WHERE STANDS HUNGARY?

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23145, 17 September 1938, Page 3 (Supplement)

WHERE STANDS HUNGARY?

Personally he is the very type of deep-water man. He makes no pretence, at being anything else than a professional sailor. It is the regret of his life that he has to spend his days in a land-locked country, and finds the placid bine Lake Bolaton a poor substitute for the wider waters of the Mediterranean. Politics do not interest him. Hungary has known all kinds of Ministries in the last twenty .years, but Horthy has been aloof from them all as long as they attempted 110 Uolshovik changes. Open-Air Activities He loathes Bolshevism, and it is due to him that the old land-owners retained their vast estates (one of them is of three-quarters of a million acres). Hungary therefore remains the last stronghold of rural feudalism in Europe; it has known nothing of the great democratic redistribution of estates which Czechoslovakia so courageously and so successfully carried through. Horthy is essentially a feudal aristocrat. He is no intellectual. His joys are to bo found in the open air, in riding, hunting, shooting, yachting. He is always ready to escape from the Royal Palace in Budapest and flee to the country districts, even to breaking horses on the wide Hortobagy plains. Yet he is very popular. The Magyars have a genuine esteem for aristocracy, and they know that the Horthy family goes back for many centuries and that Horthy himself is entirely free from false pride. This is shown in his treatment of bis sons. He sent his eldest son

ON November 1. 1918, the Austrian Admiralty, after a pitiable subterfuge, was compelled to hand over the Austrian fleet to the hated Yugoslavs. This Was not achieved before the Italians seized the opportunity of torpedoing one of the great battleships. It Was a bitter moment for the fifty-year-old admiral, Nicolas Vitez Horthy de Nagybanya, who is now more familiar to the world as Regent Horthy, "His Serene Highness the . Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary." Horthy was a tall, slim, erect man, modest, sparing in his words, tight-lipped. Circumstances had made hirn a courtier, just as they later made him a statesman. Born of an old Magyar family in 1868, he entered the Austrian Navy as a boy and slowly worked through the lower grades. When the War broke out he was in command of an old battleship, but gladly exchanged it for a newer cruiser. ■The navy as a whole made no great showing in the Adriatic during the war-years, but Horthy's sallies becamo famous, especially because ho scorned an y publicity about them. Drake-Like Episode ft was he who played the leading Part in the attack on the Italian coast ®j the Adriatic in 1915, he who sank *' of tho Italian transports bound for 9 relief of Montenegro (a Drake-like Pisode this, because he dashed into tho P° r t of San 'Giovanni di Medua and PJayed havoc with the crowded shipP| n g), he who fought his ship in tho Roads in 1917 until he was off the bridge desperately eh a,lt ' * ie n ' lo ma d e the battloSni+i nc . e Kngone the terror of the in k until he was promoted ■ be commander-in-chief of tho entire "stro-Hungnrian Navy. r„; l U tho old Empire crumbled into and! i° re^Us . c d to discard his old white :I , "' Uo . uniform, and indeed wears day. At the .time of jblia

I infamous rule of the Bolshevik Bela Kun in Budapest he mustered the ConI servatives and became, first, WarMinister, and then Regent, of the new Hungary. This post he has held uninterruptedly since 1920. It is a strange position.- He is the Regent of a kingdom that has no king, because it is a fiction of the Hungarian Constitution that the form of government is still a monarchy, although the Magyars would probably revolt if the rightful heir to the throne, Prince Otto, were to be recalled, for in their opinion he has dallied far too long with Austria and so lost his chances in Hungary. Horthy is also an admiral in a country which has no j trace of a navy. I

' Will Throw in Her Lot If Czechoslovakia "

STORY BEHIND REGENT'S RECENT VISIT TO GERMANY

By Professor S. H. ROBERTS, Challis Professor of Modern History, the Sydney University—(Copyright)

to work in the Ford laboratory in Michigan, and later put him in a motor factory in Hungary. He made him learn details of motor" engineering and study the mechanical side of aviation, and, when that long training was completed, gave him a job in the Royal Hungarian State Works. No Sinecure His second son he placed in business, and at present this young man helps to sell machinery to the old-fashioned Magyars and works in the British-Hun-garian bank. In short, Horthy has given his children an education suitable to the newer conditions. Not for them was easy political prefcrment'or one of the learned professions. Even democratic Masaryk made his son ambassador to London; aristocratic Horthy placed his sons in founderies. Horthy's job as Regent has been no sinecure, for the highly-strung Magyars are notoriously hard to manage, and, moreover, Horthy had to face the legacy of the Treaty of Trianon, which was ignominiously forced on Hungary seven months after ho becamo Regent. This treaty has been tho dominating fact in Hungarian life ever since, and it will rjLUuain so until every vestige of its provisions has been removed. A few weeks ago the military provisions were relegated to the waste-paper basket, but the other clauses remain, especially those that reduce Hungary to "a bleeding heart." The Hungarians had a heavy bill to meet when the peace-makers began to remake Central Europe. Their record as a governing race had been a disastrous one—so much so that the investi-

gator would have to go a long way back to find record of such infamies as they perpetrated on their subjectraces; and you have to remember that before the War ten million Hungarians governed (or rather misgoverned) ten million subjects of foreign birth. This fact should never be forgotten, especially in these days when we hear so much about the minority question in Czechoslovakia. Treaty Spoils The treaty took away three-quarters of her territory ami more than half her population. Czechoslovakia Yugoslavia, Rumania, and even Austria all participated in the spoils. The two million Slovaks and half a million Kutheues who lived to the north of the great Hungarian plain went to Czechoslovakia. Three million Sorbs and Croats went to join the rest of the Serbs in the new kingdom of Yugoslavia, and the rich farming regions of Transylvania, with three million inhabitants, were handed over to Rumania (far and away the most favoured guest seated at tho peacetable). President Wilson's Tenth Point had been emphatic on tho point that these minorities had to have autonomy, and the Peace Conference was virtually unanimous on the matter. Not a single voice was raised in favour of Hungary's record with her minorities Unfortunately for the Magyars the feeling of revulsion went too far, and they claim that the treaties denied them tho right of continued national existence. Trianon condemned them to a long-drawn-out agony, just as it did

Austria. Justice was one thing, vindictiveness another, they cried; and ever since they have subordinated all of their activities to furthering the cause of treaty revision. "No, No, Never!" All the world knows their cry, "Nem, nem soha!"—"No, no, never!" —that they would never, never submit to the disintegration of their territories. The very ilower-beds in Budapest are arranged in maps of the mutilated fatherland; the statues representing the lost provinces are for ever draped; and the Hags are constantly at halfmast. Even in the country districts the words "Nem, nem soha!" are built in great rocks on the hillsides, and there is not a village without its propaganda about "the bleeding heart." For a time they gained much support in England, for Englishmen have always looked with a kindly eye on the Magyars (whom they rather priggishly call "the Englishmen of the Continent"). A few years ago, no fewer than two hundred members of the British House of Commons signed a petition in favour of treaty-revision, buf. it is doubtful if they would do so to-day. Sinco then Hungary has gravitated toward the German camp. At the time of the Abyssinian crisis Hungary (with Austria) refused to participate in the measures against Italy, and she has made little secret of her preference for armed force over resolutions of the League of Nations. She also alienated much sympathy by her anti-Semitic measures (which were never stronger than in the last six months) and by her repeated refusal to securo justice for the depressed peasants. Limit to Armaments The Little Entente (which comprises tho three Powers who had profited directly by the dismemberment of Hungary) felt themselves justified in maintaining tho terms of the treaty. Until last month, then, Hungary had to limit her army to 35,000 men and to do without a navy or an air force. Oddly enough, although she was practically unarmed in a rapidly arming world, and although she could not have put two divisions in the field, her frontiers were never attacked—rather a good commentary on tho fever of rearmament ! Tho German occupation of Austria Inst March changed the entire Central European position. Tho* frontiers of Gormany were extended to Hungary, and Budapest obviously became the next goal of the Germans if they were to prosecute their scheme of expanding along tho Danube. Hungary was, for Germany, the stepping-stone to tho oil-wells of Rumania, quite apart from the fact that she herself had over eleven million acres under crops and produced eight million tons of coal a year and possessed probably the richest bauxito deposits in the whole world. Moreover, if the Germans could control Hungary, they would have Czechoslovakia surrounded on three sides instead of two. Hungary thus became a much-sought-after prizo. Horthy, a professional sailor and an admirer of military

strength, tended to look toward Hitler, especially because of tlio implacable hostility of the States of the Little Entente Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Rumania. Hence the .Regent's recent invitation to go to Berlin; hence the greatest military review in Berlin since the War; hence the German offers to develop Hungary economically. But the statesmen of the Little Entente are far from being fools. Realising that the German offers bad to be countered, they stole a march and repealed the military terms of the Treaty of Trianon and allowed Hungary to rearm, just as Bulgaria had been allowed to rearm a few weeks before. Press campaigns also pointed out the dangers of Danubian Imperialism on the part of Germany, and much was made of the fact that tho leader of the Hungarian Nazis, whoso aim was to disrupt the State, was even then in a Budapest gaol. "Lost Magyars" . At the moment wo tend to place too much value on tho agreement between Hungary and the Little Entente. We would be deluding ourselves if we ever remotely imagined that Hungary has given up her claims to regain her "lost Magyars," and we must realise that the non-aggression arrangements are halting and tentative in their nature. Nobody can say where Hungary stands at the present time. Again and again, as Horthy said in Berlin, Magyars and Germans have fought side by side; and if Hungary thinks that there is any chance of Czechoslovakia breaking up she would not hesitate to throw in her lot with Berlin. deduced almost to nothingness by the Peace Treaties, Hungary stands to gain by any change in Central Europe, and her people have little objection to becoming a political satellite of Germany, just as they are already an economic satellite. No non-aggression pact can obliterate the Magyar's determination to regain bis losfe lands. Tliis is the jtrump-card

in Hitler's hand, and he knows that of all peoples the fighting Magyars will be most impressed by his displays of military strength. . "I believe in one Divine hour coming. I believe in the resurrection of Hungary"—this is their creed. The only point at the moment is how it can best be attained —-through Berlin or through Prague. The answer seems very obvious. (By Arrangement with The Sydney Mail).