HEROES OF THE “ HOLY CROWN.”

Otago Witness, Issue 3523, 20 September 1921, Page 51

HEROES OF THE “ HOLY CROWN.”

Ry

JESSIE MACKAY.

Hungary is adding her share at tlie moment to the- mass of military trouble seething in one corner or another of Central Europe. She refuses to surrender to Austria Burgenland, a portion of her territory west of the Dunube. To us it seems an insanity that these starving, unstable, uncohering States, newly founded by the merciless carving-knife of the Bowers at Versailles, should waste the little strength they have warring on each other. Among these upstarts of an hour, however, the ancient Kingdom of Hungary stands forth like a Vala of northern doom, crying aloud the wrongs of a nation established for a thousand years —a nation that was the bulwark of Europe against the Turks, and has been he mother of the noblest European champions of faith and freedom; a nation now dismembered more piteously than her old oppressor, Austria, in that she was a political entity, a ruling unit, such as unwieldly, unassimilated Austria never was. Listening to that cry, the hearer suspends judgment on Hungary's investing of that territory : those who know most of the history of Austro-Hungarian relations will be least inclined to judge the junior partner of the Dual Monarchy for resisting cessions to the senior who dragged her unwillingly into a war that ruined both. Hungary asserts that she has lost two-thirds oi her area and many millions of true Magyar population, parted among Rumania, Austria, Jugo-Slavia, and Czechoslovakia, with the command of waterways and that balance of upland and lowland country that made her industries and her very means of subsistence s-jure. Eighteen months ago her outlying provinces, forecasting this dismemberment, joined in a union of passionate denunciation of parfit ion and lovaltv to the Magyar polity. Rumanians, Slovaks, Germans, Croats, South Slavs, Wends, and very particularly the people of the West Hungarian provintje now under review, have petitioned to remain under Magyar rule. One story is good till another is told. The arbitrary divisions of the new States, only ostensibly on racial grounds, are well known to ail students of the Peace Treaty; but I am not attempting adjudication on the Burgenland dispute, or on the extent and trend of French and Russian intrigue in those vexed realms between the North Sea, the Baltic, and thejllack Sea. Something of Hungary’s tragic, troubled, but seldom inglorious past is not out of place, however, at the present moment. Like shadows, the names of the ancient heroes flit across the lurid nage of presentdav history, and it is hard to believe the spirit of these bygone fighters for !aith and freedom has died out of their sons. One linking phrase is found in the speech of all who claim to live under the Magvar flag. The Holy Crown, the Iron Crown, the Blessed Grown of tot. Stephen—again and again the memory of this national treasure is invoked by Hungarian patriots. For a thousand years and more Hungarian Icings have been crowned with this sacred diadem, and exLmocror Karl dreams yet of replacing this symbol of Danubian rule upon his head.

Tn a recent paper I recalled the pioneer mission work of St. Stephen, the fellowevangelist of St. Olaf of Norway, who completed the task that the first royal Olaf left when he died before his time in the sea-fight of Svoider—the Olaf of Longfellow's “Saga.” So did the saint and nation-builder Stephen finish the cautious beginnings of his father, Geza—that half-and-half convert who never turned his back wholly on the Magyar war god. Had ur. The Pope. Silvester 11. received Hungary into the fold with lively satisfaction. Hungary had already proved herself among the nations of Europe, and her rapid rise under Christian culture was alike gratifying to her missionary King and to the Pontiff. In 997 the young Prince had been crowned as his fathers wore before him; in 1000 he was crowned anew as the “Apostolic King” of Arp ad’s line—crowned with that sternly simple iron diadem which was the Pope’s gift to the roval neophyte. Forty years of storm and shine, struggle and triumph, were added to the span of Stephen—the first saint and rovnl hero under the blessing of the Holy Crown. The line of Arpad ended in 1301. and the Magyar people were constrained to choose among a crowd of foreign aspirants. Their choice fell finally on an Angevin : Charles, who brought to his troubled kingdom the strong hand of Anion, which had already brought the unifying influence of law to England with the first Phmtn-genet ruler, Henry 11. The son of Charles, Louis the Great, may fairly be called a hero of the Holy Crown. The sacred emblem had been" carried off to Transylvania, that rich province settled originally by Saxons, who became in time local subjects to the Magyars, and gave shelter to those flying WallaHiians, fugitives from the Turk, who bequemther the friction of irredontism, which works in Rumania to this day in her claim to the Transylvania principality, which was now with Hungary and now away from her, hut in the main was a part of the Magyar polity, as it is asserted the present-day Transylvanians still desire to lie. Louis the Great was destined to make

Hungary the greatest Continental Power of the fourteenth century. Wallachia. Moldavia, Serbia, and Bulgaria bowed to him as their overlord. The avenging of a brother’s murder placed Naples in his hands with the approval of chivalry. I!is claim to Dalmatia constrained him to impose both war and a peace of his own making on the princely merchantmen of Venice. By helping "the Polish King against the savage invasions of Tartars and Lithuanians lie jiaved the way for n. peaceful election to the throne of'Poland when it fell vacant in 1370. Wisely, he refused to accept another crown, the German crown of the Holy Roman Empire,