HUNGARY’S EXPERIMENT

Greymouth Evening Star, 19 March 1934, Page 9

HUNGARY’S EXPERIMENT

ANTI-SEMITIC POLICY. The Hungarian Third' Reich began in the late summer of 1919. after the death of the short-lived Bolshevist regime of Bela Kun. While the Communists were in flight, the White Terror gripped the land and gave Hungary a foretaste of what’Hitlerism would do to Germany. It may be therefore of some use to compare the German and Hungarian scenes, as similar premises may produce similar consequences, writes Emil Lengyel in the “Literary Digest.” In the first days of August, 1919, Stephen Friedrich, an obscure manufacturer, seized the Government by appointing himself Prime Minister nominating Archduke Joseph Governor of Hungary. His followers worked up au auti-Semitic sentiment and tried to plunge the country into a lacial warfare by making the Jews responsible for the late Bolshevist rule. On a hot afternoon, when nerves were on edge, they made an attempt at street pogroms in Budapest. At the universities, liberalminded professors were ejected and students were beaten up. “The “Awakening Hungarians,” whose slogans anticipated the Hitlerite motto, “Germany, Awake!” went into action.

Hungarian Socialists and pacilists were put in internment camps. Political murders were committed, but the Hungarian Government refused responsibility for them, attributing them to “irresponsible elements.” Foreign investigators reported organised atrocities. Pessimists placed the number of victims of the White Terror at 5000, while friends of the Government were filling to admit only one-tenth of that figure. The bulk of the murders took place between the Danube and Tisza rivers, and the largest number of mutilated bodies was found in the forest of Orgovany, near the city of Kecskemet.

Hungary crashed the gates of world publicity, and. the Socialist Second International adopted measures of boycott against her. They were, however, of little use and the Nationalistic Government of Budapest, in harmony with the “Awakening Hungarians,” tnacted several decrees to which the legislative work of the Hitler Cabinet shows a striking resemblance. Public offices and the corps of army officers were purged of Jews, and their number at the universities was restricted to their proportion in the population. Jewish students left the country by the thousand, seeking admission to foreign universities. Government monopolies and special trade licenses were withdrawn from Jews. Nearly all of the measures of the previous Republican Administration were repealed, and Hungary was proclaimed_a. kingdom, although she had no king. The Government went into battle under the banner of Christian Nationalism. The leaders promised happiness and prosperity to all, except the Jew, the Radical and the Pacilist. They held out the hope that Hungary, cut into pieces at the Peace Conference, would regain her lost territories and would stretch from the Carpathian Mountains to the Adriatic Sea. Theirs was the Hungarian Third Reich, a Land of Promise, inhabited by the descendants of Arpad the Conqueror. NATIONAL AWAKENING.

The Government made haste to announce its programme of social and national awakening. The wicked gaiety of Budapest was to be replaced by the austerity of nationalistic Puritans. New churches were being built all over the land. The landless peasants were to receive a piece of property. The army regained its pre-armistice standing, and' the clicking of heels drowned out the gipsy music. Youth was to show the way to the country of a virile and defiant; race; the young people of Hungary were organised in “levente” groups, a semimilitary formation. Anti-Semitism was to be the guiding thought of the national awakening, and the song of the Jewcaters, “Erger, Berger, Schossberger,” became the unofficial march of the National Army. The similarity between Hungary fifteen years ago and Germany to-day is even more striking in their attitude towards the rest of the world. In Hungary public opinion was so aroused against the Treaty of Trianon that it became an obsession, and Irredentisin was the principal spiritual product of the land. School children were taught the pre-armis-tice boundaries of Hungary, and the national prayer challenged the enemy to break the national defiance.

The Hungarian Third Reich, however, showed also some dissimilarities from the German Third Reich. Hungarian anti-Semitism has never been so much a racial as a religions issue, and converted Jews were treated with more consideration. The anti-Semitic programme of Budapest was less thorough than that of Berlin. Jews have not been deprived of their civic rights, and' as a conciliatory gesture to foreign opinion a Jewish Minister was included in one of the first Hungarian nationalistic governments.

HEAD OF THE GOVERNMENT. What lias become of Hungary’s national awakening after a trial period cf nearly fifteen years? Has the new regime succeeded in leading the Magyars to the Land of Promise? These questions are particularly pertinent at the present time, in view of the fact that the head of the Hungarian Government was at one time an ally of Adolf Hitler. General Julius Combos, Prime Minister of Hungary, is only forty-six years of age. When he began his political career shortly after the Armistice he was in his earliest thirties, a tempestuous youth with an uncompromising temperament, incensed at what seemed to him the unjustifiably slow action of the Government in transforming Hungary into a haven of Aryan heroes. Ten years ago he was suspected of pulling the strings of an ultra-reaction-ary revolution, such as Adolf Hitler was just then plotting in Bavaria. The strong-arm men of Julius Gombos were seen to be conspiring with Hitler’s lieutenants, and the result of their work was a “Preliminary agreement between the Bavarian and Hungarian States towards a United Political and Military Action.” Hitler rtaged his coup which was drowned in universal laughter, and came to be known as the ludicrous beer-hall putsch. Both Hitler and Gombos disappeared for some time from the political bull-ring, and to-day both

are the responsible leaders of their countries. Is General Gombos still sold to the idea of National Socialism? It is strange to say that just, the contrary seems to be the cast?. Not long ago General Gonibos’s Cabinet issued an order for the suppression of the Hungarian National Socialist Party. To-day the Nazis arc outlawed in the land of the Magyars. From this the conclusion is justified that Hungary’s experiment with National Socialism was so unsuccessful that its very name is distasteful. This conclusion is confirmed by the outward appearance of the capitals of the two countries, Berlin and Budapest. The religious austerity of the Hungarian metropolis has given place to its congenital gaiety. Once more the Jewish population of the city occupies the place it had before the nationalistic regime. The most

flayrant manifestations of intolerance have been banished, but the new era of milk and honey, the Hungarian Third Reich, has failed’ to materialise. The Hungarian super-nationalist

regime was signally unsuccessful in its efforts to improve the condition of the peasant. The country is potentially rich, but land is unequally distributed, more than one-half of all rural estates being concentrated in the hands of less than a thousand

andowners, and the rest scattered

among millions of peasants. At the end of the World War about 1,500,000 farmers had either uo land or too small parcels to make a living on them. The Government’s intention was to execute an agrarian reform by turning over a part of the large estates to the country proletariat. The refjym, however, was wholly inadequate, as it failed to correct the results of unequal distribution. Only about a million acres were parcelled among the landless, and much of that land was too poor for profitable cultivation. Moreover, the authorities failed to provide the new owners with agricultural implements, so that most of them are to-day as badly off as they were at the start. So desperate has the peasants’ plight become recently that the Government had to permit them to pay their tax arrears in wheat and rye, and it also decreed a farmers’ moratorium. In order to enable the population of the “Alfold,” the great Hungarian plainland, to tide over the worst times, the Cabinet devised a system of debentures, which was an anticipation of a similar plan later suggested in the United States. According to this plan, the peasants have for years received an export grain premium, the so-called “boletta,” which amounts now to about seventy-five cents per quintal. The boletta is paid out of a special tax on the flour consumption of the cities, to which is added a Government contribution. For the payment of this premium in the current year the Cabinet appropriated! nearly twenty million dollars. It is only fair to add that the system is so unpopular all over Hungary that the Government will probably discontinue it next year. The unfavourable monetary situation has made it incumbent on the Government to decree a transfer moratorium on all foreign debts. It is obvious, then, that the economic results of the Hungarian Third Reich are unsatisfactory.