REGENT OF HUNGARY

Evening Star, Issue 21935, 23 January 1935, Page 4

REGENT OF HUNGARY

KICH9LAS HORTHY I ■ i A COLOURFUL FIGURE | A brilliant military parade to which all the diplomatic corps were invited was the feature of celebrations in honour of that great day fifteen years ago when, in the midst of rain and fog, Nicholas Horthy ride into the city of Budapest on a white horse shortly after the city had been evacuated by the Rumanians, says a writer in the ‘ Christian Science Monitor;’ Behind him rode an army, but it was not an army prepared for battle. Rather was it an army composed of men—officers mostly of the former Austro-Hungarian forces—who rode with a common ideal before them, the ideal of building for a torn and shattered Hungary a new foundation of peace. FROM THE SEA. Hie man who rode upon the white horse was Nicholas Horthy, now, Regent of Hungary. He headed his army not through personal ambition—■ he had, as a matter of fact, resigned his official post as War Minister only a few months before—but because he had ; watched his country suffer through the downfall of a republic, the upheavals • of a short-lived regime of Communism, the ravages of an army of Rumanian soldiers who bad established themselves in the very capital itself, and the existence of two self-constituted and antagonistic Governments which added to the general turmoil. Nicholas Horthy knew little about the command of armies when he rode into Budapest on November 16, 1919,but be knew more than most men about command upon the seas. As a small boy he had won his way to the sea bysheer determination—when his parents had selected for him a high school at Sopron, and he himself had selected the Naval Academy at Fiume—and ho had made good in his chosen profession, travelling around the world as ensign on the battleship Saida; writing brilliantly vivid reports to his Emperor Franz Josef about the revolt of the Turks against the annexation by Austro-Hungary of Bosnia and Herzegovina, becoming in consequence the Emperor’s aide-de-camp, from which post he was only freed in 1914 in order that he might assume that of captain, first of the battleship Budapest, then of the Hapsburg, and then of the cruiser Navarra.

It was while in command of the Navarra that Nicholas Horthy made a popular name for himself by" directing the battle of Otranto to a victorious conclusion, and directing it, moreover, while he himself lay upon a stretcher as a result of having gone, although wounded, to the rescue of a friend—a deed of gallantry which won for him first the command of the whole AustroHungarian fleet, and afterwards, in 1918, the rank of admiral, when he quelled a Bolshevik revolt among his own man.

To those who know Mr Horthy, the history of high-spirited achievement seems natural enough. It was high spirits which induced him, at a naval academy ball at Fiume, to dress as a girl and, with flounces and fan, to deceive even his best friends. It was high spirits, too, that made him consent, although shy, to make a speech to the peasants of his own village on his return from his voyage round the world, .telling them of things unheard of before—strange birds and animals, strange customs, strange men with yellow skins and stranger men with black. And it was a yet higher spirit which prompted him, during the early days of the war, when he was organising a big drive on behalf of Red Cross work, to consent to allow the barber to shava off his dearly-cherished moustache in return for a subscription of 1,000 crowns to Red Cross funds. FIRST MISFORTUNE. It was at the close of the war that' Nicholas Horthy met his first great misfortune. At the command of revolutionary powers, he was forced to hand over his fleet and naval equipment to the Southern Slav National Council.But even then his natural resistance to defeat stood by him. He refused to allow the flag of new authority to be hoisted until he himself had left his flagship, and having left, he still refused to believe that revolution or no, adventure did not still lie gloriously ahead.

He was right, of course. In the next few months were crowded days of intense movement, in which a republics rose and fell, a reign of Communism shot up and disappeared, Governments and counter-Governments were made and unmade, and finally the array was placed in his own hands, and he was forced to assume power. Possibly no other man could have, at that moment, undertaken _ such a task, but Nicholas Horthy envisioned peace for his people through the establishment of unity among them. To him, the adventure was worth the risks he ran. _On November 16 he mounted his white horse and rode into Budapest. And within four months he was Regent of Hungary, the position which he still holds.