DANUBIAN WARNING

Waikato Times, Volume 112, Issue 18804, 28 November 1932, Page 6

DANUBIAN WARNING

Tlie economic crisis which is common in |he whole of Central and Eastern Europe has been especially felt in Hungary. Hungary is a predominantly agrarian country with an enormous foreign debt, contracted at high rates of interest when agricultural prices were far higher than today. Her exports are enormously reduced by tariff wars with her best customers, Austria and Czechoslovakia; she has bee,n forced, like several of her neighbours, into restrictions on her currency and default upon her foreign obligations. Vet Count Karolyi’s Cabinet, which took ollice a little over a year ago lo solve the country’s desperate problems, failed to find remedies for economic ills which lay outside ils power of control, its huge majority in Parliament was no real indication of the feeling in a land where secret ballot is unknown outside the towns. A series of defeats at by-elections have shown Hie depth of discontenl among bankrupt peasants and landless labourers. Hence Count Karolyi’s resignation 'and the formation of a Ministry under General Gombos. This is no mere reshuffle of the forces of the leading Government Party, though almost all the new Ministers belong to it. Gombos, though Minister of Defence in the last Government, depends upon the personal support of the Regent, Admiral Worthy, rather than on the backing of the party of Count Bethlcn. Ills opposition to Hie llabsburgs and his declared desire to carry through some measure of agrarian reform make him extremely suspect to the great legitimist magnates. That he should be accepted by the most reactionary governing clique in Central Europe is proof, if proof were needed, that the Hungarian social system is in danger. If the great creditor nations of the West delay their remedies much longer they may discover that the only choice in Central Europe lies between revolution and semi-Fascist Governments of the Gombos type.