Nelson Evening Mail SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 1944 HUNGARY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 79, 15 April 1944, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 1944 HUNGARY

WITH the Russian arm ies already threading their way through the Carpathian foothills, the plains of Hungary may soon become a battleground of Europe; if so, it will be no new experience in the chronicles of that blood-drenched country. The history of Hungary is violent, stormy, and troubled; its filled with the record of barbarian invasions and civil strife, contending factions and shattered armies, murder, violence and oppression. To the hurrying tourist its yellow cornfields, rich vineyards and dark pine forests present an attractive and alluring picture; but they divert attention from a peasantry which is one of the most backward and illiterate in Europe. In Hungary the feudal tradition is still strong. Half the land is concentrated in the hands of 2000 men; most of the peasants have holdings so N small that they must work by daylabour, -and more than a million have no land at all. The gap between rich and poor is wider here than almost anywhere else in Europe, and the successive shocks that have impinged on the aristocratic tradition elsewhere seen to have left the Hungarian nobles, the Esterhazys, the Karolyis, the Apponyis, the Hunyadis, untouched. These magnates, with their twenty and more generations of family history behind them, form a curious link between East and West; their polished manners and suave courtesy used to make them welcome in Paris and Vienna, but their ruthless insistence on seigniorial rights and their callous indifference to human suffering remind one of their affinity with the old nobility of Russia and the petty chieftains of the Balkans. Although the Hungarian Parliament is the oldest in Europe—it dates back to 1222, forty-three years before Simon de Montfort—it has remained all through the centuries in the grip of the great families. Its constitution was described in 1910 as “the most illiberal in Europe”; only six per cent of the population had the vote, and all but a handful of the -working people and small traders were completely disfranchised. In ancient times Hungary lay on the extreme edge of civilised Europe, : and took the full shock of the barbarian invasions that periodically swept over the Continent. Attila’s Huns settled there and gave the country its name, though it is most unlikely that any part of their blood runs in the veins of the modern inhabitants. The present day Hungarians are descended from the Magyars, who settled on the great plains in the tenth century and formally constituted their kingdom in 1001 under the saintly ruler Stephen, who first introduced his people to Christianity. Hungary suffered terribly from the Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century, and it was in order to replace whole tribes massacred by these Asiatic savages that Bela IV introduced German colonies I which still retain their individuality. I As in other parts of Europe, famine, I war and pestilence fill the pages of

Hungary’s history in mediaeval times, and for more than two centuries the greater part of the land lay under the domination of the Turks. The crown eventually passed to the Austrian Hapsburgs, and a Dual Monarchy was established which reserved to Hungary full autonomy in her own affairs. Most of the Haps burg kings loyally observed this compact, and the influence of the Magyar nobles remained supreme in a country which incorporated within its borders almost as many Rumanians, Slovaks and Germans as Magyars. This extraordinary complexity of nationalities bore hardly upon Hungary at the Peace Conference in 1919. None of the defeated countries offered such splendid possibilities for the application of President Wilson’s “principle of self-determin-ation,” and the shears were used with a ruthless zeal which aroused fierce resentment. Hungary emerged from the Peace treaties with her territory reduced by 70 per cent and her population by 60 per cent. Admittedly the majority of those taken away from her were of alien stock, but with them went 3,000,000 Magyars. It is generally agreed that the redistribution of peoples at the Treaty of Versailles was carried out with care and impartiality; but the Allied statesmen seem to have nodded when the map of Hungary was being redrawn, and the dissatisfaction expressed had some justification. National feeling runs as strongly in Hungary as in any country in Europe, and it is not surprising that the Nazi denunciations of the Versailles Treaty found a ready echo in Budapest. Hitler had little difficulty in winning over the dominant aristocratic class, whose contempt for democracy was notorious. The chief figure in Hungary over the last twenty years has been Admiral Horthy, who is nominally Regent for the exiled Hapsburgs. There has always been a strong monarchical party in Hungary, but it has received no support from Horthy (who would find himself out of a job if the King returned), or from the neighbouring Slav states. Hungary on the whole has profited from her adhesion to the Axis. She has recovered a good deal of her lost territory during the last five years, including the strongly Rumanian province of North Transylvania. Her sacrifices till recently were small. She-supplied a few divisions for Hitler’s Russian war, but has steadily refused to declare war on the Soviet. For the last four years she has been the most favoured of Axis satellites. Hitler, however, has no use for friends except to use them, and Hungary’s equivocal policy has now brought its well-earned reward. Correctly appreciating the dangers of a Russian descent on the Hungarian Plain, Hitler demanded last month that Hungary should mobilise all her forces, assist with the garrisoning of Yugoslavia, and supply the Reich with food and labour. Receiving a flat refusal from the Prime Minister, M. Nicholas Kallay, he immediately occupied the country. A pro-German cabinet, under a notorious Nazi, Field-Marshal Sztojay, was installed. To all of this Horthy seems to have been an acquiescing, if not an enthusiastic, party. Not much sympathy will be extended to Hungary in her difficulties; her policy throughout has been singularly self-interest-ed, and she cannot complain if she suffers the fate of those who seek to placate their enemies by giving halfhearted loyalty to their friends.