HUNGARIANS' ANCIENT LOVE OF LIBERTY

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28210, 23 February 1957, Page 6

HUNGARIANS' ANCIENT LOVE OF LIBERTY

Cen+uries-old Struggle Against Oppressors NEW SOLIDARITY REVEALED [By a Special, Correspondent] TT used to be said that no coun,ti-y of the same -*■ extent contained such a variety of nations as Hungary-. There were the Magyars, or Hungarians proper, who were originally an Asiatic people; there were also Wallachians (claiming descent from Roman settlers), Armenians, Germans, Italians, Jews, Serbians, Slovaks, Coats, Wends, and Russians.

Thus many races, whose descendants in presentday Hungary (which lost much territory after World War I) have become welded in a solidarity never so vividly displayed as now.

The oldest known inhabitants of Hungary were nomadic barbarians who had migrated there from western Tatary, in the region of the Black Sea. Under Attila, they ravaged ancient Gaul and Italy as the dreaded Huns, and it was after Attila’s death in 454 that they assumed the name of Hungarians. History has scant record of them from 454 A.D. until early in the eleventh century, when German missionaries carried Christianity to them. A hundred years later, German colonists gave an impetus to the prosperity of Hungary when they settled there and laid the foundations of the country’s manufacturing wealth. But Hungary in olden times, as today, suffered cruelly from the intrigues of ambitious neighbours and the invasions of peoples from the east. In the thirteenth century a terrible irruption of Mongols almost overwhelmed the Hungarians, and long years passed before the country recovered from the inroads of those savage hordes. Moslem Invasion Then, in 1526, the Moslems under Soliman the Magnificent invaded Hungary and annihilated her forces in battle. Beneath the sign of the Crescent, the victors deported no fewer than 200,000 persons and bore them into abject slavery—a circumstance not without parallel today, as all who have followed the brave struggle of the Hungarian freedom fighters against the Russians are only too well aware.

For a century and a half the country was a debateable land between Christendom and Mohammedanism, and successive wars drained it of its best blood and exhausted its resources. Yet it survived the miseries of 150 years of invasion and counterinvasion. Much later it survived, too, the machinations of the House of Hapsburg which sought

to absorb Hungary and deny the people their separate rights and privileges. Little more than 100 years ago, all Hungary was placed under martial law by the Austrians, who poured troops into the country to crush what they called “a rebellion.” It was not so easily crushed. An Austrian army of 60.0C0 men captured town after town, but was suddenly attacked by Hungarian patriot forces on the River Theiss, and after a series of engagements lasting 10 days was utterly routed. In their plight the Austrians invoked foreign aid. Aid From Russians And their ally in the effort to crush the spirit of liberty in Hungary? The ally was Russia. Hungary was overpowered by the combined might of Tsarist Russia and Hapsburg Austria, but, having learned a sharp lesson, and because they recognised the difficulties and dangers involved in seeking to hold down a defiant nation, the Austrians conceded to the Hungarians many reforms which the patriots of that country had fought to secure. A foreign observer, writing in 1850, had this to say of the struggle waged by the Hungarians then: “Every lover of liberty will sympathise with their courageous efforts to secure the advantages 'ofa constitutional government, and the restoration of their rights.” How appropriate those words are today, no less so than 100 years ago.

But he went on: “What Hungary has failed to obtain by force of arms, she has now, however, obtained by Austria’s own pressing needs for a peaceful co-existence.” Will history repeat itself? Will Russia, like Austria in that other century, ultimately find herself obliged by circumstances to relax to a considerable degree the tyrant grip which she has laid on Hungary? Tyranny’s grip is a hold which no regime has even been able to maintain indefinitely upon a people.