Feilding Star, Oroua and Kiwitea Counties' Gazette. SATURDAY JANUARY 20, 1917. TISZA THE TYRANT.

Feilding Star, Volume XIII, Issue 3146, 20 January 1917, Page 2

Feilding Star, Oroua and Kiwitea Counties' Gazette. SATURDAY JANUARY 20, 1917. TISZA THE TYRANT.

Onoe more Count Stephen Tisza, the masterful Premier of Hungary, is very much in the public eye. Doubtless, after those unhappy New Year greetings from the revolvers of his would-be assassins, he is thinking himself too much in the limelight. A little less public attention would please him, as it pleases all tyrants when "the elections are not on. Count Tisza was a fitting representative in Hungary of the late Emperor Francis Josef. The Hungarian Premier is discredited with having been associated with the notorious Count Forgach (a relentless enemy of Serbia) and Yon Tshirschky (German Ambassador at Vienna) in convincing the Austrian Emperor in 1914 that the time had arrived for the Dual Kingdom to strike Serbia, and thus absorb this country into a Great Austria. That was the real genesis of

the Great War; the assassination of j tho Archduke Ferdinand being only j the excuse. Since the outbreak of J the war Count Tisza's power has increased —yet, strange to say, his un- j popularity amongst the people has developed with his influence, until today the masses execrate him as tho evil genius of Hungary. Ho is a strong man, of tromendous will-power, au autocrat by instinct, a dictator by force of circumstances, and a belicvor in road-roller methods of crushing opposition, wholly unscrupulous. He has great ambitions for his race, the Magyars—but ho sees only Stephen Tisza at the hoatt of those ambitions. His grand aim was the domination of the Magyar. He strove to achieve three distinct objects: (1) tho retention and extension of the Magyar ruling ascendency in Hungary, (2) tho predominance of Hungary in tho partnership of the Dual Monarchy, and (3) the territorial expansion of tho! whole. The first has mado him one of tho most ruthless of oppressors, tho deadly enemy of all nationalist aspirations of the subject in Hungary, and tho inflexible opponent of the extension ST the franchise. Tho second mado him the ready instrument of Francis Josef and his Austrian party in suppressing political parties with independent principles. To enable him to attain to the expansion of liis territory and power, he lent himself to tho Kaiser Wilhehn's Berlin-to-Bagdad scheme. In pursuance of this policy ho sought to shatter tho Balkan Alliance, and openly incited Bulgaria against the hitter's former friends in the war of 1913. Ho has certainly been meteoric in his latter-day progress ; for although he entered Parliament in 1886, he had to wait until 1903 before ho'even began to climb the ladder of ambition. Since then, until the Great War mado him a fixture, ho had been in and out of power, and always tho storm-centre of Hungarian politics. It is no new experience to have his life threatened, for in the scenes he created in Parliament deputies freely hurled things at him that were more weighty than words. Take his experience in the strenuous political period of 1912, when, in order to break the opposition that had beaten him in appeals to tho poeplo, he had himself elected President of the Cham-bor-of Deputies. Then things happened swiftly. Tho Standing Orders of the Chamber were revised, the Two Years Military Service Act was passed, and no fewer than 36 deputies who protested were removed by tho police under Count Tisza's orders. Bills wero passed by • forco, tho army and the police being at his disposal. One deputy, M. Kovacs, attempted to assassinate him. In the following year Count Tisza fought no fewer than three sabre duels with his opponents, disabling Count Michael Karolyi, after 32 bouts; and, despite his 20 years' seniority to his adversary, he defeated Count Szechenyi, a relation of the Countess Berchtold. He also inflicted such severe injuries on the Marquis Pallavicini, besides being badly hurt himself in the third encounter of the year, that the duel was prematurely stopped. All this occurred during the first year of his second term as Premier—a term yet to bo closed. These duelling exploits afforded a faithful mirror of the man. Force 13 the god he worships—force the instrument of his indomitable will. Like the Kaiser, he has always rattled the sabre. The sabre is ever with him. It menaces Parliament, it stands as a symbol for foreign diplomatists. No man, in truth, is better fitted to be a dictator than Count Stephen Tisza. He is essentially a strong man, ruthless and intolerant, despising cunning and subterfuge, which ho considers the defence of tho weak. Of intellectual greatness he has none, but in the rude art of delivering a decisive blow against those who oppose him ho is a master. Will it be yet again demonstrated that he who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword?