the schools in Slovakia after the majority of the teachers had departed for their native land at the end of the year 1918, were faced with extreme difficulties in the direction of finding teachers with any experience of their profession who were capable of imparting instruction in Slovak.

The statistics of these secondary schools and training colleges are interesting. In 1908-1909 there were in Hungary:—

139 | Magyar classical schools.
7 | German classical schools.
4 | Rumanian classical schools.
1 | Serbian classical school.
0 | Slovak classical schools.

During the same period there were:—

30 | Magyar modern schools.
2 | German modern schools.
0 | Slovak modern schools.

The figures for training colleges for teachers were:—

59 | Magyar.
5 | Rumanian.
4 | German.
1 | Serbian.
0 | Slovak.

All the special technical schools in Hungary were Magyar.

About 1860 the Slovaks had established three classical schools with the help of funds which they had collected, but the Hungarian Government did not tolerate them for long. After a successful activity which lasted for twelve years, the Slovak classical school at Volca Revuca was suppressed by the Government in 1874. In the following year the same fate befell the Slovak classical school at Turocz St. Marton, which had been in existence for eight years, and that of Klaster pod Zniovem, which had been in existence for six years. The funds and the premises of these establishments were confiscated by the Government, and the teachers were discharged without compensation and without pension. The Slovaks then abandoned the idea of founding secondary schools. When, in 1910, the Evangelical clergyman Lichner began to collect funds to establish a Slovak classical school he was fined by the political authorities, and the sum which had already been collected was confiscated.

As has already been mentioned, Slovak pupils in the secondary schools who ventured to pursue Slovak studies in their spare time rendered themselves liable to expulsion. The following table, which covers a period of ten years, gives the number of Slovak pupils expelled from free schools for having privately devoted themselves to the study of Slovak language and literature.

Year. | Type of School. | Locality. | No. expelled.
1881 | Normal school | Lucenec | 7
1882 | Normal school | Presov | 7
1882 | Girls’ high school | Bratislava | 5
1882 | Academy of law | Bratislava | 2
1882 | Classical school | Rim. Sobota | 1
1885 | Academy of Protestant Theology | Bratislava | 3
1885 | Academy of law | Bratislava | 5
1885 | Classical school | Bratislava | 4
1885 | Catholic seminary | Ostirhom | 2
1886 | Classical school | Levoca | 11
1887 | Central Catholic seminary | Budapest | 2

According to the census of 1910, the Slovaks constituted 11·9 per cent. of the total population of Hungary. The extent to which they participated in higher education is shown by the following figures:—

| Per cent. |
The training colleges for teachers contained | 4·8 | Slovaks
The classical and modern secondary schools | 2·6 | ”
The girls’ higher secondary schools | 0·9 | ”
The universities | 0·9 | ”

It is natural that under these circumstances the educated classes contained few avowed Slovaks. Moreover, the conditions which had to be fulfilled by applicants for posts under the Government were such that it was extremely difficult for Slovaks to obtain such posts. In 1887, for example, the Government issued a regulation in accordance with which even the foresters and their assistants in the State forests had to understand Magyar. In any case the sentiments of the Magyars towards the non-Magyar nationalities was almost sufficient to preclude the appointment of a Slovak to a vacancy in the public services. Hungarian official statistics afford abundant proof of this. The following figures relating to Government officials denote the conditions obtaining in the year 1910.

Judges and official lawyers in Slovakia: 461 Magyars, 0 Slovak. In the whole of Hungary: 2,601 Magyars, 1 Slovak (in the Budapest district).

Law court and prison officials in Slovakia: 805 Magyars, 10 Slovaks. In the whole of Hungary 4,756 Magyars, 16 Slovaks.

Elementary teachers in Slovakia: 4,257 Magyars, 345 Slovak. In the whole of Hungary: 18,480 Magyars, 404 Slovaks.

Higher elementary teachers in Slovakia: 226 Magyars, 0 Slovak. In the whole of Hungary: 1,268 Magyars, 2 Slovaks.

Elementary and higher elementary women teachers in Slovakia: 199 Magyars, 1 Slovak. In the whole of Hungary: 1,336 Magyars, 1 Slovak.

Secondary school teachers in Slovakia: 638 Magyars, 10 Slovaks. In the whole of Hungary: 3,518 Magyars, 23 Slovaks.

Medical officers in Slovakia: 713 Magyars, 26 Slovaks. In the whole of Hungary: 4,914 Magyars, 35 Slovaks.

These figures are only typical. At this time, it must be explained, 70 per cent. of the inhabitants of Slovakia spoke Slovak and scarcely 25 per cent. understood Magyar.[16]

From the moment when the Compromise put the Magyars in control of the internal policy of Hungary, they set to work to use the means of education as the principal machinery in their factories for Magyarising the “subject nations.” Their first attempt was clumsy, because it was too brutal. They organised what was to all intents and purposes a press-gang for the collection of poor children, whom they clothed in a distinctive uniform, numbered and transported to farms in the Alföld, the central district of Hungary, where they would be subjected to a healthful Magyar atmosphere. There they were often ill-treated; some of them escaped and contrived to reach their homes, clothed in rags and dying of hunger. Their parents, who had been deceived by lying promises, naturally kept them at home. In 1874, 400 children were transported in this way; in 1892 the number had fallen to 174, and in 1900 only 24 could be collected. The experiment was then abandoned.

It was, however, unnecessary to transport a whole people. A more subtle means of Magyarisation was discovered. Let the children of the non-Magyar nationalities be subjected to the process of Magyarisation throughout the period of their education, so that these nationalities would in due course die a natural death. In the national schools the non-Magyar pupils were given a thorny path to tread. Life was made a burden to them if they remained faithful to their national ideals, while, on the other hand, they were pampered and extolled if they allowed themselves to be converted to the true Magyar faith. In order to escape these temptations the Slovaks succeeded in establishing three secondary schools at their own expense. Their fate has already been recounted. An inquiry was opened in 1874 into the state of the school at Revuca. The inspector, a fierce Magyarist, reported that “the Slav, and consequently anti-Magyar, tendencies discernible preclude all hope that results favourable and useful to the State can accrue from the teaching,” and the school was immediately closed.

Trefort, the Minister of Education, had his appetite aroused by this success. He sent another commission to inspect the establishment at Klaster pod Zniovem, which was unable to discover any grounds for objection. A second commission was equally unsuccessful. At last the Minister discovered that the buildings were old, and did not conform to modern sanitary requirements. The managers of the school explained that they were just about to move into new quarters. But the educational authorities were not to be baulked so easily. They inspected the new premises and reported that the walls were not dry enough to allow of the occupation of the buildings. In the middle of term, 200 pupils were sent home and the school was closed. That of Turocz soon followed suit. Since that time every request of the Churches or the communes for the erection of new Slovak secondary schools remained unanswered, despite the sentiment expressed in the law of 1868.

As regards primary education, the public establishments, that is to say those kept up by the State, were exclusively Magyar. In 1868 there were, in round figures, in northern Hungary 6,000 Magyar schools, and 6,500 non-Magyar. In 1896 there were 9,700 Magyar against 4,100 Slovak. The county of Zemplin contained 295 Magyar schools for 141,000 pupils, and 20 Slovak schools for 107,000 pupils. This meant that every year thousands of children were deprived of education altogether, or compelled to enter schools where it was impossible for them to learn anything, instruction being carried out in a tongue unknown to them, and where the sole object of their teachers was to humiliate them.

Besides the schools maintained by Government funds, the law allowed private individuals, communes or Churches, to maintain private schools at their own expense. The Magyars did not dare to suppress these openly in the non-Magyar districts, but effectual means were taken to make the continuation of their existence extremely difficult, and to use them for the purposes of Magyarisation. In order to obtain a teacher’s certificate it was necessary that the applicant should possess a good knowledge of the Magyar tongue; the private schools were subjected to the inspectors of the national schools, who exercised discretionary powers; it was ordered that Magyar should be taught in all schools without exception, and the number of hours during the week, in which such instruction should take place, was fixed by the Minister of Education. In 1902 these hours were fixed at from eighteen to twenty-four per week; at the end of four school years the pupils were expected to be able to speak and write Magyar correctly, and the teachers were held responsible for their progress.

This law was so absurd that, despite the zeal with which it was enforced, the results produced by it were negligible. The census of 1890 established the fact that 46 per cent. of the population did not understand a word of Magyar; the progress made in the preceding decade had been negligible. The Jingoes were seriously alarmed. They attributed their ill-success to the obstinacy of the teachers in the denominational schools, and they turned their attention to endeavours to abolish these schools. A law of 1893 fixed a minimum salary for the teachers in the denominational schools, and as the parishes as a rule were too poor to pay the salaries fixed by this law, the State offered to pay a contribution in such cases. But this contribution was to be very dearly bought. In return for it the State claimed the right of supervision of the school. Once the subsidy was accepted, the State had the power to remove schoolmasters of whom it did not approve. Further, in all subsidised schools Magyar was to be the language in which teaching was carried out, and for ever after they were to be in exactly the same position as State schools.

In 1900 the Hungarian Government issued a report upon the conditions of education in the country. (L’enseignement en Hongrie. Ministère Royale des Cultes et de l’Instruction Publique. Budapest, 1900.) According to this report, “primary education is one of the most powerful means of consolidation of the Hungarian State.... This is the reason why State elementary schools are found principally in the poorest communes and in the districts where the population is mixed and employs a foreign tongue (de langue étrangère). The Hungarian race demands protection when it finds itself, as is often the case, enclosed within a solid block of people speaking a foreign tongue.... The schools guarantee to the Hungarians the increase of their power and extend the race towards the frontier.”

In 1904 a fresh law was passed giving the country officials the power to control the schoolmasters; to suspend or even to prosecute those whose teaching of Magyar did not produce the results demanded by law. In the training colleges for teachers, instruction was given only in Magyar, and as the students came from the higher elementary schools, which, as we have seen, were also Magyarised, they frequently found themselves unable, when they became qualified teachers, to make themselves understood by their pupils. In view of the inconvenience of this state of affairs, it was ordained in 1908 that Slovak might be taught in the training colleges for two hours per week.

The process of Magyarisation, so painstakingly evolved for half a century, received its final form by the Education Act of Count Apponyi, in 1907. Wekerle, then President of the Council, declared that “nowhere are people speaking an alien tongue so liberally dealt with as in Hungary.” Apponyi himself introduced his Act with a flourish of trumpets. “A Minister of Education would commit a crime against the State, and against those of its citizens who speak another language, if he deprived them of the chance of learning, besides their own tongue, the Magyar language; this would be to isolate them artificially and, in fact, to exclude them from political life, in which Magyar is the dominant factor. I repeat, in this kingdom the Magyars are supreme, but in that lies no menace to the other nationalities.”

The Magyars are past masters in the art of camouflage, and the administration of the law of 1907 is a striking commentary on the generous phrases of its framers. According to it, all teachers, irrespective of the nature of their schools, are Government officials, with a minimum salary fixed by statute. Private associations too poor to pay this minimum are compelled to give up their schools or to accept a subsidy. But even more onerous conditions are attached to the acceptance of this subsidy than before. The teachers in schools where it is granted must be able to read, write and teach in Magyar; the hours to be devoted to the teaching of Magyar are to be fixed by the Minister of Education; the official primers must be used in the school. If the subsidy granted is over 200 crowns, the Minister has the right to refuse to ratify the choice of teachers, and if the alternative candidate is not acceptable to him, he may nominate his own without further delay. Whenever he may deem it necessary in the public interest, the Minister may order a judicial inquiry into the conduct of any teacher who neglects the teaching of Magyar to his pupils, professes sentiments hostile to the State, which, being interpreted, means showing any sympathy for non-Magyar ideals, or who excites animosity towards the upper classes. If the finding of the court of inquiry is unfavourable, the choice of a new teacher must be approved by the Minister. Should the offence be repeated, the school is to be closed and replaced by a national school.

In non-Magyar schools, whether subsidised or not, Magyar must be taught under conditions to be prescribed by the Minister. Wherever Magyar has once been introduced as the language in which teaching is carried out, it can never be replaced by any other language. In all higher elementary schools instruction must be carried out in Magyar. The school inspectors may recommend to the Minister those teachers whose conduct merits reward.

The Royal Arms are to be placed above every school, and the Hungarian flag is to be hoisted on ceremonial occasions; no other emblems are to be allowed. The class-rooms are to be decorated with pictures displaying the exploits of Magyar heroes. Pictures which would tend to the encouragement of ideas hostile to the State are to be removed (for example, portraits of St. Cyril or St. Methodius, the traditional Slav saints, or of prominent Czech writers). All written matter used in the schools is to be in Magyar, even to the copy-books. And in upholding this law Count Andrassy had the face to say, in May 1908: “It is not true that the language of the Germans, the Rumanians, indeed of any nationality is threatened; it is not true that the Government engages in Magyarisation.”[17]

In 1907 three prominent Czech[18] wrote a letter to Björnson, which was subsequently published by him in the periodical März, of Munich. This letter so aptly described the conditions in Hungary at the time, that an extract from it is worth reproducing.

“Perhaps you will ask, where are the natural protectors of this country? Where are the clergy, the schoolmasters, the intellectuals of this people (the Slovaks)?

“The clergy? The Catholic and Protestant dignitaries, if they are of Slovak origin, are renegades who, in the name of the Gospel, pursue, like bloodhounds, their own nation. In that they are assisted by the other members of the clergy, and only a small number of priests faithful to the Slovak cause exist in miserable little parishes, surrounded by spies.

“The professors? There are none, for the three secondary schools which the Slovaks established some years ago at their own expense have been closed, as has the Slovak national museum, founded at the cost of great sacrifices.

“The schoolmasters? Poor, persecuted men, living in terror of unjust denunciation. The political autonomy of the Slovaks no longer exists; their miserable religious autonomy is violated. The Education Law, which has recently been passed by the two Houses of the Hungarian Parliament, will destroy the last vestiges of national autonomy as soon as it is passed. The 700,000 Slovak Protestants are not even allowed to maintain denominational schools at their own expense unless they permit Magyar to be the language of instruction for 24 hours per week. On the other hand, there are on Slovak soil 33 classical schools, 6 modern schools, 16 colleges for teachers, 4 academies of law, 14 theological institutes, 143 technical schools, all Magyar!

“There are besides, according to the provisions of a law of 1891, infant schools set up in each commune, to which children between the ages of three and six are obliged to go to learn Magyar.

“Czech and Slovak books are taken from school children and burnt. Pupils who have been discovered reading such books at home, or who have had their photographs taken in groups, or who have even signed their names in Slovak, are expelled. An example of this last offence occurred a few days ago.

“All these things are done in the name of the Magyar State, which sees in Panslavism the Mene, Tekel, Upharsin written on the wall.

“When, in June 1901, the Slovak deputy Juriga appealed for at least one secondary school for his nation, another deputy, amid the applause of the whole Chamber, answered him: ‘You shall have no secondary school, but a rope!’ Count Apponyi, the Minister of Education, in replying to the speech of the Slovak deputy Bella in January the same year, said, ‘I shall make teaching impossible to those schoolmasters who refuse to make their pupils into good Magyars. The principle that in this country the Magyar alone is master, holds good for every citizen of the State.’ The Chamber applauded these words.

“We should have to compile bulky volumes if we tried to describe how Hungarian history is falsified in the school primers; how the schools, the Churches, the State in all its functions, shamelessly lend themselves to the most violent Magyarism; how the activity of the Magyar societies produces an almost pathological passion.... The Rumanians, the Ruthenians, the Serbs, even the Germans, but above all the Slovaks, are the victims of the Magyar fury. A whole series of Government Slovak newspapers exists, whose only aim is to ridicule and slander the Slovaks in their own language, and on the other hand to extol Magyar civilisation.

“Slovak orphans are taken from their native districts and sent into Magyar areas to be educated as good Hungarian patriots; in reality in order to become the slaves of their Magyar protectors and often to perish in their exile.

“Place names which have existed for over a thousand years have been Magyarised by law throughout the whole State; thousands and thousands of Magyar names have been made up for this purpose. Nevertheless, the Magyars, although they have been absolute masters in their country since 1867, have, according to the published statistics, more than 50 per cent. of illiterates in their own ranks.

“The Magyars use every means to transform their agricultural State into an industrial one, but in spite of their efforts, they find it impossible to put an end to the terrible pauperism of the population. So miserable are the conditions that more than 200,000 citizens, including 40,000 Magyars, leave Hungary for America every year.

“This terrible gamble must necessarily end in disaster. Who are the instigators, the tyrants in this matter; who are the actors in this terrible drama?

“The aristocracy, deeply in debt, ruined morally and physically, to which the State is obliged to give employment lest it die of hunger; the financial speculators, mainly Jews, who surpass in Magyar Jingoism their Christian competitors, pure-blooded Magyars or renegades.

“But Europe, except in the persons of a very few who are in touch with the situation in Hungary, knows nothing of all this, for the Magyar comedy of liberty is brilliantly played.

“Wherever the fruits of civilisation are displayed, the Magyar heroes are to be found. They are to be met at international meetings for the furtherance of liberty, at scientific assemblies, rattling their spurs, full of enthusiasm for liberty and fraternity.

“They send telegrams to the Boers, address indignant manifestoes against Russian autocracy, plead for the liberation of India. Yet at the same time they take care to except themselves and their peoples from their programme.

“The idea of the Magyar State, which has become the staple of these swindlers, pervades the market. It prevails not only in the salons of the Magyar Tories, but also in the Courts of Law, in all the official institutions of Hungary, in all the pulpits of the Churches, in the money markets of Vienna and Budapest. It must always be maintained at a high rate of exchange, for a lowering of its value would immediately bring down the house of cards built by the imperialistic folly of the Magyars. It is necessary to the existence of thousands of people who, if it collapsed, would be without the means of subsistence. That is why this tragi-comedy is played with such earnestness.”

The reference in this letter to the Magyarisation of place names requires some explanation. In 1897 a law was passed for the Magyarisation of all place names in Hungary. The old historic names were banished from the map, and their places taken by unknown and in many cases fabricated and barbaric substitutes. All post office and railway notices and tickets employed these new names and were drawn up in Magyar, even in the localities where this tongue was unknown to the large majority of the people.

Nor was this form of Magyarisation confined only to place names. Every inducement was offered to Hungarian subjects to change their Slav, Rumanian or other names into a Magyar form. The fee for registration of change of name was reduced to tenpence, and pressure was employed to compel as many citizens as possible to avail themselves of the facility.

Two examples of this pressure are extracted from the Appendix of Dr. Seton-Watson’s Racial Problems in Hungary.

“In 1881 the various forestry departments of Hungary received the following circular from Headquarters:—

“... Hence it is easy to justify the endeavour of leading circles, that, hand in hand with the development of Magyar literature and with the declaration of patriotic feeling, the officials of the forestry department should crown with a list of names of good Magyar sound the building whose foundation has cost so much self-sacrifice, trouble and activity. But it is regrettable that, despite the evidence of this good feeling, there should be hardly a body in all Hungary in which we meet with so many foreign-sounding names as among the forestry officials. Both in order to restore this balance, and also as your benevolent superior, who is convinced that under equal conditions the Magyarisation of your names does involve some advantage for you, I consider it to be my duty, in order to further your best interests, to urge and encourage you to a general movement. But I also enjoin you to endeavour to plant a similar spirit among the subordinate foresters. The formalities for the Magyarisation of names have now been made so easy that it is merely necessary to hand in to the vice-sheriff of the county a petition bearing a one-crown stamp, accompanied by the baptismal certificates of the children and employment papers. In the latter, the places of birth and abode, position and moral character are to be filled in.”

On January 25, 1898, a private circular was addressed by Orban Sipos, the School Inspector of Bihar County, to all schoolmasters under him:

“I call your attention to the fact that by permission of the Minister of Education your colleague, Nicholas Radovich, teacher at the State school of Kozepes, has changed his name to ‘Keti’; Aug. Bruckenthal, teacher at the State school of Haimagi, to ‘Bihari’; and finally, John Modora, teacher at the State school of Olosig, to ‘Tinodi.’ I therefore request you in your correspondence with them in future to use Magyarised names. In this connection I express the hope and expectation, that these patriotic examples, which affect neither religious conviction nor the interests of the mother tongue, but are merely a proof of a patriotic sentiment above all question, will be speedily followed by the teachers who do not as yet possess names of a Magyar sound; for otherwise I should, to my great regret, be forced to the conviction that the teachers in question have not the necessary will and courage to offer unequivocal proofs of their loyal devotion to the Magyar Fatherland, or they would prove that they subordinate this lofty aim to other trivial considerations. While urging you to further the patriotic movement to which I have referred, I remain, with regards,

“Orban Sipos,
“Royal Inspector of Schools.”

With these telling examples of official Magyarisation before us, we may now proceed to investigate the influence of the War upon the peoples who, in 1914, found themselves under the dominion of the Crown of St. Stephen. In the space at my disposal I have been unable to do more than give the barest outline of what Magyar rule meant to those subjected to it. But even this outline should suffice to explain how it was that the great catastrophe found the subject races of Hungary, the Slovaks, Rumanians and Slavs, burning to throw off the Magyar yoke and, either of themselves or by union to some already established nation akin to them, to seek the political and social freedom so long denied them.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] Compare page 152.

[17] See also Professor Ernest Denis, Les Slovaques, Paris, Librarie Delagrave.

[18] They were Lederer, a prominent lawyer, Heydrek, the poet, and Kalal, a well-known writer.

CHAPTER V
WAR, REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION

The outbreak of war came at a time when Magyar oppression of the nationalities was approaching a crisis. The Hungarian Government felt and feared the danger which was already looming on the horizon. They felt the ground trembling under their feet, despite every effort to reduce the subject races to passive obedience to their will. Of all the influences which urged the Central Empires to select 1914 as the year in which to launch their long-meditated plans, that of the Magyars was the most potent. The result of a war in which Germans and Magyars were allied would be the final submission of the Slav races of Hungary under the Magyar yoke.

So firmly was the idea of Magyar domination fixed in the minds of the ruling classes of Hungary that in a sense they regarded the War as a defensive measure. They had undertaken the struggle in order to defend the place which they had usurped and which threatened to be taken away from them. The German conception of Mitteleuropa offered them a means of reasserting their supremacy. In exchange for their compliance, they would be awarded an important position in the great scheme, and would secure the assistance of the all-powerful German Empire in an enlarged policy of subjection of the subject races. Oskar Jaszi, in an article published in May 1916 in Wirtschaftszeitung der Zentralmachte, elaborated this idea. “The uneasiness and the fears felt by 10 millions of Magyars in the face of an equal number of non-Magyars who necessarily feel themselves drawn in spite of themselves towards their kindred beyond the frontiers is understandable. If the 60 million Germans, politically and economically united, are indeed anxious to superintend the peaceful economic and political development of a nation of 120 millions, it is easy to understand that we should succeed in breaking the teeth of national hatreds.... A rich and well-organised Hungary would be for Central Europe the surest route towards the Balkans.... Central Europe under German hegemony, the Balkans under the protection of Hungary, such is the dawn of the new era.”

With such a rosy prospect before her, Hungary was not disposed to wait for victory before putting into effect improved measures for the disciplining of the minorities. These measures grew steadily more strict as the War continued. In 1916 the Hungarian Parliament contained 413 deputies, exclusive of the 40 deputies from Croatia-Slavonia. Of these 405 were Magyar, and only 8 of other nationalities. On a basis of representation by population, the proportion should have been 215 Magyars to 198 of other nationalities. The subject races being thus denied a voice in the affairs of their country, the way was clear for the introduction of any repressive measures which might be thought necessary. In February 1917 a Bill was brought in by the Opposition for the adoption of universal suffrage. The franchise question had been for many years a burning one in Hungarian politics, and it might have been thought that the Government would have been glad to have settled it in this way in order to conciliate the mass of the people, who had already shown signs of restlessness. But fear of the minorities stood in the way. Count Tisza opposed it vehemently. “Universal suffrage is a national danger,” he said. “Racial tendencies must be resisted even if the wheel of universal history passes over the body of him who resists. Trifling as may be my strength, I shall employ it to save the nation from any thoughtless extension of the franchise.” That he had the opinion of the majority of the House with him is proved by an incident which occurred about the same time. Deputy Juriga, who was one of the eight non-Magyar members, asked permission to read a letter in Slovak, which the party he represented had written, thanking the Minister of Education for having allowed, as a war-time measure, the Slovak language to be taught in secondary schools as an optional subject. His request was drowned by cries of “Nothing but Magyar!” to which he retorted that quotations in French or English, the languages of the enemy, were allowed in the House, but that Slovak, the language of a part of Hungary, was forbidden.

The sentiments of Parliament were reflected in the actions of the local administrative authorities. In October 1917 the Lord Lieutenant of Nyitra, a county of Slovakia, in the course of a public speech, put the matter as bluntly as possible. “The Slovaks must not forget that they live in the Magyar State, and that they must not demand anything which conflicts with Magyar aspirations. Learn Magyar, all of you, this is the best advice I can give you, for Magyar is a universal language. Of what use would Slovak schools be to you? They are useless. The main thing is for you to guard against all ideas of separation, for the moment I perceive anywhere the slightest tendency towards upsetting the existing state of affairs I shall make the Slovaks feel my power and shall punish them with the utmost severity. I recognise the need for a policy of agreement and counsel, but this must be in exclusive accord with the Magyar spirit. Our sole ideal must be the Unitary Magyar State. He who opposes it will be punished mercilessly. I repeat, I shall punish all who do not act as the Magyar State wishes.”[19]

Two months previously the Pesti Hirlap (August 19, 1917) had put the Magyar attitude in a nutshell: “It is necessary to put an end to all bargaining with the nationalities. Hungary must be rendered Magyar.” As soon as he came back to office, Count Apponyi set to work to give expression to this desire. He ordered the closing of the Rumanian elementary schools and forbade the use of the Slovak language as a medium of religious instruction, which was the only subject in which it was used in the schools. But this was not enough. Dr. Roland von Hegedüs, of the University of Budapest, urged on the Government the adoption of a novel agrarian policy. “The State cannot in future leave the land in the frontier regions in the hands of proprietors whom, as the War has taught us, it is impossible to trust from the military point of view,” he declared. “In future the State cannot leave the land in the hands of the non-Magyar nationalities. The State must adopt an agrarian policy which will permit it to exercise a right of option in the frontier districts and of furthering in them the process of national assimilation.” Something of the kind had already been suggested. On June 14, 1917 the Szegedi Naplo, in the course of an article entitled The Democratisation of Hungary, had suggested a scheme of wholesale deportations. Having proved statistically that the non-Magyar nationalities occupied mainly the frontier districts, the article went on to explain that as some sort of democratic reform was necessary, but would be a source of danger to the Magyar State, it would be a good plan to remove the non-Magyar nationalities from the territories which they at present occupied, to scatter them over the centre of the kingdom, and to replace them by good and faithful Magyars. If this policy were carried out simultaneously with the reform of the Electoral Law, even the most extended suffrage would not be a menace to the Magyar State. The Pesti Hirlap referred to the matter on August 4, 1917 in the course of an article entitled Magyar Colonisation. In the work of strengthening the Magyar nation, the principal parts must be undertaken by the Ministers of Agriculture and Education. The duty of the latter was to suppress non-Magyar education in the schools and to enforce the Magyar language. The former must, at the end of the War, initiate a national and colonising policy. He must set himself to the task of readjusting the ethnographic map of the country. Backed by public education given solely in Magyar, a policy of colonisation would serve to diminish the menace of the nationalities, which split up into Magyar islands the continuity of the great anti-Slav ocean. This policy was the only hope of upholding the national unity and territorial integrity of the State.

It was not long before the suggestions bore fruit. On October 25th the Parliament of Budapest approved a Bill presented by Mezossy, a member of the Government. He explained the purport of his Bill to a representative of the Pesti Hirlap, which paper published it next day. “In the first half of the War the melancholy fact was realised that in the most fertile regions of southern Hungary the land was in the hands of an unreliable population.... The same was apparent in the north.... The land in these threatened regions should be in the hands of men worthy of confidence. In order to achieve this end, the transfer of ownership of land will be regulated by the consent of the authorities. Not only the transfer of land, but the lease of it as well will depend on the authorities. The duration of a lease will not exceed ten years. In the last resort, the Minister of Agriculture will examine any particular case should there be any complaint. I can assure everybody that I shall use this right for the sole advantage of the national agrarian policy of Magyarism.”

In Austria, Mezossy’s measure was criticised as savouring of barbarism, but in Hungary, the Magyar spirit regarded it as insufficient. On November 28th, the Pesti Hirlap returned to the charge. “The State should have unlimited rights of expropriation in order to be able to parcel out and colonise the land. A sane allocation of land to the Magyar nation, which alone sustains the State, must be contrived. In the south, the Serbs occupy the best land; in Transylvania, the Rumanians. Thus the decree of Mezossy is merely a beginning. We demand that this policy be continued on a large scale. So long as the Government retains the power to do so, it should endeavour to make the Magyars the masters of Hungarian soil.” In the programme produced by the reconstructed Cabinet at the end of January 1918, Wekerle showed himself not unmindful of this advice. He declared that measures would be taken in the interests of the definite safeguarding of the ideals of the nation and the State. By that it must be understood that he would do all in his power to assure to the Magyar nation the exercise of all its prerogatives. Of these the most important was the right of expropriation. In the matter of agrarian policy Magyar interests demanded first of all that the land should be in Magyar hands. This end could be achieved, without infringing the sacred rights of private ownership, by the application of the right of expropriation.

By this time it was clear that if the Central Empires won the War the non-Magyar nationalities of Hungary would be subjected to a period of oppression even more drastic than they had hitherto experienced. On the other hand, even the Magyar Jingoes realised that the loss of the War would mean the dismemberment of their much-vaunted “Unitary Magyar State.” Germany, the predominant partner, was their one hope, and during the whole of the War the Magyars did their best to support her by every means in their power, particularly in the matter of the supply of foodstuffs, even to the detriment of Austria. At the time of the campaign in the Carpathians, the Magyars realised that the future of Hungary was in the balance, and at the same time they were careful to send only Croatian and Slovak regiments into the front line. This was throughout the policy of the Magyars, to oppose to their Slav enemies the hated and despised nationalities of Slav origin, in the pious hope that they would mutually destroy one another and so leave the coveted districts at the disposal of the Magyar nation. It was proved by Deputy Jerzabek that among the nations of the Dual Monarchy the Magyars had suffered the smallest number of casualties. This may be taken as another proof of Magyar skill in inducing others to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them, while substituting for the traditional valour of the race of Arpad a noisy bluster and a virulent abuse of the Entente nations.[20]

When President Wilson first formulated his famous Fourteen Points, the Magyar Press rejected them unanimously as the product of an utterly unpractical point of view. Count Czernin declared, on the subject of self-determination, that the Monarchy would decide for itself the details of its internal affairs, and would not brook outside interference. Up to the last moment the attitude of Hungary was one of stiff-necked obstinacy. The Magyar ruling class did not care what lessons the War might have taught; their whole policy was still concentrated upon securing for themselves the best possible terms and the largest possible area upon which to batten.

But the population of Hungary was utterly war-weary, even the military caste was for the moment incapable of being goaded into further effort. The coup d’état of November, by which Hungary declared herself a Republic, was inspired by the desire to make a display of sympathy with the principles of democracy which had won the War. The Republic of Hungary might escape the punishment hanging over the heads of autocratic Germany and Austria; it might even hope that the arbiters of peace would be moved to restore to it the allegiance of the nationalities, who had already expressed their desires in no uncertain terms. But Karolyi, the first President, although even at the time he probably honestly believed that the introduction of democracy was Hungary’s only hope of salvation, was a weak man, unhappily placed between the socialistic demands of the disfranchised proletariat and the oligarchic dreams of the ruling class, who, although they had retired from the stage, remained very close behind the scenes. It is doubtful whether any man could have stemmed the Bolshevist flood which already threatened the nation; the inability of Karolyi to do so was proved almost immediately. Instead of devoting all his energies to framing a constitution for the purely Magyar districts of Hungary, which it was evident were all that would be left to her, and so endeavouring to satisfy the democratic instincts of the working classes, awakened by the War to the sense of their political importance, he wasted valuable time in launching plaintive denunciations of the wrong that had been done to the “thousand-year old Magyar State,” and in intrigue directed towards reversing what was already in effect a fait accompli.

Success in these directions could not be achieved by force of arms; in the eyes of the old ruling classes there remained only the forces of misrepresentation. Unscrupulous propaganda might yet save the day that political incompetence had lost. The Pesti Hirlap voiced the prevailing panic. “In the three coming months we have to concentrate all our efforts on the work abroad; no matter how much it costs, whether it is one million or 100,000 millions, it is worth it. Every article written in French, English or Italian will save for us one square kilometre of Hungarian territory. It will be the duty of a clever manager to spread into the circle of our enemies what the staff of writers will prepare. It is necessary to send into every foreign country Magyar Socialists who speak foreign languages fluently.” To uphold their nationality in foreign countries was surely a novel rôle for “Socialists.” We may suspect the Socialists of the Pesti Hirlap of skin-deep convictions only.

The methods of Magyar propaganda will be dealt with in a later chapter. For the present it is sufficient to say that the most determined attempts were made to seduce the inhabitants of the new States from their allegiance. The agents employed in this campaign were the officials of the old Magyar regime, who for the most part had been left at their posts. The Slovensky Vychod of February 27, 1919 said of these men: “The new regime does not please them at all; for until now they had been the supreme masters of the ‘stupid’ Slovaks. Under the Magyar regime they took bribes from everybody who merely made inquiries of the administration. Under the new order of things this sort of corruption is not allowed. A certain number of these Magyar officials have been dismissed the service because they refused to recognise the sovereignty of the Czechoslovak State in Slovakia, but they have remained within the borders of the State and have thus been enabled to continue their subversive activity.” Side by side with these attempts, the Magyars used every means of influencing foreign opinion in their favour. The Karolyi regime was made to appear as the dawn of democracy in Hungary, a sort of millennium in which all citizens enjoyed the most unfettered freedom; the argument being that the non-Magyar nationalities should be induced to return to the fold for their own sakes as much as for that of Hungary.

But Karolyi’s People’s Republic was short-lived. His failure to influence the Entente in favour of Hungary discredited him in the eyes of the ruling classes; his flirtations with Communism, undertaken in the attempt to gain popularity for his regime in the eyes of the proletariat, had afforded opportunities to the followers of Lenin of which they were not slow to take advantage. Despite the efforts of Oskar Jaszi, his Government had failed to win the nationalities, and by March 1919 he perceived that he was friendless within Hungary and without. The power slipped from his hands into those of a Soviet Republic under the presidency of Alexander Garbai, the existence of which was proclaimed on March 21st. Karolyi disappeared from the stage of Hungarian politics, in his exit accusing the Entente of planning to make Hungary a base of military operations against the Bolsheviks of Russia.

For rather more than four months Hungary was given over to the rule of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, and became the scene of famine and bloodshed. Bela Kun, the true leader of the new revolution, had declared in February that he had brought with him from Russia a sum of 300,000 crowns with which to overthrow Karolyi’s People’s Republic and replace it by Soviet rule. Hungary was admirably situated to form the focus of the World Revolution. It lay in the centre of Europe, surrounded by States suffering in greater or less degree from the exhaustion of the War and the fierce cross-currents of reconstruction. Let Bolshevism but gain a firm foothold in Hungary, so Lenin and his supporters argued, and it could not fail to spread until it covered the face of Europe.

For a time Bolshevism dominated the country and succeeded in organising a by no means despicable Red Army with which it attacked the Czechs in the north and the Rumanians in the south-east. Bela Kun believed that the surest way of converting his neighbours to his own views was by force of arms. At the same time, by means of his soldiers and especially of his “Terror-boys” under Szamueli, a ruffian with an insatiable blood-lust, he contrived to suppress all attempts at counter-revolution. Time after time the adherents of the old ruling classes endeavoured to rise against the new tyranny, but on every occasion they were prevented. The Hotel Hungaria in Budapest became the scene of political murders, while Szamueli, scouring Hungary with his executioners in a special train, made away with such individuals in the provinces who threatened to become centres of resistance to the Soviet rule. It was not until July that the military caste succeeded in setting up a White Government in Szeged.

But even then this Government was powerless and isolated, mainly through its own supineness.[21] The measures of the Soviet were successful in preventing a rising of the masses in their favour, although by this time the majority in Hungary were heartily sick of the Bolshevik experiment and anxious to return to some form of sane democracy. It might have been supposed that even the Magyar aristocracy had learnt from the events of the past months that although Bolshevism was unacceptable to the nation, the old regime would be almost equally so. The mass of the people, at all events, believed that this lesson had been learnt, and were prepared to allow their old leaders to accept the task of cleansing the country from the stain of Bolshevism and of establishing a new order on modern Western lines. If the people of the country were prepared to agree to this, there was no reason for the Entente to oppose their wishes. The Rumanians were eventually allowed to enter Budapest to restore order, and with the advance of their disciplined forces the Bolshevist regime disappeared like a shadow. On the first of August the Soviet “resigned,” and the control of the country was taken over by a military dictatorship, with Admiral Horthy as Commander-in-Chief and Mr. Friedrich as Prime Minister.

The Military Dictatorship was the direct outcome of the White Government of Szeged, and it immediately set about the work of persecuting all those suspected of sympathy with the Bolsheviks. In the words of a Liberal Magyar,[22] “The victims of the Red Terror, according to an official statement, amount to about 300; but those of the White Terror are estimated at 6,000. These atrocities must not be placed to the account of the Hungarian people as a whole, which is naturally kindly and humane; they are mainly the work of the Hungarian ‘gentry’ class, which is both economically and politically in decay, and which contains within it elements sufficiently corrupt and demoralised to employ such methods to prop up their traditional regime.” The doings of the Horthy Government will be examined later; we are only concerned here with the factors which led up to its establishment. It was natural that a reaction from Bolshevism should sweep the country in the first moments of relief from its sway, and it was confidently expected that as soon as the Military Dictatorship had restored order it would give place to some form of Parliamentary government elected on a truly democratic franchise. But the months passed by, and it became apparent that the old ruling classes, having regained the saddle with the assistance of the military clique, had no intention of relinquishing it. The danger to Hungary involved in this state of affairs was obvious to every onlooker. Oskar Jaszi, writing in the New Europe of November 20, 1919, said: “If the ancient regime re-establishes itself in Hungary, if the magnates and prelates, with their traditional allies, the autocratic country gentry and the Jewish usurers of the cities, regain their ancient power, then all the democratic gains of our October revolution are lost, and Hungary, a prey to race hatred and Chauvinism, reverts to its old policy of oppressing the peasantry, the working classes and such few non-Magyars as remain.”

That the Horthy Government had every intention of restoring in Hungary not only the conditions which obtained before the Bolshevik experiment, but also those which obtained before the establishment of the Karolyi Government, is proved by the fact that they refused admission to the country to Karolyi himself and all his supporters. To support democratic tendencies was in their eyes treason to the State and destructive of the ultimate object which had they in view, the restoration of the Hapsburgs. Not only must democracy be suppressed with an iron hand, but any encroachment on the power of the ruling classes must be strenuously avoided. Their attitude to the agrarian question is a case in point. In Hungary, perhaps more than elsewhere, the distribution of land has for many years been in grave need of reform. For the most part agriculture has been in the hands of large owners employing very little labour, and in consequence the land hunger of the people has grown more and more acute. Under the Karolyi Government, attempts were made to readjust the tenure of land, but very little had been achieved before the fall of the Government at the hands of the power of Bolshevism. As the author already quoted,[23] remarks: “As a result of the territorial demands put forward at Budapest by Colonel Vyx in the name of the Allies, the working classes suddenly went over in large masses to the Communist camp. The Soviet Government which followed annulled the Buza land reform (instituted under the Karolyi regime), and one of the people’s commissaries afterwards publicly boasted at a meeting that the Communists had succeeded in preventing or reversing the subdivision of the large estates which had already partially begun, and that in this they had been aided by the large proprietors, who mobilised their influence for this common aim.” This policy was, in fact, one of the fundamentals of Communism. The land was the property of the State, and the large estates were, therefore, State property which was not to be privately owned by any section of the people. But, in order to manage these estates, they were put in the hands of agricultural co-operative societies, and in many cases the original owner was left as “manager” of his own estates for the co-operatives. The net result was that the labourers were as far from owning the land under Bolshevism as they had been under the former oligarchy.

“As a natural result the Proletarian State roused the mistrust of the great majority of the agricultural labourers, while the small and medium peasant proprietors were no less alienated by so dishonest a policy. Their suspicions were confirmed when the Communists came out as open opponents of small peasant ownership.... The Hungarian Soviet Dictatorship owes its really miserable failure only partially to its corruption and excesses, which have often been exaggerated. The foremost cause was that it aroused, by every possible means, the hostility of the great majority of the agricultural population, and this proved fatal to its food policy and also in other respects. The Communist experiment would in any case have failed owing to its internal weaknesses, especially in the matter of workmen’s discipline, but it need not have left such a hateful memory behind it and injured so gravely the whole cause of progress if the Soviet Government had pursued a less doctrinaire and dishonourable agrarian policy.”[24]

The counter-revolution thus found the conditions of land tenure practically untouched, and it took good care that no undesirable democratic ideas should disturb it. Divide the land to some extent it certainly did, but in such a way as to produce in Hungary a pure and undiluted mediæval feudalism. “Nothing shows so well its (the Horthy regime) feudal character as the provision that owners of the new peasant or medium holdings enjoy certain privileges, and are consequently liable to military service ‘if social order is threatened.’ The Ministerial decree, published in August 1920 in the official gazette, Budapesti Kozlony, says: ‘Recognised patriots who have distinguished themselves in the War will receive from the hands of the Chief of State, Governor Nicholas Horthy, of Nagybanya, a grant of small holdings for the most part, but in some cases also a lesser manorial estate. The land received in fief is a reward for valour in the War,’ but everyone who receives land ‘must always be ready for such public services as aim at protecting social order and social peace.’ Those receiving such grants obtain all the privileges of entail; their land cannot, therefore, be alienated, and will be inherited undivided by the eldest male survivor. In addition to this they also receive exemption from taxation, and the further privilege that their land cannot be mortgaged. Such proprietors are allowed to add to their name the hereditary predicate of Vitez (which means ‘the brave,’ or, in old parlance, the equivalent of knight). Thus the effect of the Horthy land reform is to create a new armed nobility.”[25]

Lest it should seem absurd to apply the term “nobility” to landed proprietors on so small a scale, it must be explained that Hungary is accustomed to such a use of the word. Indeed, until 1848, the franchise had been confined to the “nobility” so called, who were exceedingly numerous, and indistinguishable from the remainder of the people either by manners or wealth. They were known as bocskoros nemesseg, “sandal nobility,” from their down-at-heel appearance. But they could be relied upon to use their votes in the Magyar interest, and were therefore invaluable to the Government.[26] It is obvious that the Horthy regime is anxious to reintroduce this state of things, and to organise a band of supporters upon whose votes and military training it can depend for its continuance in power.[27]

The tendency of the present Government of Hungary is evident from this example of its internal policy. It represents almost exclusively the privileged classes, who are bitterly opposed to the introduction of any form of democracy into the Magyar State. The Government believes that for the time the people, alarmed at the ease with which the democracy of Karolyi degenerated into the Communism of Bela Kun, will not resist the reinstatement of an oligarchy. During this period of consent to its administration, it is working hard to entrench itself throughout Hungary, so that by the time the people grow restless under its rule they will find themselves bound hand and foot and powerless.

It was not until the Entente intervened that the White Government of 1919 showed any signs of legalising its dictatorship by the summoning of a National Assembly, which it finally did in November 1919. But even then organisations like the “M.O.V.E.” and the “Awakened Magyars”[28] took good care that the assembly should contain as few elements as possible likely to be dangerous to the cause they had at heart. An extremely strict censorship guarded against unfavourable reports of these elections reaching the ears of the outside world, which was, indeed, for the most part, too vitally engaged upon the problems of its own reconstruction to worry much about the details of Hungarian conditions. On the surface things appeared to be going well. Bolshevism had been defeated, a National Assembly was in process of formation. Only the new States watched anxiously, knowing the dangers which lurked behind the false appearance of a pacified Hungary. It is only now, when the internal conditions of the countries of the world are becoming more stabilised, that their inhabitants have eyes to spare for the dramas being enacted in other lands than their own. In the following chapters of this book, therefore, I shall endeavour to inquire as to how far the new States, having achieved national unity, are employing that unity for the furtherance of democratic ideals, and are thereby demonstrating the justice of their existence in the modern world; Hungary alone, the prey of an autocratic ruling class, we shall find slipping back into reaction, and thereby becoming a danger to the peace of Europe.[29]

FOOTNOTES:

[19] See New Europe, October 4, 1917.

[20] See page 7.

[21] An interesting picture is given of the inactivity and lack of initiative of the White Government when a bold move on its part might have saved Hungary from the ignominy of salvation at the hands of her late enemies the Rumanians, is given by MM. Jerome and Jean Thiraud, in their book, Quand Israel est Roi (Paris, Plon-Nourrit et Cie). “They were French officers who went to seek at Vienna, where they have taken refuge, Count Teleki and his friends, in order to put them at the head of the Government of Szeged. But few magnates, however, elected to follow them, the majority of these gentlemen preferring to remain in Vienna at the famous Hotel Sacher, where they lived on the fat of the land and wasted their money in gambling. It was by virtue of a French safe conduct, and escorted by French officers, that Count Teleki and a few others were enabled to cross the Hungary of Bela Kun without hindrance. It was under the protection of our troops, under the friendly eyes of our Staff, that they were able to organise their Ministry and their army. If they had shown at once a greater promptitude of decision, if they had wasted less time in futile discussion and in mutual recrimination, if the odd thousands of officers who were collected at Szeged had resolutely marched upon Budapest with the arms and munitions which we had lent them, they would have secured on the way to support of many of the peasants of the Plain, and would perhaps have overthrown the Bolshevik forces, already almost dissolved. Instead of that, they schemed and made merry at Szeged, and allowed the Supreme Council time to declare that it did not recognise this reactionary Government.”

[22] Arnold Daniel, a supporter of Karolyi, in the Slavonic Review, June 1922.

[23] Arnold Daniel, in the Slavonic Review, June 1922.

[24] Arnold Daniel, in the Slavonic Review, June 1922.

[25] Arnold Daniel, in the Slavonic Review, June 1922.

[26] For a description of the sandal nobility, see Racial Problems in Hungary.

[27] “Fortunately this reversion to the Middle Ages can only take place on a very small scale, because the depletion of the Treasury and the interests of the big landlords do not permit of large purchases of land, except in so far as the State lays its hands upon the communal land” (Arnold Daniel, loc. cit.).

[28] Societies for the propagation of Magyar sentiments by force. See page 187.

[29] The point of view of an active member of the Magyar aristocratic class towards the events from October 1918 to March 1919 may be perceived in Miss Cécile Tormay’s An Outlaw’s Diary (London, 1923).

CHAPTER VI
HUNGARY AND HER NEIGHBOURS

The issue of the War had proved beyond dispute that the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy could no longer exist in the form in which it had existed previously. Apart altogether from the various coups d’état which had already shattered it beyond repair, the very nature of the victory which had been achieved made a redistribution of the nationalities which had composed it a sacred duty. In the eyes of the majority of the human race the War had been a struggle between the power of Might, as represented by Germanism and Magyarism, and the power of Right, as represented by the Allied and Associated nations, to use the convenient formula of the Treaties. In the past, Might had stood for the acquisition of territory, irrespective of the wishes of the inhabitants, in order to strengthen the aggressive power of the great nations. In the future, Right was to proclaim the doctrine that the allocation of territory must be governed by the will of those who lived within its borders.

This was the true meaning of self-determination. The small nationalities, bound against their will to an alien race and forming a factor of its aggrandisement, were now to be given the opportunity of working out their own salvation. Europe, so long subjected to the swords of the dominant Powers, was again to be resolved into the nationalities, hidden for so many years on the maps under the patches of colour which marked the empires of their masters, but none the less sentient and race-conscious. The nationalities, freed from their chains, could choose their own form of government, and in the future were to stand or fall according to the measure of their capacity for self-government, displayed in the manner in which they made use of their freedom. It is important to remember that the rise of the new nations was a natural result of the War, and not an artificial structure of the Treaties. “Democracy had triumphed over autocracy, and nationality over oligarchy. The absolute rule of the Emperors of Germany and Austria-Hungary, of the Sultan of Turkey, of the Tsar of Bulgaria, had been destroyed; the innumerable minor potentates of Germany had disappeared....

“The races of the Hapsburg Monarchy, previously exploited by an Austro-Hungarian oligarchy, were freed. Poles were liberated from subjugation to Austria, Russia and Germany, and had already constituted themselves into an independent State. When the Paris Congress assembled, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugo-Slavia had already existed as free States for three months. This is important to remember, as it is often loosely said that the Treaty of Versailles ‘created’ these States. The Treaty ratified their independence, of which they could certainly have only been deprived by force.”[30]

The true reason for the establishment of the new States must be fully realised. They were the manifestations of national will, and were not erected by the victorious side as monuments of their complete defeat of the Central Empires. Indeed, it is not too much to say that in some cases the existence of the new States proved an embarrassment to the Allied diplomatists. Had their boundaries been determined by the tribunal of the victors alone, had they been composed of such portions of the Central Empires as the decision of this tribunal deemed the just spoils of war, there might have been some justification for the complaints of the Magyars and their sympathisers that Hungary had been unjustly dealt with. But of this there was no pretence. The existence of the new States was a fait accompli, it only remained for the Powers to see that they were indeed formed in genuine regard for the wishes of the nationalities. It was not a question of rewarding friends or punishing enemies. The world had learnt that the surest way of sowing the seeds of future war was to tear from the vanquished any part of its territory inhabited by a people of its own race. The Allies were scrupulously anxious to avoid any opportunity of creating in any nation a just hunger for territory brutally torn from it. Racial preference was to be the deciding factor, not the wish to weaken an enemy lest at some future time she might again be dangerous. Indeed, in more than one case enemy nations were awarded districts which had previously been beyond their frontiers. The transfer of the Burgenland from Hungary to Austria is a case in point. In this case, as in all others, the matter was decided by the wishes of the population.

But—fortunately or unfortunately—geographical exigencies have a modifying influence upon the theory of self-determination. Theory demands that self-determination should extend downwards to the individual; practice cannot pursue the process of integration beyond comparatively large communities. This difficulty has been brought home to the British nation in the course of the settlement which it has entered into with Ireland. “How far was the principle of self-determination to extend? If Ireland had a right to secede from her union with Great Britain, surely Ulster had a right to secede from the rest of Ireland?... During the latter months of the year, various local bodies in the Six Counties proclaimed their allegiance to Sinn Fein ... but in their turn certain parishes in the dissentient areas protested against such a course, and, to go a step further, individual Sinn Feiners within these parishes evinced a disposition to determine themselves in opposition to their neighbours.”[31]

It was, of course, the same story with the boundaries of the new nations. Geographical considerations and the necessity for short and easily defined frontiers made it impossible to exercise the principle of self-determination to the theoretical limit. Nations had to be considered as Nature had made them; their boundaries already existed and it was impossible to alter them. The result was that the problem of minorities still prevailed, though in a very modified form. In no case could the new nations or the old be so delimited that their boundaries included no individual of an alien race. The best that could be done was to reduce the necessary minorities as much as possible, and to secure the insertion of safeguards in the Constitutions of the reformed nations which should guarantee the minorities in those nations from oppression.

It is difficult to see how the Magyar propagandists can maintain, in the face of these very obvious facts, the contention that injustice was done them by the Treaty. The whole history of Magyar rule is one of ill-treatment of what they themselves stigmatised as “subject races” and the release of these races from their yoke is only an act of elementary justice. This point was ably expressed in a reply to one of Lord Newton’s articles on Hungary: “The fundamental error made by Lord Newton is due to his assumption that the Treaty of Trianon constitutes a punishment to the Magyars for their conduct during the War. Far from it. The Treaty of Trianon is a mere act of elementary justice, rendering it impossible in the future for a number of races to be ruled over by a nation whose past record most clearly demonstrates that it is utterly devoid of the most rudimentary qualifications for such a task.”[32] Injustice would have been committed had the victors, for example, taken the Alföld, or some other Magyar district, from Hungary as the spoils of victory and awarded it to the Czechs, Serbs or Rumanians as the price of their support during the War. It is important to distinguish the two motives. Slovakia, for example, was taken from Hungary not as a punishment but because her previous misrule had determined the Slovak nation to cast off her chains. Nothing but a coercion as brutal as her own would have brought Slovakia back into the Hungarian hegemony. The Magyars of Hungary may regret the loss of territory which was once hers, but that regret will not be reciprocated in Slovakia. Had the Alföld been taken from Hungary, on the other hand, both the Magyars of Hungary and of the disunited Alföld would have felt the same passion for reunion and a longing to right the injustice done to them. And it is these mutual passions and longings which breed future wars.

So much for the establishment of the new nations. But in order to justify the continuation of their existence it is necessary for them to give proof of their capability of ruling the races under their sway in the true principles of freedom and democracy. Four years have now passed since their establishment, and, in the light of all evidence, it is fair to say that they have as far as possible in so short a time supplied this proof. The autocracy and oligarchy of the old order have given place to the democracy of the new; the old methods of tyranny have yielded to the modern methods of popular suffrage and government. The freed nations, allowing for certain temporary difficulties and local mismanagement caused by the disregard of official policy by certain inexperienced officials, have introduced for themselves and for the minorities within their borders a new era of liberty which contrasts strikingly with the coercion under which they suffered. But there is an exception to this happier state of things in Central Europe, an ugly shadow upon the fair picture. The Magyars, “the most truculent people in Europe,” have not seen fit to alter by a hair’s breadth their traditional domineering policy. Crushing her racial minorities, now greatly reduced, but still a factor in world politics, beneath her feet, Hungary looks with angry and covetous eyes towards the territories which formed part of the “thousand-year-old Unitary Hungarian State.” Her people cannot realise that the age in which territory was held by the sword has disappeared, and that its place has been taken by an age in which men strive to build States in accordance with the wishes of their inhabitants as a whole and not of their ruling classes alone.

In the present chapter and the two which follow it, I shall endeavour to show how the democratic and enlightened state of the nations delivered from the Magyar yoke contrasts with the sullen and rebellious attitude of Hungary. Magyar propagandists, anxious to create a feeling for the revision of the Treaties in favour of Hungary, are prone to speak of the “Balkanisation” of Europe and of the “mushroom States” so created. The surest way of refuting them is to demonstrate that these so-called “mushroom States” are energetically developing themselves in accordance with modern ideals and enlightened practice, while Hungary remains wrapped in the oligarchic dreams of the past. The liberated nations look forward to the light; Hungary turns her eyes back to the days when Arpad and his wild horsemen scoured Central Europe for the captives of their spears.

Of the new States Czechoslovakia is necessarily the most interesting, both because it is a new name upon the map of Europe and because it includes the Slovaks, who were probably the most sorely oppressed of the former Hungarian nationalities. But although it is a new name on the map, it must not be forgotten that Czechoslovakia is mainly the recrudescence of one of the oldest nations of Europe, the Kingdom of Bohemia. The instincts of nationality and self-government, so long in abeyance, are none the less living forces among the Czechs and their kindred the Slovaks, and these instincts have given proof of their existence in the form in which the Republic has developed. “The revived State was faced by a formidable cultural problem in Slovakia and Ruthenia, as a result of the Magyars having repressed all national education and literature in those districts. Particularly since the Apponyi Education Acts of 1907, Slovak education had been virtually abolished, since the few hundred denominational schools which still survived were only nominally Slovak. To-day there are in Slovakia more than 2,600 new Slovak national elementary schools; over 80 grammar schools; over 30 secondary schools and also the beginnings of its own university. In Ruthenia, also, there are already about 700 Ruthene elementary schools, in addition to grammar and secondary schools and also infant schools. Moreover, the Republic is also turning its attention to the hygenic improvement of this much-neglected country; State hospitals are being established, and epidemic and endemic diseases are being stamped out. It may be said without exaggeration that the cultural policy here pursued by Czechoslovakia has few parallels in the new Europe....

“All the national minorities have their schools; the Germans, by reason of their numbers and their high development, have, in addition, their own university, two technical high schools and an agricultural academy (this latter established by the Republic).”[33]

“The Charter of the Constitution expressly declares the Czechoslovak Republic to be democratic, and the State to be unified, not federative. Only the territory of Ruthenia enjoys a special position with regard to public rights. In accordance with the Treaty of St. Germain the autonomy of this territory is guaranteed, and besides this, the members of the national assembly elected in Ruthenia are admitted to full rights of discussion and participation in all acts of the National Assembly.”[34]

It is instructive to compare the position of Ruthenia in Czechoslovakia with that formerly occupied by Croatia-Slavonia in Hungary. Theoretically the cases are to some extent parallel, but in practice they are as wide apart as the poles. The Czechoslovak Government has made it its business to develop, at considerable expense to itself and with no prospect of reaping a reward for many years, if at all, the territory of Ruthenia, one of the most backward in Europe. On the other hand, the Magyars, in their treatment of Croatia-Slavonia, had done their best to hinder the development of the country lest it should evince resistance to the Magyarising policy of its masters. “The Hungarian Government, through fear and hatred of the Slavs, deliberately prevents the progress of the country (Croatia). The service of the State railways is arranged of set purpose to confine Croatian trade to Hungary and hinder its development elsewhere. Even communication with Vienna is made difficult, for the Magyars are afraid of the Austrians coming to an understanding with the Slavs.”[35]

We have here an example of the entirely different outlook of the new States compared with the narrow self-seeking of the old. If it were necessary to make any defence for the policy of entrusting the smaller nationalities to the government of their kindred, the cases of Ruthenia and of Croatia-Slavonia might be cited as evidence of the wisdom of that policy. In the first we have an example of an active and sympathetic democracy striving to confer the benefits of modern civilisation upon a community backward through the oppression of its late masters; in the second we see the process by which oligarchy hoped to render a subject people subservient to its will. Those who are inclined to spare Hungary a measure of sympathy with her claims from a spirit of chivalry towards a beaten nation, should remember that she still practices the measures of coercion which made her rule hateful in the past, and that any extension of her influence would deprive a corresponding number of human beings of their new-found liberty.

Contrast, for example, the liberty enjoyed in Czechoslovakia with the servitude under which the subject nationalities of Hungary lived before their release. “A special section of the Constitutional Charter is devoted to the so-called ‘fundamental rights and liberties’ of the citizens, which are comprehensively enumerated. Privileges derived from sex, birth, or calling are not recognised; all residents of the Republic are guaranteed complete and absolute security of life and personal freedom of which they cannot be deprived except upon legal grounds. Private ownership is inviolable and may be restricted only by law. The Constitution guarantees complete freedom of the Press, of assembly, freedom of instruction and of conscience and religious creed, liberty of expressing opinion, the right of petition, postal inviolability and domestic liberty. Marriage, the family and motherhood are placed under the special protection of the law. All these guarantees and rights are protected by the Supreme Administrative Court, which sees to the legality of public administration.”[36]

Nor are these provisions mere words. In the new States the freedom so dearly won is a treasured possession. The examples of Austria and Hungary are present to the mass of the population as well as to their rulers. Neither have the least intention of imperilling the future existence of the new States by incurring the resentment of the racial minorities they contain. The Magyar minorities, as might be expected, are vociferous on the subject of their imaginary wrongs, which consist in the inability to display their alleged racial superiority. Despite the inevitable confusion resulting from the many changes of government, it is safe to say that no minority community in the new States has more than trivial grievances, which are due to the period of transition and will disappear as soon as the machinery works with greater freedom.

I may be allowed to quote at length from an eminent authority on the subject. “It cannot be emphasised too strongly that it is the duty of this country—of all who desire to see reconstruction and stable conditions in Europe, and a new life budding among the ruins of the old world—to give their active help and sympathy to the new States—Poland, Bohemia, Rumania and Jugoslavia—and to help them to adjust their mutual differences, to overcome the internal difficulties created by war, and to organise their shattered political and economic systems. That is a perfectly practical programme for the future; and I contend that it is the only programme for that part of Europe which has the slightest prospect of success.

“During the War those who advocated the break-up of Austria-Hungary as the key to political (as opposed to purely military) success, were condemned in certain quarters as being merely destructive in their aims, and as putting forward a programme which, owing to its criminally impossible character, was calculated to prolong the War. Some of us never hesitated to take up this challenge; indeed, we claimed that, so far from being impossible, this programme was the only sure road to victory, and that although Austria-Hungary was rotten to the core and uniformly unsuccessful in the field, she none the less provided Germany with the ‘cannon fodder’ (35 millions of unwilling victims!) and with the strategic frontiers without which she could not have ventured upon, still less maintained so long, her struggle against the whole world. Even in high politics you cannot put the cart before the horse; and it should have been obvious from the first that if the League of Nations is the goal (and it must be the goal of all sensible students of foreign affairs) you must have your nations there, before you can form them into a league. So long as Europe contained a whole series of anti-national States like Austria-Hungary or Turkey or the Old Russia, holding down by main force a score of nations struggling to be free, it was obviously impossible to devise a scheme of order on any basis save that of the Holy Alliance, whose members, starting from the highest moral professions, ended with what was virtually a mutual insurance against the spread of liberal and progressive ideas. It is only now that most of these nations have at last been set free, that it is possible to set to work in earnest upon the task of constituting a League of Nations.”[37]

These words were spoken in 1919, and the sequel has demonstrated the truth of the ideas which underlie them. Not only have the new States, in the close alliance known as the Little Entente, proved that their common policy is directed towards the insurance of the peace of Europe, but they have even proposed and secured the admission of Hungary to the League of Nations, in the face of the doubts expressed by the Powers. This action of the new States, each one of which has suffered and is still suffering from the effort made by Hungary to undermine their influence and their reputation in the eyes of the world, is a striking example of their determination not to allow resentment or the memory of old oppression to interfere with the peaceful settlement of Central Europe. The speech of Dr. Osusky, the delegate of Czechoslovakia, in recommending the admission of Hungary to the League, was a solemn warning to Hungary that her admission was only due to her expressed undertaking to abandon the policy she had hitherto adopted. He explained that Article 1 of the Covenant laid down that no State could be admitted to the League unless it showed a sincere intention to observe all its international obligations. Hungary, by the Treaty of Trianon, engaged to disarm and abolish compulsory military service. It was true the latter had been abolished by law, but he had observed in Hungarian newspapers in the present year notices calling up the classes of 1898 to 1902 for military training, and at Szeged, in February and March, violent demonstrations took place against the application of compulsory military service. The inter-Allied Commission of Control appointed by the Peace Treaty had obtained evidence of a number of facts which would seem to show a certain lack of sincerity on the part of the Hungarian Government in applying the law abolishing compulsory military service, and it had had to apply certain important reservations as to the way in which this law was applied with regard to the destruction of material of war. It was true that very little concealed material had been found, but in the opinion of the Military Commission this alone did not form sufficient proof that none existed, and certain obstacles in the way of control and investigation had been placed by the Hungarian Government in the way of the Commission. The Treaty of Trianon laid down that all subjects of the Hungarian State should enjoy equal political rights. Without wishing to call attention at length to the condition of the Hungarian minorities, there was the Hungarian Law, Article 25 of which provided that only Hungarian inhabitants whose moral spirit was considered satisfactory would be allowed to vote as electors. The abolition of this law had been frequently demanded, but, so far, the Hungarian Government refused to do so, on the ground that its provisions were necessary for the protection of the Hungarian race.

Notwithstanding these facts, the Committee of the League had recommended the admission of Hungary on the strength of a solemn undertaking on the part of Count Banffy by which Hungary firmly declared its intention to observe all its international engagements. This solemn declaration had been noted by the Committee, and its terms allowed of no doubt whatever, especially as regards the question of the restoration of the Hapsburg dynasty. On the strength of this declaration alone had the recommendation been made, in fulfilment of the policy of the new States. Dr. Osusky concluded by remarking that he hoped this evidence of the spirit which animated these States would be of assistance to Hungary in the fulfilment of the undertakings of Count Banffy. As the result of this speech, Hungary was admitted to the League on September 18, 1922. She has yet to prove that she merits this act of forgiveness on the part of her once oppressed nationalities.

It must be realised that the democratic tendencies of the new States are such that the condition of the Magyar peasant and working classes is far more favourable under Czech, Rumanian or Serbian rule than it was formerly, or for that matter is now, under the rule of the Magyar oligarchy. The Magyar system of election, justice, assembly and many other State-controlled functions bore very heavily upon the Magyar poorer classes, who were, in fact, oppressed in much the same manner, though to a lesser degree, as the racial minorities. In the new democratic States the Magyar landowner is equal legally and politically to the labourer of his own or any other nationality. It is this fact which clouds the Magyar understanding, and makes it impossible for a member of the Magyar ruling classes to see any good in the organisation of the new States. The idea of the divinely bestowed superiority of the Magyar over the man of any other Central European nationality is so firmly implanted in Hungary that it is impossible for anybody brought up in the traditions of Magyar supremacy to believe that States conducted upon any other lines can possibly survive the wrath of heaven. But in some cases there are other more mundane forces at work among the Magyar landowning class. It is perhaps largely as the result of these forces that the rulers of Hungary are straining every nerve to produce a feeling in favour of the return of the territory of the “subject races” to the Magyar yoke. The present regime at Budapest is very largely swayed by the influence of the Magyar feudal magnates, and these magnates are very large landowners in Transylvania. The Teleki, Banffy and Bethlen families alone owned no less than 200,000 Joch (284,000 acres) between them in what is now Rumanian territory. They argue that this was Hungarian land, and that its transfer to Rumania was an act of injustice. The fact that these great estates were owned by Magyars is, of course, no argument for the return of a territory inhabited by a majority of Rumanians, but it serves as an argument in Budapest. The influence of these families upon Admiral Horthy’s Government is at all events sufficient to cause the leader of the State to refer to Transylvania in the terms already quoted.

It is the uncompromising attitude of the Magyar ruling classes towards the democratic leanings of the Magyar peasantry of the minorities remaining in the States bordering Hungary which causes the greater part of the difficulties met with by the administrations of those States. The Magyar peasantry would show no marked hostility towards their new rulers, especially as they begin to understand and experience the vastly improved position to which they can raise themselves, were it not for the constant encouragement and instigation they receive from those whom for generations they have been accustomed to regard as the masters of their destinies. In their disgust at finding their aristocratic and hereditary privileges disregarded by the new Governments, the Magyar nobility owning land in the new States leave no stone unturned to incite their fellow-nationals, of whose welfare they have hitherto been singularly indifferent, to protest and even rebellion. The war of the Magyars against the new States is not only a war against the hated nationalities, but even more—a war between the hereditary privilege of oppression and the democratic ideal of liberty.

The present book has no concern with the attitude or the policy of the States surrounding Hungary, except in so far as these concern that country. Enough has, therefore, been said in this chapter to show the divergence between their ideals and the traditional predatory tendencies of the Magyars. We may sum up by saying that the goal towards which the former are working is enlightened and progressive, while that of the Magyars is obscurantist and reactionary. In supporting the new States we are supporting the cause for which so many of the English-speaking race laid down their lives in the Great War; in supporting the Magyars we are risking the regeneration of the very circumstances which made that war inevitable.

FOOTNOTES:

[30] A. L. Kennedy, M.C., Old Diplomacy and New.

[31] See the author’s Ireland in 1921. I should, perhaps, apologise for quoting my own words.

[32] Jaroslav Cisar, in Eastern Europe for October-November 1921.

[33] President Masaryk, in the Slavonic Review for June 1922.

[34] The Czechoslovak Republic, Cisar and Pokorny.

[35] The Slavs of the War Zone, W. F. Bailey, C.B.

[36] The Czechoslovak Republic.

[37] From an address delivered at Edinburgh on October 22, 1919, by Dr. Seton-Watson.

CHAPTER VII
THE MINORITIES IN HUNGARY TO-DAY

According to Hungarian official statistics, the population of the Republic of Hungary is now 7,482,000, composed as follows:

Magyars | 6,612,000
Germans | 500,000
Slovaks | 166,000
Yugo-Slavs | 111,000
Rumanians | 49,000
And a small fraction of other nationalities.

As a matter of fact, the estimates of the non-Magyar nationalities are probably too small, for the reasons already set out in a previous chapter. The Slovaks themselves estimate their numbers as 267,500, and it is certain that the correct estimate is nearer the latter figure. In the present chapter we may examine the treatment of these minorities by the Magyars.

As regards the Slovaks, although they inhabit certain districts in a compact mass, and although, even according to official Hungarian statistics, they form either a majority or a considerable minority in 99 towns, they have not yet been provided with a single elementary school, not to speak of secondary or technical schools.

The Hungarian Government, in order to evade the duties devolving upon it in accordance with the Treaty of Trianon, relative to the protection of racial minorities, declares that the Slovaks now settled in Hungary do not desire schools in which instruction is carried out in their native tongue. A strange light is thrown upon the accuracy of this statement by the fact that in March 1919 a deputation was sent by the Slovak inhabitants of the Bekes area, which contains more Slovaks than any other part of present-day Hungary, to Karolyi, then President of the Hungarian Republic, and to Berinkey, then President of the Council, to submit a memorandum claiming Slovak schools for the Slovak minority in present-day Hungary. The President of the Council promised them this, but only on the condition that they should sign a manifesto protesting against the union of Slovakia with the Czechoslovak Republic. The deputation declined to comply with this condition, and their request was consequently refused.

Another proof that the Slovaks in Hungary wish to have their own schools is that, at the period when the Rumanian Army occupied a large part of Hungary after the defeat of the Bolshevik troops, the Slovaks in that area applied to the Rumanian Government for the establishment of Slovak schools.

But the Magyars have in no way abandoned their Magyarising tactics against the non-Magyar races. On the contrary, the oppression of the latter has grown even more severe, although now that the majority of these races have been delivered from the Magyar yoke, the Magyars have no longer reason to fear that the Magyar ideals of Hungary may be menaced. In order to create the impression that the Slovaks are contented with their lot, and do not desire the establishment of Slovak institutions, the Magyar Government systematically terrorises the humbler classes of the racial minorities, and with the help of armed threats forces them to sign declarations against the establishment of their own schools and other national means of expression.

They have even gone further than this. The Slovak minority has been deprived of the negligible number of schools in which instruction was carried on partially in Slovak, and these schools now use nothing but Magyar. This has occurred at Kestuc, at Slovensky Komlos, at Pitvaros and elsewhere. In the latter town, two teachers were dismissed from their posts by the Hungarian Government and deported to an unknown destination, because in spite of orders to the contrary they had continued to use Slovak as the language of instruction. In the Churches belonging to the non-Magyar nationalities Magyar has been forcibly introduced into Divine Service, as, for example, at Slovensky Komlos. Slovak pupils in secondary schools have been forbidden to speak Slovak in the streets.

The non-Magyars are being subjected to persecution and imprisonment, and in some cases even to torture. Instances can be cited by the dozen. A former Slovak deputy named Hrabovsky, now a farmer at Caba, was imprisoned and tortured, together with about fifty of the principal citizens of Caba, Slovensky Komlos and Pitvaros. They were kept in prison for twenty months without being brought to trial. For no reason whatever Martin Morhac, a Slovak Evangelical clergyman of Budapest, with his wife and daughter, were treated in the same way. Again, the Slovak preacher Rohacek, of Niredhaza, was sentenced to five months’ imprisonment for having urged his fellow-Slovaks not to conceal their nationality when filling in the census returns. It is instances such as this last which makes it allowable to doubt the correctness of the Hungarian census. Where terrorism prevails among a poor population, it is certain that a large percentage of that population will yield to it rather than incur the danger of fine and imprisonment. It is impossible to estimate even roughly how many Slovaks alone were led by these considerations to inscribe themselves as Magyars in the census papers.

The hatred which the Hungarian officials feel towards the Slovaks is shown on the slightest occasion. A typical incident is the case of Jan Calik, a farmer of Caba, who, on May 4, 1922, asked the superintendent of police to vacate the rooms he was occupying in his house, as his son was getting married and needed them. The superintendent attacked Calik and beat him savagely with the flat of his sword.

But the Hungarian Government faithfully followed the precedent laid down by its predecessors of 1868. In order to have a reply to criticism, it re-enacted to all intents and purposes the Law of Nationalities which had been a dead letter during the years before the War. On August 21, 1919, it issued the following decree:[38]

“1. All Hungarian citizens have completely equal rights. The fact that they belong to a racial minority cannot give them any privileges nor expose them to disabilities.

“2. Subjects of the State belonging to racial minorities can freely make use of their native language in the Hungarian Parliament, in district and communal assemblies, as well as on their committees, wherever they have the right to make speeches.

“3. The laws and decrees of the Government are to be published in the languages of all the racial minorities; the Magyar text is authoritative. District and communal regulations will be published in the administrative language of the communal area, and also in the language used there at the meetings of the administrative bodies.

“4. The administrative language of a district assembly is fixed by the district at a general meeting. Proceedings are to be reported in that language and also in those languages which at least one-fifth of the members of the departmental representative body desire to use. The administrative language is the authoritative one.

“5. The district assemblies can make use of their administrative language in all their requests and decisions, but if this language is not Magyar they are bound to subjoin a Magyar text.

“6. The administrative language of communal bodies is determined by their assembly. As regards the reports of their proceedings, see paragraph 4.

“7. The communal bodies can use their administrative language in their requests and decisions.

“8. Subjects of the State belonging to racial minorities can use their native language in communicating with legislative bodies, the Government, the Ministries, district and communal administrative authorities, as well as with the public services.

“9. The administrative bodies will issue their decisions and replies in the same language as the applications, complaints and requests submitted to them, and in communicating with communal bodies, societies, institutions and private persons, they will use the same language as the latter, provided it is the administrative language of the area.

“10. Whosoever requires the protection of the law and the assistance of the law courts, either as plaintiff, defendant or appellant, can use his native language, provided that it is the administrative language for the area within the jurisdiction of the court concerned.

“11. The law courts will issue their decisions in the same language as the application, etc. The evidence of witnesses and other judicial procedure will be taken in the language of the witness or the parties interested, with the same proviso as in paragraph 10. Under the same conditions, appeals will be made in the language of the appellant provided that the court is aware which language this is. All other judicial decisions, including the verdict of the highest appeal court, will be given in the language of the interested parties at their request.

“12. Ecclesiastical administrative authorities, religious communities and parishes, can decide freely what is to be the official language of their Church or the language of instruction in their schools, and they can make use of it in their dealings with State and autonomous administrative bodies.

“13. Care must be taken that citizens of the State belonging to racial minorities and living in sufficiently considerable compact masses in the territory of the State may have facilities in the State educational establishments of the area where they reside for their children to be educated in their native language as far as the initial stages of higher education. In the universities special chairs will be established for the study of the languages and literatures of each racial minority.

“14. Municipalities, communal areas, Churches, parishes or private persons belonging to any racial minority may found elementary, secondary or higher schools from their own resources or jointly. For this purpose, and in the interests of developing the national and economic resources, citizens of the State belonging to racial minorities can form societies and make collections under the legal control of the State. Educational and other establishments founded in this manner will enjoy the same rights as other schools and establishments. The founders will decide what language is to be used in them.

“15. The fact of belonging to any racial minority will not be an obstacle in the way of attaining rank or employment, whatever they may be. The Government binds itself to see that judicial and administrative posts, especially those of sub-prefects, are filled, wherever possible, by persons belonging to racial minorities and knowing their languages. Officials now in office are obliged to take the necessary steps so as to be able, within a period of two years, to satisfy the linguistic requirements of the racial minorities inhabiting the area in which they are carrying out their duties.

“16. The competent Ministerial authorities are entrusted with carrying out the present decree in co-operation with the Minister of racial minorities, who will keep a continual check on the manner in which this is done, and who will organise for this purpose a special section for each of the racial minorities.

“The present decree will come into force on the day of its publication.”

The decree is most ingenious in its wording. It would appear at first sight that absolute freedom was given to the racial minorities to choose the language they would use for official purposes. But upon closer inspection it will be seen that this free use is circumscribed by limitations depending upon the “administrative language of the area.” As a matter of fact, the “areas” in present-day Hungary are comparatively large and scattered, and in consequence, even though the provisions of the decree were faithfully carried out, it would be difficult to find the requisite proportion of the racial minority, not to determine the administrative language, but even to determine the alternative language permitted under paragraph 4.

The working of the law may be illustrated by the manner in which it applies to the Slovak minority. This minority occupies the districts lying along the frontier between Hungary and Czechoslovakia, for the most part, although it is also found in other parts of Hungary. Following the events of 1918, a Minister of Racial Minorities was appointed. Oskar Jaszi, who had gained a reputation for Liberalism, was nominated to the post, in order that some pretence at least might be made of the intention of the Government to pursue a policy of conciliation towards the minorities. Jaszi made every effort to win over the Slovaks to Hungarian nationality by promising them autonomy, and he even recognised a portion of eastern Slovakia as an independent Republic under Hungarian protection.

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat in Hungary did not assist the racial minorities to secure their rights, and it is quite evident that the so-called struggle for liberty of the Bolsheviks in Slovakia was nothing more than an attempt to secure national unity in Hungary. The Bolsheviks desired, at least at first, to extend the bounds of Soviet Hungary at least as far as those of the ancient monarchy, in order to secure contact with the neighbouring States, in which their next move was to take place. Consequently there was no further step taken with respect to the minorities until the counter-revolution had restored the Magyars to power. This step, when it came, was the decree of August 21, 1919.

The motives which inspired the Government in the issue of this decree are apparent in the words used by the Minister of the Interior in introducing the new provisions. He desired to extol the generous justice of the Hungarian nation towards the minorities, once so large, now from their reduced size of so much less importance. As a matter of fact, as will be shown later, his real intention was to continue the traditional policy of Magyarisation, and he had no idea of altering the existing condition of things. In his introduction to the decree he said:

“The Hungarian State has always recognised, honoured, and even assured to the racial minorities the right of using their language and of freely developing their national civilisation. That this is beyond question is brilliantly proved by the fact that on the territory of the thousand-year-old Hungarian State not only have the non-Magyar inhabitants been able to preserve their national languages, but large numbers of them speak no other. Besides being able to use freely their mother tongues in their private life and in their schools, these inhabitants exercise in public life more extensive rights than those accorded by any European State to those of its subjects who speak other languages but those of the State.”

Had one not become accustomed to the utterances of Hungarian politicians in the past, this sort of statement is enough to take one’s breath away. The argument that many members of the racial minority spoke no language but their own because they had been allowed freedom to do so is laughable. The history of events in Hungary before the War proves conclusively that every attempt was made to stamp out the use of any language but Magyar, and that the reason for the continued existence of the other languages of Hungary was due to the most desperate efforts of the minorities to retain their national characteristics. The fact that so many of the inhabitants of Hungary spoke no Magyar conceals a fact which exposes the whole Hungarian policy. If the Minister of the Interior had been forced to pursue his argument to the end, he would have been compelled to admit that this large population who spoke no Magyar were entirely illiterate, and were composed of those who, rather than have Magyar thrust down their throats, as would have happened had they attended any place of education in Hungary, had preferred to evade the education laws and to deny themselves the benefit of any schooling whatever. The rest of his statement quoted is merely untrue. As Björnson said of Magyar utterances meant to impress foreign countries: “It is waste of time to explain to them (foreign countries) things as they are. They do not understand them. It is consequently necessary to remodel them, to embellish them, to transform them. In our simple European languages we have a single word for this which cannot be used here. I am, however, assured that in Magyar there exists a fine majestic word which we can perhaps translate very closely by ‘patriotic language.’ When a Great Magyar says something which is not quite true he speaks patriotic language. They have achieved in that respect a skill incomprehensible to outsiders, which doubtless has its origin in their racial talents.” We may, therefore, define the Minister’s statements as patriotic language.

His subsequent words bear out this supposition. “Nevertheless, those States which for political reasons complain so loudly of the oppression of their brothers within the Hungarian State provide thereby a convincing proof of their limitless intolerance and of their attempts to oppress irrespectively not only their Magyar subjects, but all their foreign subjects as well, and even those who speak a kindred language.”

He continues by adjuring the racial minorities not to endanger the Hungarian State, which is their own country, by exaggerated demands. It is within the borders of this State that they will prosper, in contrast to those who in other States are powerless to resist the efforts of alien races to assimilate them.

In order that the true application of the decree and of the Minister’s words may be fully understood, it will be necessary to summarise very briefly the legal situation of the racial minorities in Hungary as they existed before the publication of the decree. It is, of course, true that by the law of 1868 the equality of the nationalities was nominally established, but those who have read the earlier chapters of this book will be aware of the differences between the wording and the practice of this law.

The most important point concerns the local assemblies. According to the law of 1868, which is followed in this respect by the decree of 1919, the minutes of these assemblies were to be kept in the official language of the State, but they could also be kept at the same time in that language which at least one-fifth of the members of the body representing the jurisdiction wished. This language may be termed for our present purposes the auxiliary language of the assemblies. According to the law, this auxiliary language might be used in all courts and administrative bodies within the area of the assembly. As the province of the assemblies extended not only over their internal affairs, but over the whole of the services of the State, so far as these were not entrusted to other bodies, the important position thus given to the language of the minorities can be seen. But the auxiliary language had to be demanded by at least a fifth of the members of the assembly, and under the Hungarian system of election such a proportion of non-Magyars on the local bodies was unheard of. The net result was that up to the time of the coup d’état there was not a single local body in Slovakia where Slovak was used as an auxiliary language. If this fact be borne in mind, and the various laws be recalled by which Magyar was introduced to the exclusion of all others, it will be seen that even under the provisions of the Law of Nationalities the use of a non-Magyar language in the courts was so restricted as to be to all intents and purposes inoperative.

A Slovak could only use his native tongue before his own communal court, of which the jurisdiction was limited to matters involving a value of not more than 50 crowns. The exclusive language of all higher courts was Magyar, as was the language of appeal from the communal courts to the district courts. All members of the legal profession pleading before the courts and the judges and magistrates presiding over those courts were restricted to the use of Magyar, whether engaged upon their own cases or acting as the legal representatives of minors or others. In practice Magyar was the only language in which legal proceedings could be conducted. In the matter of education the situation was similar as has already been seen (Chapter IV).

The decree of 1919 was nothing more than a continuation of the existing state of things, for it did not amend the law of 1868 in any vital provision. Wherever the decree authorises the employment of a non-Magyar tongue, it limits this authorisation by the condition that the language must be either the official or the auxiliary language of the area. As things are, it is impossible that either language could ever be Slovak. As a matter of fact, there is at present no commune in Hungary where Slovak is the official or auxiliary language, far less is there any larger administrative area.

But even this illusory right was still to be denied to the members of the legal profession, as was shown plainly enough by a proclamation of the Minister of Justice dated January 17, 1920.

A statement of Pechany[39] of November 17, 1921, reproduced in the Pester Lloyd, is interesting.

“By virtue of a commission from the Hungarian Government, I have paid official visits to nearly all the communes in which there is a Slovak-speaking majority. Everywhere I have assembled the inhabitants and have invited their views on intellectual, social and economic questions. In all cases minutes were kept. As a result of these minutes and of the speeches made in the assemblies, I can state the following: The population is primarily interested in economic questions. The recorded wishes and petitions are mainly concerned with the bettering of their material situation. The population of the communes in question can prove that a considerable improvement has taken place during a relatively short time. A very good feeling exists in the intercourse between Magyars and Slovaks, and as every Slovak speaks Magyar as well,[40] it is not even possible to perceive that a polyglot population inhabits the communes. In fact, purely Magyar villages are found in the neighbourhood. The natural result is that both Slovaks and Germans make every effort to learn Magyar in their own interests. At each conference I made special inquiries into the language of instruction in the schools, and I prepared a special report on the expressed desires of the inhabitants. The fixing of the extent to which they desire Slovak to be used in the schools depends entirely upon the inhabitants themselves. The necessity for the teaching of Magyar was everywhere positively expressed. There were a few Slovak communes where, owing to the enthusiasm caused by the Lovaszy Decree on the subject of languages, the teaching of Magyar had been reduced to the minimum, but the decree was soon changed by the force of circumstances, for it was realised that it is preferable that children should acquire Magyar at school, rather than subsequently to seek employment or enter service in Hungarian towns for the purpose.”

It was hardly to be expected that the Slovaks, terrorised by the brutality of the Magyar local officials, would stand up in public and oppose their voices to the soft and Magyarising words of the Special Commissioner. It is not through the medium of public meetings that the true sentiments of a coerced country are ascertained.

It is true that in the Hungary of to-day there are no Slovak schools, and the reason is not the one so naïvely put forward by the Commissioner Pechany. The slightest sign of Slovak or other non-Magyar sympathies in Hungary is rewarded with the consequences which the non-Magyars know so well. The system of county organisation which exists in Hungary makes such persecution not only possible but easy. The control of every individual in the communes and small towns is vested in the local officials, who are in every case, owing to the Magyar system of elections, men who have been specially trained in the school of Magyar Jingoism. No one dares protest against the Magyarising tendencies of the central Government or its local officials. Even if direct molestation were not to follow, it is quite certain that the offender would never cease to feel the results of his act. At every step he is dependent upon the goodwill of the local officials, and the forfeiture of their goodwill means that existence is made intolerable to the object of their displeasure. To the citizens of a democratic country the power of petty officials is incomprehensible, but in a country such as Hungary it is no exaggeration to say that the struggle for existence is impossible in the face of the opposition they are enabled to exert.

Meanwhile the Minister of Racial Minorities had ceased to worry about the rights of the non-Magyar nationalities in Hungary itself, and had turned his attention to their brothers in the adjoining States. An article in the Pesti Hirlap of January 14, 1921, gave the game away completely.

“The principle of the national Unitary Magyar State excludes all idea of the appointment of a special Ministry for the nationalities, and the Pesti Hirlap, as a defender of the national policy, has always protested against the idea. However, when our country was dismembered, when the nationalities torn from us, notably the brave Slovaks in the northern provinces, the patriotic Ruthenians and the faithful Germans, gave proofs of their attachment to the Hungarian State, the establishment of a Ministry which should concern itself with these patriot nationalities became justifiable. That is why we ourselves have acquiesced in it. We shall not raise any objection if, for the same reasons, the Ministry is continued, for its suppression at the present moment would be used by our enemies as a weapon against us among our non-Magyar brethren. The situation is such that the Ministry may be a means of maintaining the integrity of our territory, if it is used intelligently. Its continued existence should signify that we consider our nationalities[41] as forming part of the unity of the national unitary Magyar State, and that we look forward to their return to Great Hungary. It is, therefore, evident that the object of the Ministry of Nationalities cannot be to manufacture nationalities in a mutilated Hungary.”

The Pesti Hirlap no more recognises racial minorities in Hungary than it recognises their rights. On the contrary, it impresses on the Ministry the right, or rather the duty, to occupy itself with the internal affairs of the neighbouring States. The Ministry of Racial Minorities has been suppressed, but it continues to function, as suppressed Government departments are so apt to do, in another form. It is now disguised as Government Commissions on various nationalities. The mouthpiece of these Commissions, so far at least as the Slovaks are concerned, is Pechany, whom we have already quoted. On another occasion he repeated his strange theories, under conditions which ensured for them the maximum publicity, trusting that the world at large had forgotten the grain of salt with which it is necessary to take the statements of a Magyar politician. “There can be no question of the suppression of Slovak schools,” he said. “Attempts have been made to teach Slovak in secondary schools both at Bekescsaba and at Szarvas. An insignificant number of scholars took up the course and very soon abandoned it. There is at the moment no obstacle to Slovak being taught in secondary schools, elsewhere if necessary, if application is made for it. Based on the statistics of Bekescsaba and Szarvas, I can testify that the number of pupils seeking instruction in Slovak in these two establishments is relatively very low, that in general Slovak pupils are only found in the lower classes of the schools, and go at once to the agricultural school or remain at home to engage in farming. Of the 441 pupils entered in the higher classes of the secondary school of Bekescsaba in 1921-22, only 63 speak Slovak. Among these are some Protestant Magyars and eleven Jews. Of the 451 pupils entered in the higher classes of the secondary school of Szarvas, 96 only speak Slovak.”

In fact, Pechany is unable to perceive the existence of any Slovak minorities in Hungary at all, in spite of the fact that their existence is demonstrated by the census figures of his own Government.

After the experiences of representative Slovaks, particularly those of the well-known Slovak patriot, Juraj Grabovsky, who, together with 54 of his fellow-citizens of Bekes, spent two years in prison for the crime of having suggested the annexation of that province to Rumania during the Rumanian occupation, it is hardly surprising that Pechany found so little openly expressed enthusiasm for Slovak speech or Slovak ideals. In the communes in which the Slovaks predominate the detachments of gendarmerie have been strengthened, and anyone suspected of “Panslavism” is promptly removed to prison.

On February 1, 1922, the former deputy, Stephen Rakovszky, declared that Hungary’s chief mistake was a false policy towards the nationalities, that the Slovaks were being alienated by the neglect of their language and their institutions, and that it was only possible to regain the lost districts by a favourable policy towards the racial minorities.

On February 25, 1922, more than three years after the end of the War, Count Andrassy published in Az Est a stinging criticism of the Magyar system of oppression of the minorities in Hungary. “For myself,” he said, “I have not long been a supporter of the secret ballot; my reasons having been the faulty policy pursued towards the nationalities, as a result of which the whole Magyar nation found itself on every occasion in opposition to a large number of voters of other nationalities. Hungary was faced with the alternatives of either changing its attitude towards the nationalities, or keeping to an electorial system which enabled the Government to exercise a decisive influence over the elections. Now the situation is reversed. In the first place we no longer have the nationalities, in the second everyone is agreed that the attitude towards the nationalities in the past was bad, and that in any case it is impossible to return to it. Under these conditions I consider that public voting is a crime against the right of the nationalities to self-determination, and I most emphatically condemn it.”[42]

These words of Count Andrassy convey an entirely different impression from a sincere desire to further the rights of the nationalities, since he does not appear to be aware of their existence in present-day Hungary. It is safe to assume that the Slovaks at least do not enjoy any of the rights provided for racial minorities, since their “Commissioner” maintains that they do not desire to exercise these rights.

Nor is it only the Slovaks who suffer. The experiences of the German inhabitants of Oedenburg form a case in point. According to the Budapesti Hirlap of February 6, 1922, before the plebiscite of Oedenburg a deputy of Germans of that locality waited upon Count Bethlen, the President of the Council, to acquaint him with the wishes of the German inhabitants of that town and to assure him of their devotion to the Hungarian Fatherland. The President asserted that the application of the Law of Nationalities and the decree of 1919 would not be subject to any delay, and promised the deputation that the desires of the German population should be met. In the Nemzeti Ujszag of January 25th Anthony König voiced the complaints of the Germans, who, having heard so many promises and fair words, were getting impatient for something to be done. Those who are familiar with the situation as regards education in the areas inhabited by the Germans have gained the impression that no move has yet been made in the direction of applying the laws.

As for the other minorities in Hungary, the same conditions prevail. The Rumanians have been awarded a Government Commissioner and nothing more. The Hungarian Government apparently does not recognise the existence of the Ruthenes, Serbs or Slovenes.

It is clear that the old passion of the Magyars for their domination at the expense of the non-Magyar nationalities still burns as fiercely as ever, and that the country which now proclaims the injustice which has been done to her has yet no intention of dealing justly with the minorities within her own borders.

FOOTNOTES:

[38] Signed by the Prime Minister, Stephen Friedrich, and published November 19, 1919, in the official gazette.

[39] Commissioner to the Slovaks in Hungary.

[40] Compare the remark of the Minister of the Interior (page 136).

[41] Evidently meaning the subject nationalities of former Hungary.—C.J.C.S.

[42] Compare the article on Hungarian Elections, by A. Kristicz, in the Oxford Hungarian Review, vol. 1, No. 2, p. 164, where the author says: “In the rural districts the polling is public and oral, corresponding to the frank character of the provincial Magyar and his sense of responsibility for the open deeds done.”

CHAPTER VIII
THE MAGYAR MINORITIES IN THE NEW STATES

It is one of the principal complaints of the Magyars that since the division of Hungary the Magyar minorities in the surrounding States have been oppressed and unfairly treated. That such a complaint should be made by a nation, the whole of whose recent history has been one of coercion of racial minorities, is astonishing; but the very fact of the accusation having been put forward makes it necessary that it should be investigated.

Magyar minorities exist at the present day in Czechoslovakia, Rumania and Yugo-Slavia, each of which States includes some part of the former dominions of the Crown of St. Stephen. According to recent figures, Czechoslovakia contains a Magyar population of about 636,000, mostly in Slovakia; Rumania a Magyar population of about 800,000 (if the Szeklers are included among the Magyars), mostly in Transylvania; and Yugo-Slavia a Magyar population of about 100,000, mostly in Croatia. It will be seen, therefore, that the Magyar minorities in Czechoslovakia and Rumania are the most important.

We may deal first with the position of the Magyars in Slovakia under the rule of the Czechoslovak Republic, upon which we have been able to obtain indisputable evidence, and which may help us in estimating the value of the Magyar charges in other cases. Enough has been said of the condition of Slovakia under Magyar rule in earlier chapters of this book to make further reference to the subject unnecessary. It is sufficient to say that the Magyar minority in Slovakia comprises 21·2 per cent. of the population of the province, and about 5·5 per cent. of the total population of the Republic.

Articles 8 and 9 of the Treaty of St. Germain (September 10, 1919) between the Allied and Associated Powers and Czechoslovakia, stipulate that Czechoslovak subjects belonging to racial minorities are to be granted the liberty of founding, managing and governing schools and other institutions established specially for them, and that the Czechoslovak Government is to grant all its subjects, whatever may be their mother-tongues, adequate educational facilities. The children of such subjects are to be granted the right of instruction in their native languages when they form a considerable fraction of the total number of the inhabitants of a town or district.[43]

So much for the theory of nationalities in the Czecho-Slovak Republic. We will now turn to the practical manner in which this theory has been carried out. It will be remembered that in Slovakia under Magyar rule there were no schools in which the Slovak population could secure general instruction in the Slovak language. It is interesting to see how the Magyars fare in their turn. The tables which follow give the educational figures for Slovakia alone for the year 1921. In examining them it must be borne in mind that the proportion of Magyars in the population of Slovakia, contemporaneous with these figures, was 20·6 per cent.

Language of Instruction.

No. of
Schools.

Per Cent.

No. of
Classes.

Per Cent.

Elementary Schools: | | | |
Slovak | 2,613 | 70·7 | 4,207 | 68·2
Magyar | 762 | 20·6 | 1,373 | 22
Magyar-Slovak-German | 3 | — | 20 | 0·3
Magyar-Slovak | 26 | 0·7 | 53 | 0·8
Magyar-German | 2 | — | 48 | 0·7
Higher Elementary Schools: | | | |
Slovak | 85 | 77·3 | 434 | 77·9
Magyar | 15 | 13·7 | 94 | 17·2
Slovak-Magyar | 2 | 1·8 | — | —
Magyar-German | 2 | 1·8 | — | —
Secondary Schools: | | | |
Slovak | 28 | 70 | 267 | 69·5
Magyar | 4 | 10 | — | —
Slovak-Magyar | 3 | 7·5 | 31 | 8
Slovak-German-Magyar | 1 | 2·5 | — | —
Magyar-Slovak | 1 | 2·5 | — | —
Magyar-German-Slovak | 1 | 2·5 | — | —

From the above it will be seen that as regards elementary education the Magyar minority in Czechoslovakia obtains better terms as regards education than are provided for in the Treaty. The latter only provides for facilities for elementary education for the racial minorities, whereas the Magyar minority not only gets this in greater proportion than its strength warrants, but also gets the advantages of higher elementary and secondary education in its own language. As for the Slovak majority, their lot is so different now that Slovakia is released from the Magyar yoke, that it is almost unrecognisable. The population now has complete freedom in educational matters, and facilities for their enjoyment. Instead of being compelled to imbibe what knowledge it could through the medium of a foreign tongue, it has at its hand a modern and extensive system of schools of all grades. As a consequence the percentage of illiterates is decreasing by leaps and bounds, and the backward state of the remoter parts of the country, such as Ruthenia, which under Magyar rule were left in mediæval darkness, is rapidly giving place to intellectual consciousness.

Nor does the Czechoslovak Government spare expense in equipping Magyar schools. The outlay on education in Slovakia for the year 1921-22 was:—

| Czechoslovak Crowns.
For State Elementary Schools | 41,661,957
For Private Schools | 90,808,142
| —————
Total | 132,470,099
| —————

Out of this total expenditure, the following grants were made for non-Slovak schools:—

| State Schools. | Private Schools.
Magyar | 5,770,173 | 24,245,763
German | 1,587,318 | 4,267,981
Ruthenian | 141,650 | 4,177,172
| ———— | —————
Total | 7,499,141 | 32,690,916
| ———— | —————

Thus the Magyar schools receive 22·5 per cent. of the whole sum spent on elementary education in Slovakia. The outlay on secondary schools in Slovakia amounted to 9,712,526 crowns for 1921-1922. Out of this sum the Magyar schools received 2,048,006 crowns, or 21 per cent. of the total.

As regards the admission of Magyars into the public services, the Czechoslovak Government adopts an entirely unprejudiced attitude. The following figures show the distribution of the nationalities in various branches of the public services of Slovakia for the year 1921. They are worth comparing with the similar statistics for the same province under Magyar rule in 1910, which will be found on page 78.

Political Administration: Czechoslovaks 1,763, Magyars 397.

Posts, Telegraphs and Telephones: Czechoslovaks 1,631, Magyars 1,423.

Elementary School Teachers: Czechoslovaks 4,676, Magyars 1,685.

Higher Elementary School Teachers: Czechoslovaks 413, Magyars 137.

Secondary School Teachers: Czechoslovaks 431, Magyars 138.

Doctors and employees in State Hospitals: Czechoslovaks 248, Magyars 88.

Judges and Lawyers: Czechoslovaks 198, Magyars 160.

Public Works: Czechoslovaks 869, Magyars 144.

Agricultural Services: Czechoslovaks 993, Magyars 576.

From the above it will be seen that the proportion of Magyars in the public services of the Czechoslovak Republic is far greater than the actual strength of the Magyar minority would warrant.

In the Czechoslovak Parliament, including both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, the representatives of racial minorities can use their own language, both in speeches and written communications.

Racially the present Chamber of Deputies has 199 Czechoslovak members, 72 Germans, and 7 Magyars. The Senate has 103 Czechoslovaks, 37 Germans, and 3 Magyars.

The manner in which the Czechoslovak Courts carry out their proceedings, even against Magyars who have committed acts of sedition, has received no higher justification than the tribute which was paid to it in the Parliament of Budapest by the deputy Rassay, who commended it to the notice of the Magyar Courts as a model of justice and impartiality. In any degree of court in the Republic racial minorities are permitted to plead in their own tongues.[44]

In carrying out agrarian reforms in Slovakia, the Government is showing the fullest consideration for the demands of the Magyar peasantry. It is natural that the owners of the large estates in this district, the majority of whom are of Hungarian nationality, should endeavour to delay the process of agrarian reform as much as possible, but the small farmers, whether Magyar or Czechoslovak, are opposed to their attitude. Wherever land has been distributed, it has been allotted to the workers irrespective of their nationality, according to the locality in which it was situated. Thus the whole of the Coburg estate, which is situated in a Magyar locality, and the area of which was about 2,500 acres, was divided exclusively among Magyar workmen.

The Czechoslovak law of languages does not restrict itself to the conditions imposed by the Treaty of St. Germain, but accords to the minorities far greater advantages than that Treaty contemplates. Where the Treaty mentions a racial minority, Czechoslovak law does not limit this expression to a given nationality, represented by a sufficient proportion of members, but extends the rights of minorities to all groups of citizens speaking other languages, who form a fifth of the population of any district. Thus, in a district of 20,000 inhabitants it is sufficient that there exist 4,000 citizens speaking other languages, not necessarily the same, to endow that minority with the rights appertaining to minorities in general. It is not only in this sense, but in a number of others, that Czechoslovak practice outstrips the letter of the obligation. For instance, the Treaty provides that: “Notwithstanding the establishment of an official language by the Czechoslovak Government, appropriate facilities shall be given to Czechoslovak subjects speaking languages other than Czech, for the oral or written use of their language before the courts.” The Supreme Administrative Tribunal published an order on October 5, 1921, to the effect that all members of racial minorities were to be given the advantage of this provision, whether they were Czechoslovak subjects or not.

Again, the Government is not obliged, under the Treaty, to give the lingual advantages defined above except before the courts. But the law of languages extends the right of usage of a minority language beyond the courts to “all other services, branches of administration and agencies of the Republic”; in other words, to the postal, educational, financial, political and other services.

The Treaty speaks of “appropriate facilities,” which must be given the minorities for the use of their languages.

In Yugo-Slavia, also, the Magyar minority has been afforded every facility for the continuance of its national existence. It is confined almost exclusively to Croatia and Slavonia, which were formerly in Hungarian territory, and where, even then, the Magyars formed a very small fraction of the population. The Slavs of those districts have shown no tendency to retaliate upon their former masters the indignities they once suffered; the Magyars are permitted free use of their language and are subject to no restrictive legislation, notwithstanding the intrigues which exist between them and the irredentist societies of Hungary.

In Transylvania the problem which confronts the Rumanians is more complicated. The conditions which existed in this district before the War have already been touched upon, and the injustices of Magyar rule exposed. In Transylvania, and the same remark applies with equal force to the other transferred regions, the Magyar population was to a large extent made up of the official classes, who had been appointed by the Hungarian Government for the purposes of Magyarisation. Upon the transfer of the regions, these officials were offered terms, in many cases extremely favourable, upon which to continue in their posts, as long as they showed their intention of keeping faith with the new authority and refrained from supporting Magyar irredentist policies.

In many cases these officials showed themselves unworthy of the trust displayed in them. In Transylvania especially was this the case. Many of the leading Magyar families owned large estates in the agricultural districts of Transylvania, and were able to exert a pernicious influence upon those officials and others who, originally appointed under Magyar rule through the influence of the landowning families, preserved their appointments by the transfer of their allegiance. In many cases this transfer was only nominal, and was effected deliberately in order that they might be in the position to further the schemes of the Government of Budapest. As a result, the Rumanians have been faced with grave difficulties in assimilating their Magyar subjects, who have remained closely in touch with the sources of sedition. The defection of the official classes has been seconded by the efforts of the Magyar propagandists, and Magyar subjects of Rumania have been encouraged to offer a policy of passive resistance to the efforts of the administration to form a homogeneous Kingdom of Rumania, combined with an unceasing stream of complaints as to the injustice with which they assert they are treated under the new regime.

In many cases the Rumanians have been compelled at short notice to replace disaffected officials by men of Rumanian birth whose loyalty is unquestioned. Naturally the supply of men trained for such posts is limited, and in some cases men may have been appointed whose ideas of local administration have been modelled upon the methods of the Magyars when Transylvania was under their rule. The Magyar propagandists, always keenly on the watch for any incident upon which to base their protestations, have seized with avidity upon the acts of their Rumanian pupils to demonstrate the tyranny with which they are treated under Rumanian rule.

As a matter of fact, in Transylvania the Magyars under Rumanian rule are far better off than the Rumanians ever were under Magyar rule, even in the most extreme cases, which the Magyars themselves have been able to quote. But such a state of affairs is not sufficient to ensure the peaceful settlement of Transylvania, and of this the Rumanian Government is well aware. The oppressive acts of local officials, which are in fact limited to misinterpretation of the provisions of the law-giving freedom of language, education and religion to the Magyar minority, are entirely contrary to the express instructions of the Government of Bucharest, which is deeply concerned to enforce the provisions of the Treaties which ensure the protection of minorities. But the Government is in an extremely difficult position. The Rumanian population of Transylvania, from the highest to the lowest, is deeply incensed at the Magyar efforts, overt and covert, to stir up strife and to secure by hook or by crook the return of the province to Hungarian rule. The Magyar irredentists regard Transylvania as the Sinn Fein irredentists regard Ulster; both alike proclaim the iniquity of “partition,” regardless of the presence in Transylvania and Ulster respectively of large majorities in favour of such partition. In both the irredentist minority have committed acts of aggression against the majority; in both the servants of the Government have been guilty of hasty and ill-advised actions in restoring order and administering the law. But no reasonable person accuses the Ulster Government of a policy of repression of the Sinn Fein minority in Fermanagh and Tyrone. It would be equally unreasonable to accuse the Rumanian Government of a policy of repression of the Magyar minority in Transylvania.

That local officials and members of the civil population of Transylvania have been guilty of foolish and arbitrary actions is undeniable, and not to be wondered at. It is indeed extraordinary that, overrun as the country is with Magyar agents provacateurs, these actions have not been of greater violence and frequency. Exasperated by the overbearing demeanour of their late tyrants, their political dishonesty and their perpetual efforts to stir up discord, the Rumanian inhabitants have at times retaliated by furtive efforts at petty persecution, not one of which has been allowed to pass unnoticed by the delighted Magyar propagandists. It is regrettable that the Rumanians have thus played into the hands of these men, as it affords them a ground upon which to base their futile cry for the restitution of Transylvania to Hungary, and so to delay the peaceful settlement of that province.

A distinguished Englishman,[45] as the result of investigations on the spot, sums up the situation as follows. “The Rumanian character is extraordinarily easy-going. They are not hustlers (perhaps it would be better for them if they could hustle a trifle), and no one would suggest that in all sections of their country their administration is perfect. It must not be forgotten, however, that the country has been roughly doubled in area and that in the newly annexed territories it was impracticable to retain a large number of civil servants who had been brought up in the machinery of another State—at any rate, as far as the leading officials were concerned; but it may here be mentioned that the majority of the minor personnel on the Transylvanian railways, as well as postal officials, etc., who worked under the old regime, have been retained by the Rumanian Government. Every Englishman knows how long it has taken us to build up an efficient Civil Service. Rumania is a country which has not behind her the traditions of organisation which Great Britain enjoys, and in the selection of the various administrative officials during the short period which has succeeded the War, there have undoubtedly been appointed some men who have proved themselves unfitted to carry out the work. Humanly speaking, this was bound to happen, and in my humble opinion the Rumanian Government is doing all that is possible to make good when failure in this respect is discovered.”

Despite the exaggerated claims of the Magyars, there is no question that the Magyar minority in Transylvania is in every respect far better off than ever was the Rumanian majority under Hungarian rule. Such minor injustices as have been perpetrated towards the Magyars have been due to the misplaced zeal of isolated local officials, and are in no way representative of official Rumanian policy. Beyond these, Rumanian demonstrations of triumph inspired by the acquisition of an essentially Rumanian province, are naturally distasteful to a proud people. But of grievances such as would justify a reconsideration of the Treaties, even the Magyar propagandists can adduce no trace.

FOOTNOTES:

[43] These terms of the Treaty are embodied in the Czechoslovak Constitution, which contains the following provisions:—

128.

1. All Czechoslovak citizens are fully equal before the law and enjoy the same civil and political rights, without distinction of race, language or religion.

2. Differences of religion, confession, opinion or language can be no bar to a Czechoslovak citizen, within the limits fixed by the general laws, particularly to admission to the public service, offices or honours, or in the exercise of the various professions or industries.

3. Czechoslovak citizens may, within the limits fixed by the general laws, employ freely any language, in private or commercial matters, in the exercise of their religion, in the Press or in any form of publication, or at public meetings.

4. The rights in these respects belonging to State agencies according to the laws at present in force or those which may be passed in the future, in the interests of public order, the safety of the State or of efficient supervision, are not prejudiced by the foregoing.

129.

The principles of the right of language in the Czechoslovak Republic are fixed by a definite law forming part of the Constitution.

130.

The general laws according to citizens the right to establish, direct and control at their own expense charitable, religious or social institutions, schools and other educational establishments—all citizens, without distinction of nationality, language, religion or race, are equal and enjoy the right to use freely their own tongue and practise freely their religion in these establishments.

131.

In towns and districts containing a reasonable proportion of Czechoslovak subjects speaking a language other than Czechoslovak, the children of these Czechoslovak subjects are guaranteed the possibility, within the limits fixed by the general educational laws, of receiving instruction in their own tongues, but Czechoslovak may be declared an obligatory subject.

132.

In cases where in towns and districts inhabited by a reasonable proportion of Czechoslovak subjects belonging to racial, religious or linguistic minorities, certain portions of the public revenue are earmarked for educational, religious or charitable purposes by State, communal or other budgets, part of the amount so earmarked, corresponding to the appropriation and the objects, shall be applied to these minorities, within the limits of the general regulations concerning the public administration.

133.

The putting into force of the principles of 131 and 132, and particularly the definition of the expression “Reasonable proportion,” will be provided for by special legislation.

134.

Any measures of forced denationalisation whatever are forbidden. Violation of this principle may be declared by law a criminal act.

[44] See also below for an amplification of this statement.

[45] Sir Harry Brittain, in Eastern Europe, October-November, 1921.

CHAPTER IX
MAGYAR PROPAGANDA

From the moment when Hungary realised that her defeat in the field would result in the loss of the territory populated by what the Magyars termed the subject races, she devoted all her energies towards regaining them by the use of the more subtle weapons of propaganda. The analysis of a propaganda campaign is always extremely difficult, unless the strategic scheme of those directing it is known. The tactics of propaganda can usually be unmasked, but the true motives which inspire those tactics are frequently difficult of discernment. Propaganda in the modern sense means the influence of opinion by the dissemination of some particular idea or theory. It is based upon the psychological fact that people upon whom a point of view is perpetually impressed will in time insensibly adopt it as their own. If this point of view is skilfully presented, it is unlikely that the general public will see any motive behind it. Further, unless the point of view concerns some set of conditions with which the particular section of the public it is desired to convince is remarkably familiar, the arguments adduced in favour of it need not necessarily be founded on the strictest fact.

The Magyars, taught by their German allies, became during the War adepts at the gentle art of clothing fancies with the convincing garments of fact, and as soon as their nation decided to take up the weapons of propaganda they had no difficulty in finding the men to wield them. But even so their methods displayed a certain native clumsiness, which makes it possible to counter their strokes by the only really convincing method. To attempt to refute propaganda point by point is a wearisome task, and one which often plays into the adversary’s hand, by giving him opportunities of reply. The surest method of making it harmless is to expose the object of the propaganda and the sources whence it rises. I shall not attempt to deal with Magyar propaganda except by the quotation of the Magyars themselves, with an occasional commentary where necessary to explain them.

The ratification of the Treaty of Trianon compelled the Magyar propagandists to assume a veil of secrecy, and to disguise official propaganda under the guise of the operations of unofficial bodies. Of these bodies the “League for the Defence of Hungary’s Integrity” has taken the lead and has absorbed many of its smaller competitors. The General Secretary of this League is Dr. Alexander Krisztics, a Professor at the University of Budapest. On January 23, 1921, at the General Assembly of the League, he made a report, from which may be extracted the following passages:—

“We have carried out a task worthy of Sisyphus. In January 1920 I accompanied the Hungarian Peace Delegation, inciting them not to dare to cede even a jot of our ancestral rights. The same demand was shouted to them by the people at every station on the way. We used this means of strengthening the morale of the delegation in this direction. In the report of the delegation, however, passages have been observed which indicate that they had consented to bargaining. But even these have failed to soften the hearts of the Entente Ministers. They have returned with the most intolerable conditions. We have done everything in our power to ensure that the protest of the nation should be as weighty as possible. We held a whole series of meetings for the purpose of protesting against these conditions, in Budapest as well as in the country, ending up with enormous processions and scientific lectures. Our protests found an echo even in the foreign Press. In vain. Not even at the second attempt has the delegation been able to bring back more advantageous conditions. Consequently we began an agitation against the signature of the Treaty, exploiting absolutely everything. But we could not even prevent this. We hoped from the assurances we received that the ratification would not be carried out. We then expected that the Magyar Sisyphus would finally complete his task, pushing his heavy burden to its goal and thus ridding himself of it. But again we were disappointed. We failed to obtain even the postponement of the ratification of the Peace. We therefore shoulder our burden once again. Now we fight for the revision of the Treaty, and prepare ourselves for new and great national efforts, hoping to be victorious in this new attempt. The faith is the old one. It is invincible, being an eternal source of power for our future happiness. If we had all united in the service of the Fatherland instead of admitting discord, we should have obtained palpable results to show for our efforts to regain our integrity. Sisyphus himself often loses his strength through this discord and busies himself with too many difficult problems, when indeed he has but one problem to solve, namely, the regaining of territorial integrity, which is all important and without which no other problem can be solved.

“Until we solve the problem of territorial integrity none of our internal problems can be seriously and satisfactorily solved.”

“In the month of August Mr. Galocsi held a series of conferences on the question of nationalities with the leaders of the aforesaid nationalities. The minutes of these meetings remain eternal documents from which one can ascertain that the nationalities themselves do not desire more than what is granted by Article No. 44 of the law of 1868. It remains to be seen whether these delegates have acted according to their statements made at the conferences or not.

“We have done all that is possible to maintain a favourable spirit for the internal propaganda. In 1920 we held 85 big meetings combined with concerts and lectures, and 280 popular meetings; and we have distributed 34 different pamphlets, 58 different placards, 71 different letters, and 8 kinds of propaganda stamps.

“The provincial Press, which has not appeared for a considerable time, has resumed work, and its newly organised Press section under the leadership of Dr. Okolicsany Laslo has worked with admirable results. During two months 250 articles issued by our Press section have appeared in the provincial Press, all serving the cause of integrity.

“In Western Hungary we have distributed 6 different pamphlets, 9 different German manifestoes (loose leaves), the paper Westungarische Briefe, and a German calendar.

“For the occupied territories we have settled the methods for placing at the disposal of the various nationalities our pamphlets in their respective languages. We have made every effort in this direction to promote the movement and to give help to the branch league and to the refugee municipal council. The refugee municipal councils are already official organs, according to a ministerial order by which the refugee officials must present themselves to the respective municipal councils for the verification of their offices.”

“Propaganda abroad has met with great success, both in connection with the Peace Delegation and otherwise, with the result that European public opinion is acquainted with our grievance and sees that the Hungarian question is an open wound in the body of Europe. We have succeeded in creating the Hungarian question, and it is the duty of the League to keep it on the surface of European politics until it is solved in our favour. This is the basis of propaganda abroad.

“Up to the present we have distributed 28 different pamphlets in the English language, 17 in French, 8 in Italian. The number of pamphlets in these languages amounts to 300,000; if these distributed by other organisations all over the world be included, the amount is 400,000.

“We have also sent 25,000 copies of our review, The Hungarian Nation. Of the political-economic map of Hungary, worked out by Feodor Ferentz, with German, English, French, Italian and Magyar text, 10,000 copies have been distributed abroad with excellent results.

“Among our more important publications we have the English East European Problems, of which ten numbers have appeared up to the present; of the Questions de l’Europe Orientale six numbers have appeared. The pamphlet dealing with the refutation of the allegations made with regard to the White Terror in Hungary we have published in English as Reports of the White Terror in Hungary in greater numbers than usual.

“During 1920 we have sent abroad 250 parcels containing our books, reviews and pamphlets to the most prominent statesmen and institutions.

“For the distribution of our material abroad we have established close connections with important bookstalls in London, New York, Paris, Berne, Geneva and Milan. As our publications were not bought by the public, we have directed the booksellers to distribute them gratis to the customers.”

“The relations we have had with foreigners who have visited our country have had splendid results, thus, as a result of our influence a book appeared from the pen of Mme. Hedvig Latter Correvoh, the Swiss journalist, and Dr. John Polterra, Deputy of the canton of Zurich. Similarly, two articles by the American journalist, Kenneth Roberts, have been published in the Saturday Evening Post, which has a circulation of three million copies, one article on the division of Hungary and the other on Northern Hungary. The former is very strong, and our illustrations were published with it, with the result that the article and illustrations together filled a whole page of the paper.

“We have sent commissioners abroad for the service of propaganda, of whom Dr. Varosy Karoly achieved great success in Switzerland, making proposals regarding our cause even to the President of the League of Nations, and founding the Magyar League in that country. Our emissary to Italy has personally discussed the matter with the Pope of Rome and the high dignitaries of the Holy See.

“The activity of a member of the Reformed Church, Magyerosi, has been very marked in Holland. He held 26 lectures on Hungary in 24 towns, as well as two matinées, which were attended by the highest aristocracy of the country. He also informed us that Western public opinion is beginning to appreciate the machinations of the Rumanians, Czechs, Serbs, etc., and that nobody has any faith in the consolidation of those States.”

“We have received six foreign journalists, to whom we have given information, and have also shown them the impossible frontier. In Berne we have arranged an exhibition of our maps and pamphlets, by which we have demonstrated the impossibility of dividing Hungary. The exhibition was a great success.

“Abroad we have up to the present 34 emissaries in 30 large cities who work zealously for us, not only Magyars but also foreigners, drawn from the ranks of those who have visited our country, and whom we have won to our cause.

“The information in the foreign Press is conveyed both directly to the newspaper offices and indirectly through our bureaus and agents. In 1920 we have employed six such agents and we are negotiating with six others.

“We send our news direct to 182 English and American papers every week through our Press service. In these communications we show the impossible internal situation of the States which have taken possession of our territory, the atrocities committed on our territories, expounding at the same time the unanimous wish of the population of those territories for the old Unitary Hungary, and insisting on the revision of the Peace Treaty. All this appears as informatory news.

“We have close connections with 18 daily papers abroad, which publish without any modification the matter given them by us, as, for instance, the American review, The Commentator. Our emissaries and agents receive from us articles and information to be sent to the Press of the locality in which they work, which device has given splendid results. We have registered 15,000 addresses to which we regularly send all our printed matter.”

“Our action for the revision of the Treaty has the support of 53 deputies, with Dr. Karafiath Jeno at their head, who further our efforts in every direction.

“Our programme for the future comprises the improvement and the completion of the foreign services, particularly of the Press service, by sending information to the Press of the world in its various languages. We shall publish pamphlets in all languages to advocate our aims and shall distribute them universally.

“We particularly wish to send a considerable stock of books to our Hungarian brokers in America, and we shall do everything within our power to provide literary books for our agents in the occupied territories. The stock of correspondence we propose to use entirely for the strengthening of the militarist spirit.

“In the above we have the honour of presenting to you the report for the year 1920.”

There are one or two points in the above report which may require some elucidation. Mr. Galocsi, in his much vaunted conferences with the leaders of the nationalities, took care to get in touch only with those few malcontents whose private concerns would have shown more profit under the corrupt Magyar rule. “Article 44 of the year 1868” is the infamous Law of Nationalities. It is quite credible that the nationalities desired no more than was included in its provisions. But, as we have already shown, these provisions were never put into force under Magyar administration.

The reference to “refugee officials” in the occupied territories, by which term the new States are referred to throughout, is perhaps a trifle obscure. It must be remembered that when Slovakia and the other transferred territories were part of Hungary, they were ruled by a swarm of local officials, all of them Magyar or of assured Magyar sympathies. These officials in many cases used the extreme toleration with which they were treated by the administration of the new States, most of them being continued in their posts, but with widely different orders as to their duties, to intrigue against their new masters. Their actions were repeatedly overlooked, but in extreme cases it was necessary to expel certain of them from the new States. Even those who remained were approached by the Hungarian authorities, especially by the officials of the Ministry of Nationalities, in order that they might be used as agents for hostile propaganda to the States to whom they had taken the oath of allegiance.

The admission of the report that the League had created the Hungarian question is interesting. The implication is that there would be no such question in the mind of the world but for its agitation, which is very near the truth.

The Press service of the League deserves further description. It consists of a printed slip, headed “East European Press Service. Published by Alexander L. Krisztics, LL.D. Editorial Office: Budapest IV, 1 Maria Valeria Street.” A typical issue contains a report of a visit paid by a deputation of American and English Unitarians to Transylvania, and of the devastating conclusions reached by it; three other items whose contents may be gathered from their headings, “The National Minorities excluded from the Rumanian Parliament” (dated from Bucharest), “North Hungary a Second Siberia” (dated from Prague, and apparently designating Slovakia as North Hungary), and “Czech Opposition and the Hapsburgs” (also dated from Prague), and a paragraph headed “Polygamy and Free Love in Bohemia” (dated from Prague), which contains an entirely fictitious account of the introduction of a law in favour of polygamy into the Czechoslovak Parliament! Professor Krisztics’ estimate of the gullibility of the English-speaking Press appears to require revision. It is amusing to note that this farrago of nonsense is inscribed “Subscription Price: annually £1 or $5.” But as a matter of fact it shares the fate of the doctor’s other propaganda material, of which he reports so pathetically that it had to be distributed gratuitously for lack of purchasers.

The League and its associates had made every endeavour during the year covered by the above report to arouse dissension in Slovakia against the Czechoslovak Republic. During the first period of their union with the Czechs a fraction of the Slovaks were inclined to look with searching eyes into every move of the new State. They had suffered for so long under Magyar domination that they were unaccustomed to honest dealing on the part of the Government responsible for their well-being, and were consequently on the look out lest the Czech administration should adopt the traditions of the Magyars. The existence of this vague feeling was at once seized upon by the Magyars as the basis of subversive propaganda in Slovakia, and the energies of the propagandists were directed to fanning it into open revolt. It is hardly necessary to say that they failed entirely, and that at the present day the Slovaks are as loyal to the Republic as the Czechs themselves. But the methods of Magyar propaganda are none the less instructive, and form a useful illustration of their methods in other directions.

The object of the propaganda during 1920 was twofold; the overthrow of the Czechoslovak Republic and the restoration of the Monarchy. Its headquarters were at Vienna, and its chiefs were Gustav Gratz,[46] the Magyar Envoy, and Arpad Reich, who dealt with the Press under his instructions. Gratz and Reich looked to Budapest for general guidance in their campaign. In Vienna Reich had a special committee for carrying on propaganda in Czechoslovakia. The head of this committee was Leopold Mandl,[47] who was on the staff of the Neues Wiener Journal, and one of its members was a former People’s Commissary for Slovakia of the Magyar Soviet Republic. The committee maintained paid spies in Czechoslovakia, among whom were Koloman Tobler, a member of the Czechoslovak Chamber, who contrived to supply Gratz with papers stolen from the Czechoslovak Foreign Office, and a captain in the Czechoslovak Army of the name of Schenschich. At Budapest the head of the whole organisation was Tibor Eckart.

In July 1920 Reich sent the following report to the Hungarian Minister for Racial Minorities and to Eckart. The report is marked “Strictly Confidential.”

“As a result of numerous discussions and negotiations with regard to the irredentist movement in Upper Hungary, an irredentist association and various irredentist committees have been founded.

“Our confidential agents who were dispatched to the occupied territory arranged the necessary meetings, organised the movement, allotted the individual activities, and also managed the material side of the matter. To-day practically every village is represented. The Upper Territory is divided into four areas, each of which is managed by a special committee. Ruthenia forms a special area whose committee works in complete independence and submits its reports to the main committee in Vienna. It has its own Press and working funds, its printing is managed in Budapest, and its news service in Vienna.

“The following four towns are suggested as the headquarters of these four committees: (1) Bratislava, (2) Kosice, (3) Banska Bystrice, (4) Nove Zamky (or some other town).

“Connection with Bohemia is much easier from Vienna, where we have excellent printing arrangements and an extensive network of espionage.

“Important services are being rendered to us by the well-known editor Mandl, whose articles in the Viennese Press pursuing anti-Czech tendencies have considerable influence and are quoted abroad.

“The objects of the committee are partly of a political, partly of a military character. The military affairs and the organisation of troops are managed by high military authorities who are co-opted on the committee, and they are having excellent results. I will refer to this activity again later.

“The individual committees are in mutual connection, but one is not subordinated to the other. The Czechs have an extensive espionage which works well.

“As the population in Slovakia is very devout, it is necessary that every priest, as far as he is not known as a pronounced friend of the Czechs, should be won over for the movement.

“Besides the priests, the persons of chief importance to us are the teachers and lawyers. The destinies of the people are in the hands of these intellectuals, and it is therefore upon them and not upon the people that our main effort should be concentrated.

“The harvesters, who were last year obtained from the occupied territory in numbers much greater than were needed for performing harvest operations for the Hungarian estate owners, were chosen so that they should bring irredentist ideas back home with them, disseminate them, and at the given moment put them into practice.

“The preparations for winning over and using the Press are already completed with good results. With few exceptions the papers are practically all in good hands.

“On account of the liberty of the Press, no changes were carried out among the editorial staffs; the old guard is in its place and is entirely on our side. There are only a few insignificant exceptions which are not worth referring to. It is a matter of absolute indifference whether the papers pursue white or red tendencies, whether they are Jewish or Christian, whether they follow national or class interests. The only thing that matters is whether they are in favour of Magyar tendencies or whether they are convinced adherents of the Czechoslovak State.

“The French are well aware that the present conditions in Central Europe cannot last, and that there must be a complete restoration of the former state of affairs. The French[48] will not hinder this, although if necessary they will apparently oppose it, while actually agreeing with us and giving us their support. The French feel the same need as we do, and are convinced that the Czech State is incapable of continued existence. It is, of course, well known that there are politicians in France who pursue a different policy, but they will become weaker and weaker, and only those whom we need will remain in power.

“A number of papers at Bratislava are for sale. We have already begun negotiations.

“A number of important officers in the present Czech Army are in connection with us, and so we can obtain prompt information of every military activity. As a result of their former military training these officers have remained our brothers and regarded themselves as officers of the Monarchy and not of the Czech State.

“We are acquainted with military secrets which alone would justify our faith in our ultimate success.

“It is of special advantage to us that we have our representatives in the Slovak Ministry, who are better able to manage this organisation and keep us informed of everything.

“Steps have been taken so that Slovak troops will refuse to serve in Czech districts, and this will lead to a slackening of discipline and help to bring the army on our side at the necessary moment.

“The officers who were selected for the most important positions, and who are now serving as Czech officers, are doing excellent work.

“Our plans have been sanctioned by the French,[49] and their representatives are already on their way to Budapest, where they will negotiate with the politicians.

“In any case the return of Kosice and Bratislava can be regarded as settled, but the Magyar politicians, with the help of military pressure, will demand a complete capitulation. Strategic plans with regard to Upper Hungary are ready, and are on such a large scale as to make the use of artillery unnecessary.

“Through the pressure of the French politicians we shall be obliged to enter into an alliance with Rumania. Rumania will demand strong guarantees, but we shall do the same. The French politicians and military leaders have undertaken to negotiate this friendship, which is really due to the visit of the Queen of Rumania to Paris. The King of Rumania is said to be using his influence to bring about a union with us against his allies. The Rumanians would have no objection to the return of the Hapsburgs, for the King of Rumania personally sympathises with King Karl.

“The Czechs certainly know about this affair, and also in Austria they are to some extent aware of it; Renner is already preparing his counter measures. There is great excitement behind the scenes among the Czechs, and the Czech Embassy continually appeals to Paris, whence it receives courteous but evasive answers. We know for certain that the Austrians are negotiating with Renner as intermediary, and that before very long an open union will be reached between Prague and Belgrade for defence and resistance in common. But this alliance need not cause us any alarm, as after the elections in Austria there will inevitably be a change.

“In Upper Hungary the lion’s share of the work has been performed by estate owners and the Magyar nobility. It is a fortunate thing that they are Slovak subjects, and therefore not easily amenable to political control.”

There is little need for comment on the above report. I prefer to let it stand in its naked audacity.

The method by which Gratz and Reich endeavoured to influence their compatriots is indicated by the following document. It is a slip handed to Magyar subjects applying at the Hungarian Embassy for passports to enter Czechoslovakia.

“Hungarian Embassy at Vienna.

“Travellers proceeding to Upper Hungary are to do everything to intensify the opposition to the Czechs which prevails among the people, and should avoid anything that might harm the Magyar cause. Every Magyar who proceeds to Upper Hungary should regard himself as an envoy of the Magyar national interests, whose moral duty it is by every word he utters to aim at strengthening the trust and confidence in the future of Hungary among the inhabitants of the occupied territory.

“Travellers should speak about such matters which, being duly circulated, can do harm to the authority of the Czechs. Such are, the ‘Freedom from Russia’ movement among the Czech clergy. Bolshevism is developing in Bohemia, and with it is associated the persecution of Christians. The Czech industries are robbing the Slovaks. The prices of industrial products are not fixed, while the prices of agricultural products are. Food supplies are being taken from the people, and the trains which transport them to Prague start off at night. All these misfortunes are due to the fact that the Slovaks have seceded from the Crown of St. Stephen. All the Jews have escaped to Slovakia, where they are safe because the Czechs are their abettors. The Slovak language is being suppressed, and even the taxation records are written in incomprehensible Czech. The economic and financial conditions are desperate, Czechoslovakia having in one year contracted debts to the amount of 5,000 million. Misery and distress will last until the territories of Hungary are again united; it was God Himself who created them as a unity, marking them off by a huge chain of mountains. The rivers, too, do not flow to Prague, but to the Hungarian plains. The Czechoslovak State is an unnatural product. He who is in favour of this product is also in favour of the starvation and suffering of the people. Let each one choose where he wishes to belong, either to Christian Hungary which gives and assures full liberty to all its citizens, in order that the hardships of the past may not return, or to the Czechs, who are oppressing the Slovaks in economic matters, in religion and language, are starving them, and desire to reduce the Slovak nation to beggary.

“Travellers must avoid anything that might place Hungary in a bad light. Whatever is imperfect and burdensome there must be depicted with the forbearance of children who do not declare their parents’ weaknesses to the whole world. Above all, comparisons of Hungarian conditions with those in the territories occupied by the Czechs must be avoided, in order that it may not seem as if the latter were better; this would be nothing less than betrayal of our country. If, nevertheless, anything unfavourable must be mentioned, it must be modified and depicted as the result of circumstances during a period of transition. Among all reliable people it must be emphasised that justice must prevail and that soon, since the Czechs cannot maintain themselves in their State, which is an economic and geographical impossibility, against nations which are numerically stronger and are inimically disposed. It is absolutely impossible that military occupation of Slovakia should continue for long, and the Entente will not protect this State which is incapable of permanent and independent existence. The feeling of the Entente is beginning to turn away from the Czechs and to incline towards the Magyars, it being no longer possible to-day to govern according to Wilson’s principles. Our best friends in the Entente are to be found principally among the English, the Americans and the Japanese, and if our rights did not fully prevail immediately on the conclusion of Peace, this was only due to the fact that the Entente was obliged for the sake of its honor to fulfill the undertakings it had made. These commitments, however, will lapse with the conclusion of the final Peace terms. The League of Nations, which is being founded by England and America, will be composed of reasonable elements who will respect national wishes. It is obvious that in the future the Entente will adopt the attitude that the natural course of events must not be hindered and that European peace must not be menaced by the retention of unnatural conditions. Hence it depends entirely upon the probity and perseverance of the Magyars whether our rights will prevail. A very large number of utterances abroad indicate the sympathies which Hungary has gained by crushing the hydra of Bolshevism, and, in spite of unfavorable conditions, bringing about order and creating a strong army within a short time.

“The Poles are supporting us most eagerly, and they desire to have common frontiers with Hungary, since otherwise they also would be surrounded by hostile nations. In all the occupied territories a feeling of moderation is beginning to show itself, even among that part of the population which at first was opposed to us, because it now realizes that separation from Hungary is unfavorable even from its point of view. The greatest dissatisfaction prevails in Slovakia, where we are informed that the great majority of the inhabitants desires to break away from the Czechs and return to the old Hungarian State.

“Travellers to Slovakia who are stopping in Budapest should pay a visit to the headquarters of the Upper Hungarian League, or should go to the Information Bureau, where they will obtain printed matter indicating the kind of information required by the League. If, however, they cannot proceed to Budapest, they should bring a reliable and accurate reply to the following questions: (1) feeling among the people; (2) coercion on the part of the Czechs; (3) strength of the Czech and Slovak troops in various places and the feeling among them; (4) official measures taken by the Czechs; (5) any signs of unrest or typical utterances; (6) what circumstances, events and opinions are, according to their experiences, favourable to Hungarian policy in the occupied territories, and what arrangements, measures or actions should be adopted.

“Reports or information should be brought or else sent in writing to the headquarters of the League. Persons wishing to work in other ways for the League should make personal application. In conclusion, it should once again be emphasised that all pessimistic feeling does harm to our cause, and it is therefore the patriotic duty of every traveller to Slovakia to strengthen confidence in our future by all his actions.

“Budapest, December 20, 1919.”

It is necessary to make one or two comments upon the above in order that it may be fully understood. In the first place the reference to “incomprehensible Czech” demands some mention of the question of language in the Czechoslovak Republic. The Magyar propagandists have made great capital out of the allegation that the Czechs have enforced the use of their language throughout the Republic, to the exclusion of Slovak. As a matter of fact, the languages are almost identical. Without entering into a discussion as to their theoretical differences, I shall content myself by quoting the experience of Mr. Crawfurd Price, whose personal acquaintance with Central Europe makes him a reliable and impartial witness. “My own plan,” he says, “consisted of taking a Czech who had never been to Slovakia and never studied the so-called Slovak language, and using him as an interpreter among the peasants in the remote districts of the country. I found that neither party experienced the least difficulty in understanding the other, and I was led to the conviction that Czech and Slovak are merely dialects of one and the same language, with less essential difference between them than exists say, between London and Lancashire.”[50]

The document itself contains an implication which is alone sufficient to demolish the whole structure which Magyar propaganda strives so laboriously to build up. Magyars are not to discuss conditions in Hungary on Czechoslovakian soil, lest the obvious superiority of the institutions of the latter should become too apparent. To admit this “would be nothing less than betrayal of our country!”

Recently the League for the Defence of Hungary’s Integrity has formed the Magyar National Union as a purely propagandist organisation. The Union issues propagandist and irredentist pamphlets, postcards, stamps, posters, poems and songs, which are offered for sale at various celebrations, in schools, offices, shops, banks and elsewhere. The proceeds of these sales are extremely profitable to the Union, as rich Jews and others are coerced into paying ridiculous prices for the goods offered them. The Union also acquires funds from public collections and more or less voluntary contributions. For instance, even small communities such as Szeghalom and Veszto have contributed 100,000 crowns each for the furtherance of the irredentist movement. Among the foremost workers on behalf of the Union are to be found Ivan Rakovszky, the Minister of the Interior, Dr. Eugen Karafiath, State Secretary, Julius Gömbös, the leading light of the M.O.V.E., Baron Lers, Count Gedeon Raday, Baron Albert Kaas, who is in charge of propaganda on the Ruthenian frontier, and many others.

With the co-operation of the Union of University Students (Mefhosz) the Union sends a selected student to England, usually Oxford. It was at this university that the Oxford League for Hungarian Self-determination was founded. The expenses incurred in sending these students are defrayed by public subscription, or in some cases the students are sent at the expense of individual municipalities.

The Union is assisted in its work by the Pedagogic Museum, the Director of which, Ministerial Councillor Alexander Hadasi, requested English publishers to use the Magyar names of places in books issued by them.

The Union numbers about half a million members, and its motto is nem, nem, soha (no, no, never), which it declares to be the unanimous reply of the Hungarian Nation to the frontiers imposed upon it by the Treaty of Trianon. A special Irredentist Banner of the Union is preserved by the main altar in the Basilica at Budapest. With the Union are associated the various other irredentist organisations, mostly formed by the so-called “refugees” from the neighbouring States. A special Union has been formed for Slovakia, Transylvania and the Banat, with branches for such areas as Spis and Bratislava. In these organisations the former departmental officials represent the separate local areas as though these were still in the Hungarian State. The Magyar Government, wisely apprehensive of the criticism of the League of Nations and foreign countries, leaves the direction of political propaganda to private persons, restricting its own participation to the suggestion of general tendencies and to providing pecuniary assistance.

The Government attaches far greater importance to what is termed cultural propaganda. This emanates from the Ministry of Education, and is directed by State Secretary Julius Pekar. This type of propaganda is also indulged in by the Magyar Foreign Society, which is presided over by Dr. Albert Berzeviczy and Count Apponyi. Besides the activities of the Mefhosz already mentioned, this society organises travelling scholarships and local student societies on the German model. These organisations are pledged to keep alive the agitation for the restoration of Hungary to her former boundaries. They are wholly militarist in their spirit and activities.

An expressly irredentist propaganda is carried on by the political party known as the Honvedelmi Part (Party for the Protection of the Country), which originated from the Union of Protective Leagues formed on the territory of Hungary’s neighbours. The President of the Party is the former deputy Nandor Urmanczy, and Slovak affairs are supervised by F. Persay, a former Vice-Governor, Oliver Eottevenyi, a former Governor, Dr. Galocsy, Zikmund Strobl, and others. The leading workers include a former State Secretary, Gustav Ilosvay, the poetess Papp-Vary, Koloman Kovacs, the chief Pastor in the Basilica and guardian of the Irredentist Banner, and many other well-known Hungarians. During the elections of 1922 this party was extremely active in the areas with a Slovak majority, especially at Bekesska Caba, and it applied considerable sums to the support of students from the separated territories. It also issues leaflets and pamphlets of an irredentist character, and advocates the forcible revision of the Treaty of Trianon and the restoration of former Hungary. It arranges competitions in which prizes are awarded for irredentist slogans, poems, songs, etc. From time to time it issues a report to its members, entitled Magyar Irredenta.

With the insight into the methods and aims of Magyar propaganda afforded by the documents quoted above, the English-speaking reader may be trusted to avoid the pitfalls spread before his feet by Magyar guile. It is, even to-day, a safe maxim to regard all news or comment favourable to Hungary or derogatory to the new States as being inspired by the corps of Magyar propagandists, unless clear evidence exists of its pure and unbiassed source. This may seem a sweeping statement, but it is in conformity with experience. The pronouncements of Magyar politicians, the contents of Magyar newspapers, the influences brought to bear upon visitors to Hungary, the whole force of Magyar culture are all at the service of the propagandists in order that Hungary, by sowing dissension beyond her own borders, may establish a claim to the restitution to her of the territories of the Crown of St. Stephen. Before the War we were accustomed to regard Germany as the menace to the peace of Europe. We may now with equal justification regard Hungary, with her complete disregard of the truth, her unblushing intrigue and her almost undisguised reactionary tendencies, as the bar to the peaceful settlement of the problems which still exercise the minds of the statesmen of Central Europe. And it is undeniable that a menace to the peace of Central Europe is a menace to the peace of the world.

FOOTNOTES:

[46] Gustav Gratz was an intimate adherent of the ex-Emperor Karl, and is consequently a legitimist of the most earnest type. He was Minister for Foreign Affairs and is a frequent contributor to the Pester Lloyd.

[47] Leopold Mandl is well known in Austria as one of the most venomous and scurrilous opponents of Serbia and the Yugo-Slavs, a rôle he has played since 1907 or so. Before the War he maintained close relations with the Ballplatz and particularly Count Aerenthal.

[48] It should be explained, although Reich is careful not to do so, that the attitude ascribed to “the French” was not that of the French Government, but of certain groups in Paris.

[49] Here, too, it is necessary to repeat the comment contained in the previous note.

[50] Eastern Europe, October-November, 1921.

CHAPTER X
HUNGARY’S ATTITUDE TO-DAY

The hostile attitude of Hungary towards the new States and her determination to seek revision of the Treaty of Trianon, are demonstrated by methods other than those of propaganda. It is unfortunately true that in present-day Hungary exists a State whose rulers and the majority of whose people have abandoned all attempts to organise the Magyar territory which remains to them into a stable modern State, in favour of a policy of self-seeking and aggression. The traditional Hungarian policy of refusing all share in the government of the country to all but a privileged class was followed by a natural corollary after the War. The tenets of Bolshevism found a fruitful soil in the “unitary Magyar State.” The attractions held out by its exponents were bound to appeal to a proletariat which had for ever been excluded from any semblance of power. The Soviet Republic was the result, which lasted until the people had discovered that they had only exchanged one tyranny for another. Then came the reaction, which was no less disastrous to Hungary’s prosperity and good name than the revolution had been. And through the whole of this sequence can be traced their primal cause, the incapacity of the Magyar spirit to accommodate itself to modern democratic ideas.

Hungary, under the rule of Horthy, is no more worthy of sympathy than she has ever been in her history of oppression and crime. That this is so can be proved out of the mouths of patriotic Magyars, themselves not guiltless of the sins committed in the past by Hungary’s rulers, but now exiled because they have shown symptoms of relaxation of the principles of Magyar oligarchy. These men are Michael Karolyi, the President of the Hungarian Republic established in October 1918, John Hock, who was President of the National Council, and three of the Ministers of their Government, Oskar Jaszi, the first Minister of Racial Minorities, Bela Linder and Paul Szende. On the occasion of the meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Conference at Vienna in August 1922, this “group of Hungarian Democratic and Republican Émigrés,” issued a pamphlet entitled “On the sham Parliamentary Government instituted by a Military Dictatorship in Hungary and on the need of replacing it by true Parliamentarianism.” Extracts from this pamphlet follow. It must be explained that the pamphlet is addressed to the members of the Conference.

“It is our duty to lay before you sincerely the real condition of Hungary and to leave nothing undone to impress you with the truth, that the actual situation in Hungary is not only disastrous to the Hungarian people, but that it is also a formidable obstacle and impediment to European consolidation.”

“Hungary is at present the only member of the former Central Powers on the territory of which the ancien régime is still in full swing. Nay, it is flourishing more strongly than ever.

“Except for a short interruption, Hungarian feudalism has never ceased to live and assert itself. Before the collapse of the old order of things through the October Revolution of 1918, Hungarian Parliamentarianism had never been more than a democratic screen, behind which feudal nobility continued its reign. An excessive property qualification and open voting were essential to the Hungarian Constitution. Electoral districts were artificially arranged in such a way that the urban wards, including several thousand voters, were counterbalanced by small country divisions numbering only a few hundred voters. Bayonets, alcoholic drinks and bribes: such were the traditional means by which the Government fought out its electoral battles in Hungary.

“The alliance of the great landowners, the Hungarian governing class, with the dynasty set up a barrier against democratic reformist movements. The Hungarian ruling class provided for the military needs of the dynasty, in return for which the dynasty left the privileges of Hungarian feudalism untouched. By these means Hungarian aristocracy and nobility, in common with the plutocracy of finance, were able to maintain their rule over the Hungarian people and the non-Magyar nationalities of Hungary, even up to the beginning of the twentieth century. Hungary continued to be the stronghold of Central European feudalism.

“As the result of Magyar pseudo-democracy illiteracy was excessively widespread, the masses were decimated by diseases, especially by consumption; great bodies of workers had to emigrate to America and to other countries, while the welfare and general culture of Hungary remained on the very lowest level.

“It was only the October Revolution of 1918, following on the military collapse of the Dual Monarchy, which raised Hungary for a short time to a higher level. A democratic Republic was established, with universal suffrage, secret ballot and proportional representation; the freedom of meetings, coalitions and of the Press, was proclaimed, the equality of racial minorities guaranteed; the social conditions of the workers was improved on Western lines.”

“Counter-revolution began by erecting a Military Dictatorship in Hungary.... The Military Dictatorship had to create a parliamentary screen. Universal suffrage and secret ballot were actually given, but the elections were placed under the control of the military détachements. Moreover, the Hungarian Fascisti, the so-called Awakened Magyars, helped to suppress the meetings of the opposition, kidnapping, imprisoning, whipping and torturing the recalcitrant voters. The very moderate Social Democratic Party of Hungary was forced to quit the field, and to boycott the elections.”

“Such were the antecedents of the meeting of the first National Assembly under the Military Dictatorship. Yet even then the détachement of Ostenburg had to occupy the Parliament House, in order to secure the election of Vice-Admiral Horthy, the chief of the military clique, to the Governorship of Hungary. The election of the National Assembly had been achieved by him with the help of the bayonets of his détachements; his election to the Governorship was due to the assistance of his officers. In spite of pretended democracy and mock elections, the first Assembly of the counter-revolution represented no more than a puppet-show in the hands of a military clique.

“With the exception of a very few honest and brave men, this Assembly as a whole had not a word of protest against the murders committed by Horthy’s officers. It was left unmoved by the hecatombs of Orgovany, by the cruelties with which the White Terror butchered the social democratic editors Somogyi and Bacso, together with Cservenka, the Secretary of the Social Democratic Party, and many others.”

These references are to the orgy of revenge which followed the establishment of the counter-revolution. After the suppression of Bolshevism in August 1919, vengeance for the excesses committed by Bela Kun and his bloodthirsty lieutenant Szamueli was, with the connivance of the Government, undertaken by two Societies, known respectively as the M.O.V.E. (Magyar orszagos vedo egyesulet, League for Hungarian Integrity) and the Awakening Magyars. These societies used as their physical arm the Physical Force Formations and the Détachements, which were in effect organised bands of ex-officers and soldiers, and whose chief occupation was the murder of so-called Communists, in fact of anyone whom they suspected a sympathy with the Bolsheviks.[51] There was a certain rough and ready justice about their original formation, for it was an undisputed fact that the Bolsheviks had shed large quantities of innocent blood. But they very soon abandoned any pretence of justice for the more lucrative employment of assassinating anybody who became obnoxious to the counter-revolution, or from whose murder any loot might be derived. In the massacres of Orgovany and Kecskemet it is estimated that 170 victims were murdered, and the guilt for these crimes was fixed upon the leader of one of the bands, by name Hejjas. The bodies of the three men referred to above, Somogyi, Bacso and Cservenka, the two former of which were responsible for the Socialist newspaper Nepszava, were found in the Danube, and this crime also was brought home to Hejjas and his band. The Memorandum of Karolyi and his associates goes on to describe the further adventures of this man.

“The methods employed by the military dictatorship were thrown into sharp light by a recent trial. Ivan Hejjas, an officer very influential with Horthy, was falsely informed by a confidential agent that three merchants in the country had offered to pay a million and a half crowns to the Rumanians as the price of their staying three weeks longer in the district as an army of occupation. Although no inquiry whatever was made by him, Hejjas nonetheless gave orders that these citizens be executed instantly. In his written evidence sent to the court, he expressed himself in the following manner: ‘My patriotic feelings having been shocked by what I heard, I ordered Zbona and Danics to kidnap the three Jews and to put them to death.’”

“Ivan Hejjas, this ‘best officer’ of the Governor (as he was called by Horthy when addressing the British Labour Delegation led by Colonel Wedgwood, M.P.), when pardoned for his numberless murders and other crimes, flung back this amnesty to the Court of Justice with the following words: ‘Concerning the mercy granted to me, I declare that I do not need it and refuse to accept it most emphatically. I have not implored anybody’s mercy and do not expect mercy from anybody.’ This declaration of Hejjas remained as unpunished as did his greater crimes. According to the statement of a Government paper, political balance in Hungary depends on Hejjas. And, indeed, the man by whose mercy the present system is living little needs any mercy from this system.”[52]

“The ruling clique, being in their own opinion identical with the Hungarian State and the Hungarian Nation, everybody lessening the authority or impairing the credit of the Military Dictatorship or using an abusive expression against the détachements is prosecuted under Statute III of 1921 (which punishes such an offence by five years’ penal servitude). The Parliament of Military Dictatorship does not, of course, regard its own actions as high treason against a people deserving a better fate. But it regards as treasonable any description of its own barbarous system of government, and any attempt to draw the attention of Europe to these extreme abuses.”

This is a reference to the conditions under which the Press works in Hungary. By a law of December 1920 statements appearing in the Press which were deemed likely to impair Hungary’s good name abroad were made punishable offences, and the penalties were fixed according to the gravity of the offence. Fines up to 100,000 crowns, imprisonment for life, or expulsion from Hungary could be awarded. So-called freedom of the Press was restored in December 1921, but it was limited to the conditions obtaining during the War. The value of this freedom is shown by the fact that newspapers are not allowed to print verbatim reports of debates in the Assembly.

“Not even this National Assembly was, however, inclined to restrict the franchise by which it was elected. The Government omitted to submit the draft of a Constitutional Bill to the Parliament, spending its whole time in framing the specifically Hungarian institution of a kingdom without a king. In the very last week of the two years’ session, Parliament was suddenly taken unawares by a Bill for the regulation of elections. When the National Assembly attempted to resist this unexpected attack, the Government restricted the franchise by a ukase. By the new ‘law’ some million and a half citizens lost their right to vote.”

Under this law the suffrage was restricted as follows:

Men. Over twenty-four years of age, who have been citizens of the Magyar State for ten years, have resided for two years in the same district, and have passed through four classes of an elementary school.

Women. Over thirty years of age, the same national and residential qualifications as men, and in addition must

(a) Be lawfully married and have at least two children.

(b) Support themselves from their own property or earnings.

(c) Have passed through eight classes of a secondary school or be married to a man of equivalent educational standing.

“Not only the poorer classes, but also ‘politically unreliable persons’ were excluded from the franchise. Electoral qualification and eligibility are denied to those who are under the charge of a political offence. The franchise is denied also to those who gave utterance privately or in the Press to their sympathy with the enemy during the War.... Disfranchised are, further, all public officials discharged by arbitrary decree on account of their political attitude, whereby the flower of Hungarian intelligentsia is robbed of its political rights.

“The darkest blot of all on this reactionary electoral law is the paragraph supplanting ballot by open vote.[53] With the exception of the larger urban wards, in more than two-thirds of the country divisions the electoral decree ordains open voting. This is practically identical in Hungary with the dominance of the gendarmerie, the publican and the local bankers at the polls. The repeal of secret ballot means, therefore, the utter moral self-condemnation of the existing system. It means an open confession that the present regime in Hungary can only maintain itself with the help of military pressure and corruption.”

“The electioneering campaign was aptly opened by the bombing attempt against the Democratic Club in the Elisabeth district of Budapest. At this place a banquet was to be held in honour of Charles Rassay, ex-M.P., the leader of the liberal opposition. The chief leaders of the parliamentary Liberal Party were also to be in attendance on this occasion. More than three hundred persons were present. The politicians were happily some minutes late, when a terrific explosion rent the walls of the building. An infernal machine had exploded and laid everything in the hall in ruins. Eight persons were killed, more than thirty severely wounded. A series of attempts by bombs followed. These murderous attempts were committed by the Awakened Magyars, who went so far as to cheer the criminals responsible before the club-house of the Democratic Party, at the moment when the infernal machine exploded. Detective-Inspector Kovacsevics saw some ill-famed Awakened Magyars leaving the critical spot immediately after the explosion had taken place. Other reliable witnesses could give authentic evidence on utterances of conspicuous Awakened Magyars regarding the attempt. The editor of the official paper of the Awakened Magyars gave evidence in connection with another bombing affair, that he had himself given some hand-grenades to an Awakened in the official premises of the Awakened Magyars. A proclamation posted by the Awakened states that ‘the Home Secretary has in three instances implored the chiefs of the Awakened to ask for an investigation against themselves,’ which they, however, haughtily refused to do. Under the pressure of public opinion the Home Secretary had finally to instruct the police to search one of the rooms in the premises of the Awakened. Although the Society of the Awakened Magyars had ample leisure to remove anything it thought fit, yet several bombs were found in the course of this very superficial investigation. After this the search slackened, the Awakened who happened to have been detained were again released and publicly honoured by their comrades. At a banquet given in honour of one of the released chiefs of the Awakened, Julius Gömbös, formerly captain on the Staff, and at that time head of the electioneering machine of the Government Party invested with dictatorial powers, did not fail to appear. Count Albert Apponyi is reported by the papers to have made the following statement on this affair: ‘Regarding the antecedents and circumstances of the case it is not too much to say that the good name of the country as well as the safety of the citizens depends on a positive result of the investigations.’ It scarcely needs to be said that the investigations led to no positive result at all.”

The elections took place during May and June 1922. The policy of the Government was to disallow public meetings during as many days of the campaign as they dared, on all sorts of ridiculous pretexts.

“During the short time when meetings were permitted, those of the opposition were usually prohibited by special order of the local authorities or simply broken up by the Awakened. Special decrees were issued with respect to the agenda of meetings, in general forbidding any debate on the question of land reform, excluding thereby the main problem of actual Hungarian politics from discussion. No wonder that opposition voters were sent to the internment camps, were arrested, kidnapped, stabbed, beaten (women not being spared), that nomination papers were stolen and torn up, that voters were imprisoned under the sole charge of attempting to present to the authorities the nomination paper of an opposition candidate, as happened in the case of the Liberal leader Ladislaus Fenyes. No wonder that even the candidates themselves, such as Buza Barna, Ladislaus Fenyes, Ernest Nagy, and Louis Szilagyi were arrested, nearly all candidates of the opposition having been threatened with death! Candidates were forbidden to express their policy, as it happened with Imre Veer in Szentes, the motive given being that the candidate was known to hold republican views. The head of the gendarmerie in the district of Sajo-Szentpeter called the candidate, Rudolph Krupa, a ‘swinish scoundrel.’ Krupa, having asked for a proof of his identity, the gendarmerie official whipped out his revolver and apostrophised the candidate thus: ‘There is my proof of identity, and if you don’t shut up, I will let it into you swiftly enough.’

“On the election day military terror was at its height. Three days were appointed for the voting, the official reason given being that the military force of the Government was not sufficient to complete the elections in one day. In spite of open terror, the Government could only succeed in the districts where voting was open, only 18 per cent. of votes being gained by the Government Party in wards with secret ballot, whilst in districts with open vote 67·2 per cent. of votes were gained by the Government. That is why the Government abolished the ballot and re-established in Hungary the shameful practice of open voting.

“Although some five and twenty Socialists and a dozen Liberals succeeded in getting seats (mostly in wards with secret ballot), the National Assembly only represents the interests of the great landed estates. The peasantry is far more inadequately represented than it was in the first Assembly. The great majority of the Assembly are under the direct influence of the great landowners. The territory of Hungary covers 7,404,383 hectares (about 18 million acres), of which 3,339,174 hectares (about 9 million acres) belong to 1,500 landlords, each of them owning more than 575·5 hectares (about 1,400 acres). These 1,500 great landowners are the masters of the National Assembly by permission of the Military Dictatorship. In this Parliament there is restored the system of Tisza which was one of the primary factors of war.”

I must impress upon my readers that this is no highly coloured report derived from anti-Magyar sources, but the actual wording of a considered statement drawn up by five leading Magyars, and that it describes, not an exceptional state of affairs under transitory conditions, but the Hungarian elections of 1922 under the actual regime which prevails at this moment in Hungary, the country, according to its apologists, “whose ideals have so nearly approximated to our own for centuries past.”

The conclusions reached by the authors of the Memorandum are equally interesting.

“Military Dictatorship in Hungary is the obstacle to all real parliamentarianism. That Parliament which was elected by the force of a terrorist suffrage does nothing but strengthen military dictatorship. And as long as this Military Dictatorship, as long as the Governor’s détachements are in power, all Central Europe has reason to fear that the peace of this hopelessly storm-tossed Europe will be utterly broken by the Hungarian military gangs. The safety of Europe must not depend on that same Ivan Hejjas, who, according to a recently published record, made the following statement: ‘I have been watching events in Austria for a long time. I have noticed that Austria is proceeding on her downward path of ruin, so that the proclamation of Proletarian Dictatorship will be inevitable.... For some length of time I have been systematically recruiting soldiers in all parts of the country in order to form a body of insurgent troops.... I have organised these bands with the single aim of being able to operate with them in a more independent and uncontrolled fashion in the dismembered parts of Hungary, as I cannot use the regular troops for some of my actions which are prompted by patriotism.’”

“But not only the peace of Central Europe is threatened at every moment by Hungarian Reaction. As in Hungary civil war is not yet ended, as, in defiance of the explicit agreement in the Treaty of Trianon, the ruling classes are continually attacking the workers, the outbreak of revolution in Hungary may be expected at any minute. This revolution would certainly not leave untouched the European balance. Is it imaginable that there should be no revolutionary tension in a country where, for instance, the Sheriff at Vac breaks up a public meeting dealing with economic measures with the declaration that ‘owing to the recent elections the mood of the people is not such as to justify the permission to hold public meetings’? Where the Home Secretary by Order 44, 126/1922, confers the power to allow or forbid the establishment of Local Groups of Trade Unions on the local administrative authorities, who may forbid them if they are pleased to think that the establishment of the Local Group is ‘not sufficiently justified by public interest?’”

“The dangers of a coup d’état abroad and revolution at home will not disappear in Hungary until Military Dictatorship disguised by a mock Parliament is replaced by real democracy, real parliamentarianism. Therefore, we are prompted by true patriotism (which is never opposed to the interests of international civilisation), to beg all friends of democracy, all true European citizens, to work for the transformation of that state of mind which has allowed the restoration of feudalism in Hungary, into one capable of restoring the ideas of the democratic October Revolution of 1918, i.e. of Hungarian Democracy in the European sense of the word.

“Finally, we desire to state that we are ready to prove all facts mentioned in this Memorandum, as well as many points connected with them, before the League of Nations or any other responsible international institution by means of sworn testimony and documents.”

The Memorandum is signed by its five authors.

No more damning evidence of the rottenness of Hungary and Hungarian institutions could be adduced. Karolyi and his associates, however much they may be maligned by the military clique in Hungary for their actions in the fateful days of October 1918, at least attempted to reorganise the Hungarian nation on modern democratic lines. That they failed does not alter their intentions or deprive their criticism of the present state of affairs of its value.[54]

FOOTNOTES:

[51] “This paroxysm of fury died down gradually, but still I have witnessed scenes like the following: It is evening in a Budapest café. One of those cafés which are always full, in which a large part of the life of the citizens is passed. Suddenly men are heard running in the street outside; carriages drive up at full speed; at the door appear various uniforms, belonging to the various officers’ détachements, and behind them about a hundred adherents of the anti-Semitic League of Awakening Magyars or Awakened Magyars. A panic ensues in the café. Customers are to be seen crawling under the billiard table and the sofas, some run to the closets, others to the telephone. But an Awakened Magyar stops the latter with the words: ‘It’s no good trying to warn the police, all the wires are cut!’ Meanwhile the officers pass from table to table politely asking everyone to justify themselves, as they call it, that is to say, to show their identity papers. A Jew is recognised merely by the way in which he gets up before anything is even asked of him. He is immediately seized and passed from hand to hand, and by a magical process he has not reached the door before he has been relieved on the way of his pocket-book, purse, watch and cigar-case. Then he is thrown to the crowd, which receives him with howls and execrations, of which I remember this one: ‘Knock him on the head, in case he gets crippled!’ The café having been purged, the band of inquisitors salutes the remaining customers politely and goes on elsewhere to repeat its not over heroic exploit.

“One day, in the course of one of these affrays, a Jew urged in his defence that he had been baptized, and forthwith produced his certificate of baptism.

“‘All right,’ replied the officer. ‘Say the Lord’s Prayer.’

“‘Our Father, Who art in heaven——’

“The recent Christian knew no more. He was incontinently bundled into the street ‘to learn the rest.’”—(J. and J. Thiraud, Quand Israel est Roi.)

[52] In a “manifesto” published during the winter of 1921-1922, Hejjas and his fellow-ruffian Baron Pronay speak of the work of the National Assembly as “Two years of cockcrowing” in which “traitors and perjurers have talked the loudest.” The Manifesto goes on to say: “Till now we have watched with clenched fist the game of the National Assembly, though anger has choked us. Yet amid the sighs of our starving frost-pinched women and half-naked children we have proved that we too desire order—the Christian order. But we have waited long enough. We mean now to enter on paths of deeds.”

[53] See page 145.

[54] At the time of going to press the Budapest Parliament is about to consider two Bills introduced by the Government. The first deals with Public Order, and, among other things, provides for the internment in “Labour Institutes” of any person who by his political tendencies may prove obnoxious to the authorities. The second deals with Military Taxation, and ordains that every male Hungarian subject between the ages of 20 and 31 shall be liable to a poll-tax, unless he enrols himself in the army, the gendarmerie, the police or the customs or forestry services. This Bill is thus a thinly veiled measure of conscription, and is in any case contrary to the provisions of the Treaty of Trianon.

CHAPTER XI
HUNGARY AND DEMOCRACY

The result of the War may justly be described as the victory of liberal ideas and the triumph of democracy. The autocratic empires have disappeared, and upon their ruins have been built up a series of States in which the Government is founded upon the will of the people. Hungary under her present regime is the only exception. In name a republic, she is in fact ruled by an oligarchy which controls her policy, both internal and external, in its own interests and without reference to the welfare of the mass of her people. The whole history of Hungary since the Compromise demonstrates the opposition exerted by the Magyars to modern democratic ideals and the intensity of their struggle for the maintenance of privilege. We see the Magyar ruling caste, represented by such men as Apponyi and Tisza, straining every effort to deprive not only the non-Magyar nationalities, but the lower classes of their own race, of every vestige of participation in the legislation of the country. Nor did their measures of repression stop at disenfranchisement. Popular education was made as difficult as possible, lest the downtrodden classes should find in it a means of equalling their masters. Every commune in Hungary had its local despot, the nominee of the greater despot at the head of the county, who was in turn the trusted deputy of the central Government. The life, public and private, of the individual was in the hands of these men; the possession of ideas contrary to the policy of the ruling class was so practically discouraged that the only alternatives before the Hungarian citizen were their abandonment or else emigration to a country where the political atmosphere was purified by the breezes of freedom.

Under these conditions it was natural that the Hungarian nation should become divided into two contrasting and antagonistic sections: the Great Magyars, the upper classes which formed the military caste, and the uneducated and politically unimportant lower classes, which formed the mass of the nation. The War brought a measure of enlightenment to these latter, as it brought enlightenment to so many hitherto unconsidered fractions of the world’s population. But, owing to the policy of their masters, they sought this enlightenment not from their own countrymen, but from the disciples of Marx, who whispered in their ears the delusive but enticing doctrines of Communism. The sense of patriotism was killed, and no clear ideas were born in them to replace it.

The long pressure of the War and the final realisation of defeat let loose upon Hungary this accumulated flood of supreme dissatisfaction. But those who were dissatisfied knew only that the ancient form of government was corrupt. Their lack of education in the past, and the influences to which they had recently been subjected, made it impossible for them to visualise the true principles of democracy. It was too late for Karolyi and his associates to build up on the ruins of the old Monarchy any enduring structure of popular government. The stream had been dammed up too long; the dam once broken, the raging torrent refused confinement in constitutional channels. Bolshevism, the sinister tutor of the Magyar populace, was already entrenched, largely by the influence and financial support of the Jews. Karolyi was hated by the Great Magyars for what they termed the surrender of the ideals of the Magyar State, and mistrusted by the people as a member of the ruling class. From the first his fall was inevitable. Hungarians have blamed the Entente for what followed, but outside agencies had little influence on the course of events. The scourge of Bolshevism which swept over Hungary was in reality the inevitable consequence of the traditional Magyar policy, as surely as the Reign of Terror in France was the inevitable consequence of the policy of the Monarchy. Hungary lay helpless at the feet of a gang of ruffians who maintained themselves by the simple expedient of affording a licence to the lowest classes of an exasperated populace for unrestrained robbery and violence.

Nor was it Hungary who saved herself from this orgy of destruction and bloodshed. The various attempts at counter-revolution were utterly unsuccessful until the world became alarmed at the prospect of the plague spreading. To Rumania was assigned the task of restoring order, and in her execution of it she displayed an ability and a restraint which will for ever redound to her credit. Bolshevism was extinguished, and Hungary was once more given a chance to take her place among the nations of Europe.

From the first it was made clear to her that modern Europe could not tolerate a reactionary Monarchy in its midst. The new democratic States had suffered too greatly at the hands of that Monarchy to render it possible for them to view its re-establishment without alarm. But there was nothing to prevent the Magyar nation from choosing for themselves an unrestricted middle course between the rock of absolutism and the abyss of Soviet misrule. It might have been imagined that her recent history would have taught Hungary wherein lay her political salvation.

But the suppression of Bolshevism had produced a swing of the pendulum as violent as that which had followed the collapse of the Monarchy. To those who had suffered under the blood rule of Bela Kun and Szamueli the old ruling class appeared as their only saviours. They thought only of the vengeance against their late oppressors, and their untrained minds did not foresee the effects of the reinstatement of the very class from whose yoke the War had released them. But the restored military clique perceived their opportunity and from the first took full advantage of it. On the pretext of extirpating the remains of Bolshevism, they secured their ascendancy by the removal of those who were likely to oppose them, and by the erection of national institutions which could be relied upon to support their policy. The world at large and even the Hungarian proletariat were deceived by their specious promises, and it was not until their unsuccessful attempts to restore the Monarchy revealed their true aims that either perceived their mistake.

Hungary to-day differs little from the Hungary of the years before the War. It is ruled by an oligarchy whose agents strive their hardest to disguise the fact. The old oppression of all democratic ideals continues, rendered more dangerous by the determination of the jealous rulers of the State to undermine their neighbours, in whose territories these ideals flourish. Hungary, while professing poverty and proclaiming her impossibility to exist within the limits imposed by the Treaties, expends her revenues in the maintenance of a military organisation with which at the propitious moment to attempt the invasion of the surrounding States. Despite the teachings of history, despite the convictions of the modern world that territories belong to the races which inhabit them, the Magyars still insist upon their ridiculous conception of a “unitary Magyar State,” and pretend a divine right to the lands over which St. Stephen ruled. The prosperity and wealth of the nation is sacrificed by them to the vision of the restoration of the former Hungary, while the political consolidation of the present Hungary remains uncared for. It is the fable of the dog and the bone over again.

The statement that under modern conditions no nation can continue to exist in splendid isolation has become the sheerest truism. Every nation is more or less dependent upon the goodwill of its neighbours, more especially those nations upon the continent of Europe which are surrounded by States with which a reciprocal intercourse is an essential to their existence. But on the other hand, apart altogether from any exhibition of definite hostility, no oligarchy can secure really sympathetic consideration by the popular mind of a democratic country. Hungary’s rulers complain of the coldness of their neighbours; of the antagonism displayed towards them by the Entente Powers. But they make no attempt to bring their country into line with the requirements of the present day; they seem unable to comprehend the very meaning of the principles by which democratic states are governed. A recent Magyar apologist compares the state of Croatia-Slavonia under Magyar rule with the state of any of the great British Dominions. He apparently believes that the height of democratic ideals was reached by the permission accorded to the Croatian deputies to deliver speeches in their own language in the Budapest Parliament.

Until Hungary abandons her present reactionary tendencies and adopts in their place the liberal ideas which from time to time have for an instant shown themselves within her borders,[55] only to be quenched by the energetic action of the Magyar oligarchs, she cannot hope for the sympathy of the world. Her actions must be regarded with mistrust; the utterances of her leaders must be judged only by their actions. Defiance and propaganda can be no substitute for a genuine intention to abandon the errors and the absolutism of the past, and to develop a true Hungary along the lines of modern progress.

Meanwhile, Hungary’s neighbours, eager to proceed to the restoration of normal conditions within their borders, and prepared to devote all their resources to that end, are compelled to spend a large proportion of their energies in watching Hungary and concerting measures of defence against her aggressions, moral and physical. They dare not expose an unguarded flank to the Awakening Magyars, whose declared object is the restoration of the former Hungary by force of arms, or to the “League for the Defence of Hungary’s Integrity,” which strives towards the same end by force of propaganda. Central Europe is conscious of the volcano in its midst, and longs only for the fires in the volcano to become extinct, so that it may become a firmly established democratic mountain. Nowhere is there any antagonism to Hungary as a State. One of the foremost leaders of thought in the new States has said: “There can be no doubt that the democratic ideas and principles of all these neighbour States are just one huge guarantee of peace and order, and of the definitive creation of friendly relations and a commonsense system of live and let live among the various nations. If the popular classes in Hungary grasped in this respect their political and national problem, they would quickly recognise in what manner this crisis should be solved. Ninety-five per cent. of their difficulties with their neighbours would diminish the moment these neighbours perceived a tendency towards democracy and republicanism, and could be without anxiety regarding the internal regime in Hungary.... History teaches us that we and the Magyars cannot live in permanent opposition and hostility to each other.”[56]

It remains then for the Hungarian nation to abandon its present policy of obstinacy and wilful blindness. However great her efforts may be, they will not enable her to reverse the flow of the river of modern tendencies. The old days of isolation of State from State are gone, never to return, and the establishment of a mediæval feudalism is no longer possible in modern Europe. Unless Hungary consents to look facts in the face, unless she abandons her propaganda and her armed bands and sets herself to develop the Magyar race as the nationalities she once described so contemptuously as “subject races” have already developed themselves, the future can hold nothing for her but ruin. The false policy of its rulers is rapidly driving the “thousand years old Magyar nation” towards collapse and ultimate extinction. At the field of Mohacs Hungary fell gloriously, her valour overcome only by overwhelming odds. But, unless the Magyars abandon their present “awakening” for one more in accordance with practical politics, the fall which threatens their country now will be the ignominious failure of a nation which refuses to grasp its own destiny.

FOOTNOTES:

[55] As, for instance, in 1848 and 1918.

[56] Dr. Beneš in the Czechoslovak House of Deputies, January 27, 1921.

INDEX
Note.—An asterisk indicates that the reference will be found in the footnote to the page indicated.

Agram, see Zagreb
Alison Phillips, Professor, 10
Andrassy, Count, 30, 84, 144
Anti-semitic persecutions, 187*

Apponyi, Count, 20, 26, 31, 35, 39, 45, 46, 82, 83, 86, 95, 117, 181, 193, 198

Ausgleich, 13, 15, 44, 46, 78, 198

Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, 5

“Awakened Magyars,” 109, 186, 187, 187*, 192, 193, 203

Az Est, 144
Az Ujsag, 8
Banffy, Count, 26, 124, 125
Beksics, Gustave, 27
Beneš, Dr., 204*
Bethlen, Count, 125, 146
Beust, 49, 50
Bismarck, 29, 30
Björnson, 37, 62, 66, 85, 137
Björnson et Apponyi, 38*
Bohemia, Kingdom of, 117
Bokanyi, Deszo, 36
Bolshevism in Hungary, 99, 102, 106, 183, 199
Brittain, Sir Harry, 157*
Budapesti Hirlap, 17, 26, 27, 46, 145
Budapesti Kozlony, 107
Burgenland, 113
Calvinists, 19
Chains, 7, 8
Charles VI, 46
Chicago Tribune, 10
Children, transportation of, 79, 87
Cisar, Jaroslav, 115*
Classical Schools, Slovak, 75, 79, 80
Commentator, The, 166
Compromise, see Ausgleich
Courrier Européen, 62
Croatia-Slavonia, 14, 41, 118, 119, 202
Croats, 14, 47
Csaky, Count, 40
Czechoslovak constitution, 118, 120, 140
Czechoslovak education, 118, 150, 151 et seq.
Czechoslovak justice, 153
Czechoslovak Republic, The, 118,* 120*
Czechoslovakia, 101, 112, 117
Czechs, the, 13, 28
Czernin, Count, 25, 99
Daniel, Arnold, 104,* 106,* 107,* 108*
Democratic Club outrage, 191
Détachements, 186, 187
Dictatorship of the Proletariat, 102, 135
Dualism, 50
Eastern Europe, 115*, 157*, 179*
East European Problems, 164
Electoral Law, 17, 18
Elementary schools, 72, 80
Emigration, 36, 87, 185
Encyclopædia Britannica, 10, 18*, 42*, 44*
Entente, 30, 32
Eötvös, Baron, 20
Erno Baloghy, 15
Esterhazy, Count, 39
Expulsion of Slovaks from schools, 77
Fiume, 43
Francis Joseph, 49, 50
Friedrich Decree of 1919, 131, 139, 146
Friedrich, Stephen, 104, 131*
Frontiers, delimitation of, 113
Gambetta, 29
Garbai, Alexander, 101
Germans, the, 14, 28
Germany, policy of, 30, 31, 92
Geza II, King, 43
Gömbös, Julius, 180, 193
Gorgei, 29, 49
Grabovsky, Juraj, 144
Gratz, Gustave, 170, 170*, 174
Greek Orthodox Church, 18, 19, 45
Grünwald, Bela, 22, 36
Hegedüs, Dr., 95
Hejjas, Ivan, 188, 189, 195
Highlands, The, 22
Hlinka, Father, 66, 68, 69
Hock, John, 184
Horthy, Admiral, 10, 104, 107, 186, 189
Horthy regime, 105, 107, 125, 183

Hungarian agrarian policy, 95 et seq., 105, 106 et seq.

Hungarian churches, 16, 18

Hungarian elections, 26, 59 et seq., 145, 181, 185, 191, 193, 195

Hungarian education, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 39, 72 et seq., 117, 130, 133, 143

Hungarian feudalism, 125, 126, 184, 185, 194
Hungarian franchise, 17, 23, 55, 56, 93, 190
Hungarian institutions, 16
Hungarian justice, 16, 64 et seq., 139, 140
Hungarian languages, 16, 21
Hungarian legislation, 52, 197*
Hungarian Nation, The, 164
Hungarian population, 5, 13, 17, 33, 34, 128

Hungarian propaganda, 100, 117, 155, 156, 160 et seq.

Hungarian statistics, 34, 73, 130
Hungary—
area, 5
nationalities in, 33
partition of, 6
Hussite wars, 46
Illiteracy, 20, 21, 23, 137, 151
Infant Homes, 40
Irredentism, 116, 161, 170, 182, 202, 203
“Irredentist Banner,” 180, 181
Jaszi, Oscar, 70, 93, 101, 105, 135, 184
Jerzabek, Deputy, 98
Joseph II, 47
Juriga, Ferdis, 67, 94
Karolyi, Count, 99, 101, 102, 129, 184, 199
Kolozsvar, Diet of, 44
Königgrätz, battle of, 49
Kossuth, 31, 38, 48
Krisztics, Dr., 145*, 161, 168, 169
Kun, Bela, 102, 187, 201
Latin, use of, 47

Law of Nationalities, 15, 16, 50, 64, 75, 131, 139, 146, 163, 167

League for the Defence of Hungary’s Integrity (M.O.V.E.), 109, 161 et seq., 169, 187, 203

League of Nations, 122, 123
Lederer, E., 38*, 84
L’enseignement en Hongrie, 41, 82
Little Entente, 122
Local Assemblies, 33 et seq., 132, 138

Local officials, 54 et seq., 78, 134, 141, 152, 155, 163, 167, 198

Lutherans, 9
Mailath, Count Joseph, 42
Mandl, Leopold, 170, 170*, 171
Magyar Culture and the Nationalities, 15
Magyar Foreign Society, 181
Magyar Irredenta, 182
Magyar minorities, 147 et seq.
Magyar National Union, 179
Magyar, use of, 52, 53, 81, 136
Magyars et Pangermanistes, 30*, 35*
Maria Theresa, 47
März, 66, 85
Masaryk, President, 118*
“Memorandum” of Rumanian Party, 60, 66
Metternich, 31
Mezossy’s agrarian measure, 96, 97
Military Dictatorship, 186, 189, 195, 196
Minister of Racial Minorities, 135, 142, 143
Nagy-Szeben, Diet of, 44
Names, Magyarisation of, 89, 90
National Assembly, 109, 186, 190, 194
Nemzeti Akcio, 27
Nemzeti Ujszag, 146
Nepszava, 188
Neue Freie Presse, 37
New Europe, The, 105
Newton, Lord, 7, 8, 9, 115
Niederle, Professor, 36
Nyitra, Lord Lieutenant of, 94
Oedenburg, Germans in, 145, 146
Old Diplomacy and New, 112*
Orgovany, massacres at, 186, 188
Osusky, Dr., 123, 124
Outlaw’s Diary, An, 110*
Oxford Hungarian Review, 145*

Oxford League for Hungarian Self-Determination, 180

Pan-Slavism, 29, 86, 144

Peace Treaties, 6, 7, 9, 112, 118, 123, 148, 153, 158, 161, 167, 182, 196

Pechany, 140, 141, 143, 144
People’s Republic, 101, 105, 106, 184, 185
Pester Lloyd, 8, 140
Pesti Hirlap, 95, 96, 97, 100, 142, 143
Petofi, 38
Physical Force Formations, 187
Place-names, Magyarisation of, 54, 87, 88
Poland, 112
Press, freedom of, 190
Press prosecutions, 67, 68, 70
Price, Mr. Crawfurd, 179
Primary Education Act, 20
Private schools, subsidising of, 81, 83
Pronay, Baron, 189
Quand Israel est Roi, 28*, 103*, 188*
Questions de l’Europe orientale, 164
Racial Minorities, 9, 10

Racial Problems in Hungary, 8, 10, 16, 19, 36, 40, 57, 72, 89, 108

Recent prosecutions, 130
Rakovszky, Stephen, 144
Red Terror, 104
Reich, Arpad, 170, 174
Rez, Dr., 27
Roman Catholic Church, 19
Rumania, 174, 200

Rumanians, the, 13, 18, 34, 43, 44, 155 et seq.

Rural, Social and Political Hungary, 42
Ruthenes, the, 14, 18
Ruthenia, 118, 119, 142
St. Stephen, 24, 54
Saturday Evening Post, 165
Saxons, the, 43, 47
Secondary schools, 72, 75
Serbs, the, 14, 18
Seton-Watson, Professor, 8, 10, 19, 122
Slav Nation, The, 36
Slavs, the, 34
Slavs of the War Zone, The, 119*
Slovak language, 75, 178
Slovakia, 19, 115

Slovaks, the, 13, 19, 28, 36, 38, 47, 57, 58, 128, 135, 140, 141, 142, 144

“Slovenska Matica,” 38
Slovensky Vychod, 101
Soviet Republic, 101, 104, 183
Szamueli, 102, 187, 201
Szechenyi, Count, 47, 48
Szeged, 103, 103*, 123
Szegedi Naplo, 95
Szekels, the, 14, 18, 43
Teleki, Count, 103
Tisza, Coloman, 18, 22, 30, 50
Tisza, Count Stephen, 26, 94, 195, 198

Transylvania, 10, 14, 18, 19, 43, 44, 45, 125, 155

Uniat Greek Church, 19
Union of Protective Leagues, 181
Union of University Students, 180, 181
Unitarians, 19
Universities, 74
Upper Hungarian League, 178
Villagos, Battle of, 29, 49
Vyx, Colonel, 106
Wekerle, Prime Minister, 82, 97
White Government, 103, 104, 109
White Terror, 104, 164, 186
Wilhelm II, 30
Yugo-Slavia, 112, 154
Zagreb, 42, 66

Printed in Great Britain by
UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED
LONDON AND WOKING

Transcriber’s note

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Hyphenation and proper names were standardized. The word, ascendency was standardized to ascendancy.

Page number references in the index are as published in the original publication and have not been checked for accuracy in this eBook.

Spelling was retained as in the original except for the following changes:

Page 17: “eduational stipulations” | “educational stipulations”
Page 17: “most curious pervertions” | “most curious perversions”
Page 34: “excluding Crotia-Slavonia,” | “excluding Croatia-Slavonia”
Page 49: “Prussians at Koniggratz in” | “Prussians at Königgrätz in”
Page 65: “which judical procedure” | “which judicial procedure”
Page 66: “the judical procedure” | “the judicial procedure”
Page 102: “Budapest become the” | “Budapest became the”
Page 116: “proof of thei capability” | “proof of their capability”
Page 134: “chose the language they” | “choose the language they”
Page 159: “dduce no trace” | “adduce no trace”
Page 189: “detachements is” | “détachements is”
Page 205: “Bekrics, Gustave, 27” | “Beksics, Gustave, 27”
Page 206: “Königgratz, battle of, 49” | “Königgrätz, battle of, 49”
Page 206: “L’enseignment en Hongrie” | “L’enseignement en Hongrie”
Page 207: “Rakovsky, Stephen, 144” | “Rakovsky, Stephen, 144”
Page 207: “Slovaks, the, 13, 19, 28, 36, 38, 47, 57, 58, 128, 138, 135” | “Slovaks, the, 13, 19, 28, 36, 38, 47, 57, 58, 128, 135”
Page 207: “Vilagos, Battle of, 29, 49” | “Villagos, Battle of, 29, 49”

Footnote 43: “expresion “Reasonable”” | “expression “Reasonable””

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Table of Contents

- HUNGARY AND DEMOCRACY
- FOREWORD
- INTRODUCTION
- CONTENTS
- Hungary and Democracy

- CHAPTER I HUNGARY BEFORE THE WAR

- FOOTNOTES:

- CHAPTER II THE NATIONALITIES AND THE MAGYARS

- FOOTNOTES:

- CHAPTER III REPRESENTATION AND JUSTICE

- FOOTNOTES:

- CHAPTER IV EDUCATION

- FOOTNOTES:

- CHAPTER V WAR, REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION

- FOOTNOTES:

- CHAPTER VI HUNGARY AND HER NEIGHBOURS

- FOOTNOTES:

- CHAPTER VII THE MINORITIES IN HUNGARY TO-DAY

- FOOTNOTES:

- CHAPTER VIII THE MAGYAR MINORITIES IN THE NEW STATES

- FOOTNOTES:

- CHAPTER IX MAGYAR PROPAGANDA

- FOOTNOTES:

- CHAPTER X HUNGARY’S ATTITUDE TO-DAY

- FOOTNOTES:

- CHAPTER XI HUNGARY AND DEMOCRACY

- FOOTNOTES:

- INDEX Note.—An asterisk indicates that the reference will be found in the footnote to the page indicated.

- Transcriber’s note

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE