THE FRINGE OF WAR.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 304, 1 October 1940, Page 8

THE FRINGE OF WAR.

RECENT EVENTS IN HUNGARY. / AN INFLUX OF GERMANS. / Throughout April and May the atmosphere in Hungary Avas very tense, wrpte Francesca M. Wilson in the “Manchester Guardian” recently.. The Arctic snows had gone, the ice had cracked; the Danube Avas free again for the barges Avith their SAvastikas; even the floods had subsided; there seemed .no protection for Hungary any more. The increased pressure of Germany Avas seen at once in an almost complete censorship of the Press. Even the most pro-Ally .papers only dared to put in an obscure corner neAVS from London or Paris; headlines proclaimed day after day dazzling’ Nazi A r ictories. Our Hungarian friends—and there are ■ many Avhose hearts are with us—began to look gloomy and preoccupied. The Avar of nerves had begun, Budapest Avas a city of rumours.

For a Avhile Ave thought that Hungary would be another Denmark. I used to look but from my balcony every morning to see if German soldiers were on the Corso. At first it Avas assumed that the march through Avould be en route for the oil Avells of Ploesti (in Rumania); later Yugoslavia was whispered. Would be the Sweden of' the Balkans, surrounded anb squeezed but too precious to touch? The “Tourists” Arrive. Meanwhile the familiar “tourists” flocked into the country. I stood once at the end of a queue of them at the police station. “Object of visit” queried the. official. “Business.” “What kind?” “What kind is it?” the tourist asked his neighbour. “Say merchant,” Avas the reply. In May Strength through Joy expeditions arrived in Budapest and Hungarians Avere asked to give hospitality to German children; to feed their hungry neighbours they Avere induced to .ration their sugar and butter and ha\ r e two meatless days in a country overfloAving Avith food.

The authorities who for eight months, with some exceptions, particularly among the military, had treated their Polish refugees with remarkable tolerance and kindness 1 now became markedly harsher and stricter. The Germans, short of slave labour, were making extensive propaganda for Poles to go aback. Only 700 returned in April, but in May as the dark news from the West came in and conditions in the internment camps became worse many despairing men gave in and went to forced labour in the quarries near Wiener Neustadt in the vain hope that they might sometimes be allowed to revisit their homes; or perhaps still more in fear that they might soon be caught in recalcitrant exile and possibly shot by their implacable foe.

A Mysterious Episode.

A mysterious episode in April was the anti -Hungarian demonstrations among the Slovaks. A refugee brought mo a leaflet that was being scattered broadcast in that country by the Gormans, “Arise, Slovaks!’’ it began, “the hour of the Hungarian counts has struck. Deliver your oppressed brethren.' Soon all the land between the Danube and the Tisza will again be yours.” Hungarians to whom I showed this said that Germans were at the same time trying to egg them on with promises that Slovakia should once more belong to the crown of St. Stephen. .

In May this commotion died down More and more soldiers were mobilised, not on the Slovakian or western borders but on the east, north-east, »nd south, against Rumania, Russia, and Yugoslavia’. Hungarian gendarmes at a frontier post told me that when I got 'back to London I should be German. “And you will soon be goosestepping,” I retorted. Then they explained to me that they did not really like the Germans; but they could not help admiring successes whiph were so brilliant. Rut the Italians, they added, “we them.”