Chapter III: Representation and Justice

In order that the full scope of Magyarisation may be understood, a short summary of the principal Magyarising provisions of the laws of Hungary is given. This summary is by no means complete, but it is sufficient to give some idea of the legal aspect of the industry.

Paragraph 7 of the law of 1792 states that the Magyar language will form a branch of study regularly taught in the schools, and that every Hungarian subject must learn Magyar, as in the future only those knowing this language will be employed in the public services.

Paragraph 14 of the law of 1805 introduces Magyar as the official language of the Royal Hungarian Chancery, and ordains that the political authorities are to make use of it in their dealings with the municipalities. Only the departmental (local) bodies are left to decide for themselves whether they wish to use it in their own affairs and before the courts and Government authorities.

Paragraph 8 of the law of 1830 decides that the Prefectures are to use Magyar. The provision that candidates for the public services must know Magyar is repeated.

Paragraph 3 of the law of 1836 proclaims the Magyar wording and version of the laws as authoritative. This language becomes the official one in the Royal tribunals, and ecclesiastical authorities are instructed to keep the parish registers in Magyar.

Paragraph 6 of the law of 1840 declares Magyar to be the official language to be used in representations made by the Houses of Parliament to the Crown, in the law courts, in the business of the prefectures and in parish registers throughout the country. All priests must know Magyar. A knowledge of Magyar must extend to military matters.

Paragraph 2 of the law of 1844 prescribes that all decrees and regulations of the Royal Chancery and all legislation are to be drawn up in Magyar, and that all parliamentary debates are to be carried on in Magyar, except in the case of speeches by Croatian deputies ignorant of the language. This latter concession, however, is to hold good only for a period of six years.

Paragraph 5 of the law of 1848 proclaims Magyar as the sole diplomatic and legislative language in Hungary. By virtue of this proclamation, nobody who is ignorant of Magyar can become a deputy. Paragraph 16 of the same law declares that Magyar is the official language for all parts of the country.

Paragraph 42 of the law of 1870 relating to the establishment of municipalities decides that one-half of the departmental (county) assemblies is to consist of those who, being entitled to a personal vote, pay the most taxes. In order that the non-Magyars, however they may be qualified, should be effectively barred from office, it is stipulated that for the committee of candidature, consisting of six members, the assembly itself should nominate three members and the prefect the other three; further, that on this committee the president, who shall be the prefect himself, shall have the casting vote in case the voting should be equal. It is thus assured that the committee cannot nominate any individual as a candidate against the will of the prefect.

Paragraph 18 of the law of 1886 grants the president of a local area, in his capacity as presiding officer at municipal elections, the right of submitting as candidate for mayor, district attorney and medical officer “anyone whom he regards as worthy” of these offices. As only one candidate may be submitted for any vacancy, the submission of a candidate is equivalent to his election.

The law of 1874 relating to the changes introduced into the regulations for parliamentary elections entrusts the committee drawing up the lists of voters with the task of fixing the rating limit which is to be the qualification of the vote.

Paragraph 18 of the law of 1879 relating to elementary schools declares Magyar to be a compulsory subject throughout the elementary schools of Hungary.

The law of 1898 decrees the Magyarisation of all place names in Hungary.

We may deal with the various methods of Magyarisation suggested by the above summary in turn, considering first the means employed by the Magyars to prevent adequate representation of the non-Magyar races in the county assemblies and the national parliament.

The basis of the local government of the country has always been the county system. Under this system, which was introduced by St. Stephen and endures in all essentials to the present day, the county, municipal and communal assemblies were entrusted with a very large share in the administration. In 1886 the laws governing the election and duties were revised. The membership of the county assemblies varied according to the population of the county from 120 to 600, only half of whom were elected. Half of the seats on the assembly were awarded automatically to those members of the community who paid most taxes, in other words to the great landowners, whose support for the Magyar nation and ideal could be taken for granted. In the nature of things they were Magyars themselves, and opposed to any measures which might alleviate the lot of the peasant class or the nationalities. Having thus secured the adequate representation of the oligarchical party, the law proceeded to announce a so-called democratic franchise for the election of the remainder of the members. But this franchise was no more than the absurd and complicated parliamentary franchise of Hungary.

But in order to assure that the privileged class should in all cases have a clear majority, it was ordained that the county officials should be ex-officio members of the assembly. These officials were indeed elected by the assembly itself, if the word election can be applied to their appointment. The candidates for these posts are nominated by the president of the assembly, who was, of course, invariably a faithful Magyar, and the members of the assembly, as the elective body, were only permitted to record votes in favour of the candidates. Further, no opposition candidates might be nominated, so that nomination of a candidate was equivalent to his election. The result was that the privileged members with the support of the officials were always assured of a majority in the assembly. Few better examples of the undemocratic nature of the Magyar administration could be supplied.

The same principles were applied in the case of municipal and communal assemblies. The Magyar working and peasant classes as well as the members of the nationalities were thus denied all participation in the government of the country, and it was easy to pass any oppressive measures which might be indicated from the Magyar circles of the central Government. The system had the further advantage from the Magyar point of view that it ensured that all local officials should be of Magyar birth and proclivities, or else Magyarised members of the racial minorities. So effective was it in this direction that one of the most serious problems of the new States after the War was the disposal of the Magyar officials with which their new territories were littered.

The parliamentary franchise has already been touched upon. According to the law of 1874, the qualification for the vote was as follows:--

(_a_) Property qualification. 1. In free towns, owners of houses which contain three dwellings paying house tax, and owners of land paying taxes on a direct income of 32 crowns. 2. In country districts, owners of a quarter urbarial session (about 14 acres) or its equivalent. Owing to special provisions of the law, this qualification varies in different counties. 3. Owners of houses whose house tax was imposed on a basis of 210 crowns of clear income.

(_b_) Taxation qualification. 1. Merchants, manufacturers or town artisans, paying taxes on income of at least 210 crowns. 2. In boroughs, those who pay taxes for at least one apprentice. 3. Those paying State taxes on a direct income of at least 210 crowns. 4. Those paying income tax on 210 crowns income in Class I, on 1,400 crowns in Class II, or in the case of officials on 1,000 crowns in Class II.

(_c_) Professional and official qualification. All members of the Hungarian Academy, academy artists, professors, doctors, veterinary surgeons, engineers, chemists, foresters, public and communal notaries, advocates, clergy, schoolmasters.

(_d_) Ancestral qualification. All those possessing the franchise previous to 1848. (In 1905, 32,712 persons still voted by right of ancient privileges.)

Remarkable as this franchise was, it contains even more remarkable exceptions. For instance, not only are servants in the widest sense of the word excepted, but also all apprentices and agricultural labourers. “The proletariat has no share in political life, and if it has not been found possible to exclude the non-Magyar races entirely from the franchise, numerous devices have been successfully employed for the past forty years to keep them from the polls or to prevent them from electing men of their own nationality.... The constituencies have been cut up in the most arbitrary fashion, in defiance of geography, population and nationality, but with the one great object of favouring the Magyar element.”[15]

In consequence of the agreement between the Hapsburgs and the Magyars, the latter, although forming a minority upon the territory which they occupied, contrived to become the sole possessors of State authority. In practice the non-Magyar nationalities were excluded from any appreciable share in Hungarian legislation. In Hungary the nobility alone had the power of decision, and from the beginning of the “constitutional” era they made it impossible, with the help of armed power, to elect representatives of the non-Magyar peoples to parliament. How the Slovaks were represented in the Hungarian parliament can be judged by the following figures: In the 58 electoral areas of Hungary, inhabited almost entirely or for the greater part by Slovaks, there were elected:--

Date. Magyar Deputies. Slovak Deputies.
1865 58 0
1869 58 0
1872 56 2
1875 58 0
1878 58 0
1881 58 0

From the latter year onwards the Slovak political parties, seeing that their efforts were useless against the electoral machinations of the Magyars, adopted an attitude of passivity, which they maintained until 1901, making till then no attempt to secure the election of candidates. From then the numbers elected were as follows:--

Date. Magyar Deputies. Slovak Deputies.
1901 54 4

Of these four deputies, two were sentenced to one year’s imprisonment each for having advocated an unauthorised policy in his election speeches.

Date. Magyar Deputies. Slovak Deputies.
1905 56 2
1907 51 7

Of these seven deputies, one was forced to resign his seat by the ecclesiastical authorities, another was deprived of his seat for having advocated an unauthorised policy in his election addresses, and two others were sentenced to a year’s imprisonment each for the same offence.

Date. Magyar Deputies. Slovak Deputies.
1910 56 2

During the elections which took place after the Slovak parties had decided to resume their activities, the list of the candidates and voters sentenced for “crimes” in connection with these elections is most instructive. In 1904 a candidate of the name of Veselovsky was sent to prison for a year and fined 1,000 crowns for alleged incitement to revolt in his election addresses. One of his supporters was sent to prison for five days for shouting “Long live our candidate Veselovsky!” In the previous year a candidate was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment and a fine of 1,000 crowns for “incitement to revolt,” another to five months and 500 crowns for the same offence. The brother of the latter, a doctor, was imprisoned for two months and fined 200 crowns _for the crime of “political activity at election meetings by recommending his brother to the voters!”_ Another supporter, a Protestant clergyman, was sentenced at the same time to three months and 300 crowns, also for “_political activity at election meetings_.”

“Violence or excesses during elections” is another favourite crime with which non-Magyar voters were charged. In 1905, 31 farmers were awarded sentences aggregating a year and ten months for this offence. In the next year the figure rose to 56 and the aggregate sentences to five and a half years. In 1907 the figures were about the same.

The utmost endeavours were made by the authorities to prevent the non-Magyar electors recording their votes. The constituencies and polling stations were so arranged that the Magyar communities were assured of easy access to the poll, while the non-Magyar communities had to travel great distances. It was no uncommon trick for the local authorities to declare roads and bridges unsafe for traffic on the day of the election, or for all the horses in non-Magyar districts to be placed under veterinary supervision and forbidden to move outside the commune. As soon as the elections were safely over, these restrictions were removed. There was no time fixed for the closing of the poll; this was left to the discretion of the returning officer, who was always an official of safe Magyar views. This was most convenient, for if the Magyars voted early, the poll could be closed before the non-Magyars had a chance of arriving, whilst if any important section of the Magyars were delayed, the poll could be held open until they had arrived. In order to silence complaints, the Magyar newspapers published alarming stories of intimidation by groups of non-Magyar voters, which had rendered it necessary for the returning officer to protect the Magyars. This in spite of the fact that an election was the signal for what was practically a mobilisation of the Austro-Hungarian Army, which was called in to maintain order, and naturally maintained it in the direction indicated by the authorities. In the elections of 1910, according to an official report _only_ 194 battalions of infantry and 114 squadrons of cavalry were employed for this purpose!

The famous “Memorandum” which the Rumanian party in Transylvania attempted to present to the Emperor in 1892, and for which it was persecuted in typically Magyar fashion, contained a reference to the methods by which elections were conducted. It asserted that a non-Magyar citizen could only take part in an election at the peril of his personal safety, and that his attempts to record his vote practically resulted in a civil war against the nationalities. The troops and gendarmerie used every means of force and injustice to keep the non-Magyar electors from the polls, and instances of their brutality during the elections were so frequent as almost to pass without remark.

It was the endeavour of the officials in charge of the registers to manipulate them in such a way that even when the opposition voter reached the polling booth he more often than not discovered that he was disqualified. The voting lists were drawn up exclusively in Magyar, which made it easy to insert false particulars without the knowledge of voters of subject nationalities. For instance, the voter’s age, address or calling might be incorrectly entered, so that when he appeared he did not answer to the description entered on the list. Further, there was no secret ballot; voters were compelled to declare aloud before the returning officer, and incidentally before various other officials seated with him in the booth, the name of the candidate for whom they wished to vote. If they voted thus for the opposition candidate they became at once marked men, upon whom the eyes of the local officials were directed, and the latter took the first opportunity of trumping up against them some charge which involved a fine or imprisonment. It thus required considerable courage for a Slovak or Rumanian voter to vote for a non-Magyar candidate, or even for a Magyar peasant to vote against the wishes discreetly conveyed to him by the representatives of the Government party.

The voter could not even be sure that the returning officer would record his vote correctly. A nominee of each candidate was present in the polling booth, but the returning officer had power to eject any of these representatives on the most trivial excuse. In such cases, while a substitute was being procured the returning officer had ample leisure to transfer votes from the candidate he represented to the one officially favoured. Again, it is the Magyar custom to describe an individual by his surname followed by his Christian name. Should a voter declare his intention to vote for John Smith, to anglicise the position, he was promptly told there was no such candidate, and sent away before he had time to correct his mistake and describe the candidate as Smith, John.

Complaint was worse than useless, as it merely branded the originator of the complaint as disaffected and opposed to the Magyar nation. The officials whose duty it was to deal with the complaint were those in whose hands the control of the election lay. The following letter, written by a departmental returning officer to his subordinate at Ipolysag, a district of mixed Magyars and Slovaks, during the elections of 1881, explains the official attitude.

“I am sending you the 400 florins asked for; I know that you need them. But in order that I may be able to keep my accounts in order, I ask you to make a detailed note of it, and always to sign receipts. In matters of this sort I like to be methodical, for I have seen and I still see what harm has been done by the contrary procedure. _Keep a careful list of the opposing side, and admit only 10 out of every 100 of them to the urns. That is the chief thing. Those who do not like it can complain. But no concessions!_”

The letter was signed by the prefect himself, and his reference to complaints is interesting, seeing that he himself administered the appeal tribunal which heard such complaints.

Björnson published an article dealing with the electoral conditions in Hungary in the _Courrier Européen_ of February 25, 1908, part of which is well worthy of translation here.

“I belong to a free and independent nation, and in Norway no more than in any other secondary nation is electoral fraud known. To falsify the votes of the people would be in our eyes as grave a crime as to poison the water they drank. Falsify votes! What sort of chambers could be thus elected? And what laws would these chambers pass? And what sort of morality would those who carried out these laws possess? Yet that which we look upon in our political life as the worst of calamities is the constant practice of the Hungarian aristocracy.

“It is impossible for me to explain in a few words the electoral system of Hungary. It is involved in inextricable confusion. But I can safely affirm that the electoral law of Hungary of 1848, partially recast in 1874, is an unjust act committed for an unjust end. If this be thought too severe, let us no longer consider the law, but the electoral organisations which result from it. According to these arrangements, 5,161 electors in Hungarian Rumania are distributed in twelve districts, to elect twelve--12--Magyar representatives, but 5,275 electors are concentrated in a single district to elect a single--1--Rumanian representative!

“As though this unjust organisation did not sufficiently assure the end aimed at, the law contains a provision by which a candidate can be proposed by ten electors and elected by acclamation before the mass of the electors have had time to arrive. This is how things happen. The poll is set up in a place to which access is as convenient as possible for the Magyars, and as inconvenient as possible for the Rumanians. Voting begins at 9 o’clock, and within the space of half an hour there is time to propose a candidate and to elect him by acclamation. The law contains other similar provisions which are nothing but traps. I shall not mention them, I shall merely state that Magyars alone are appointed to supervise the elections!

“And the elections themselves! I think of the districts where the Magyar aristocracy is afraid of not securing a majority. I have been sent a description of the elections in a country where the great majority of the electors were German. But for all that the deputy elected was a Magyar. People were so far from daring to go and vote that they barricaded their doors.”

The representation of non-Magyar nationalities in Hungary before the War has been shown to have been farcical. The Magyar system was completely oligarchical and utterly opposed to any idea of democracy. Its tendency was to treat the non-Magyar as a foreigner, and as far as possible to deny him any facility for the expression of his rights. It would be possible to quote instance after instance of corruption in elections and of the disqualification and imprisonment of deputies once they were elected, but space will not permit of it. The way in which the electoral system was made to serve the interests of Magyarisation has been described first, for representation is the first principle of a democratic nation. It will now be necessary to investigate the prostitution of justice for the same ends.

Under sections 7 and 8 of the Law of Nationalities, every Hungarian subject is permitted to employ his mother-tongue before his local courts, and has a choice of languages in those courts where his own is not officially employed. But in the latter case the judge is compelled to take the necessary measures, including the use of an interpreter if necessary, to ensure that the parties concerned can follow the proceedings, particularly the verdict. But these provisions were flatly disregarded. Summonses were issued, trials conducted, and verdicts issued in Magyar, even in districts where hardly any of the general population, and certainly none of the litigants, understood that language. This was merely another means of compulsion used towards the racial minorities to employ Magyar as their natural language. A Slovak or a Rumanian who remained ignorant of Magyar found himself to all intents and purposes an outlaw; he was at the mercy of anyone who chose to proceed against him on the flimsiest excuse. He could understand neither the basis of the charge nor the case against him, nor would the court listen to his defence. Finally, when the case had gone against him by default, he was ignorant of the sentence inflicted upon him. The judge entirely disregarded his right to an interpreter; if he wished for such a luxury, he was compelled to pay the man’s fees himself, which in a trial of any length were entirely beyond the means of a man of the peasant or labouring class.

Nor was the language question the only slur upon Hungarian so-called justice. The judges themselves were the constant recipients of communications from the central Government on the subject of the conduct of the cases before them. They were very carefully selected from that class of the community which could be trusted to employ its influence in favour of the Magyar ruling class and against the lower classes and the nationalities. They were bidden to employ every resource of justice to suppress “class war,” which in Hungary meant any protest by the nationalities or the Magyar peasant or labouring classes against the intolerant rule of the landed classes. In the eyes of the Magyar rulers justice was merely a convenient handmaiden to the sacred principles of oligarchy, and the purveyors of this justice were expected to act in accordance with this idea. In the rare cases where judges were non-Magyar, care was taken to appoint them to courts distant from the districts inhabited by their fellow nationals. In 1910, of 2,633 judges and official lawyers in Hungary, 2,601 were Magyar, 31 were German, and 1 was Slovak. The latter was kept in Budapest, well under the eye of the Minister of Justice. This practice ensured that the judge would be unable to conduct a case in the language of the racial minorities, even had he wished to do so. There was yet another means by which judicial procedure could be used as an instrument against those who had become unpopular with the authorities, either from their democratic tendencies or because they sympathised with the aspirations of the nationalities. They had only to be accused of inciting to class war or of conduct to the prejudice of the Magyar nation and arrested. There was no difficulty in delaying the trial for a year or more; it was rare in Hungary for a trial to follow an offence with less delay. Then, even if by some carelessness the accused was eventually acquitted, he or she had served quite a useful term of imprisonment, which would act as a salutary warning against the holding of similar views in the future.

It can now be realised how admirably the Magyars had contrived the judicial procedure of Hungary to suit their own ends. The length to which political persecution was carried was so great that any complete description of it would require a book to itself. Echoes of the more sensational political trials even reached the outside world, as, for instance, the trial of Father Hlinka, the Agram trials and the “Memorandum” trial, directed respectively against the Slovak, the Croat and the Rumanian races of Hungary. The most impartial method of obtaining some idea of political persecution in Hungary is to take the leading cases for a single year. This summary was published in a slightly different form by Björnson in _März_ of December 1907.

The year in question extends from the end of August 1906 to the end of August 1907. It must be realised that at that time there was no suggestion of sedition on the part of the non-Magyar nationalities. It has been urged that the Magyars have been engaged in a justifiable attempt to put down smouldering rebellion against the State, that they were taking steps similar to those which must be taken by every nation faced with rebellion. This is utterly untrue. It has even been represented that the non-Magyar nationalities were at this period in the same state of revolution against the State as were the Irish Sinn Feiners against the British power in 1920. Nothing could be further from the truth. It would be far more correct to describe the nationalities as being as peaceful as the Welsh. The political persecution carried out by the Magyars was just as unjustifiable as a similar persecution would have been if carried out by the English against the Welsh, just because they were Welsh.

On August 27, 1906, a master carpenter was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment and a fine of 50 crowns for incitement to disturbance. He had criticised the new amendments to the Education Act, and had declared that it was unreasonable to martyrise the children of non-Magyar parents by forcing them to learn Magyar. On September 24th the Supreme Court of Budapest confirmed the sentence of the editor of a Slovak paper to a month’s imprisonment and a fine of 200 crowns. On October 20th his successor was sentenced to a fine of 500 crowns for defamation of character, which was incurred by his publication of a letter blaming the violence of a Magyar official.

On September 16th two citizens were sentenced to three months’ imprisonment and fines amounting to 1,100 crowns for having ostentatiously left church when a schoolmaster, who had been appointed against the wishes of the parish, began to play the organ.

On November 16th the Slovak deputy and priest, Ferdis Juriga, whose election had been particularly obnoxious to the authorities, was condemned to two years’ imprisonment and a fine of 1,200 crowns for the crime of incitement against the Magyar nationality. He had published two newspaper articles in which he had attacked the Jingoism of the Magyars and had defended himself against charges of unpatriotism. The offence was, of course, merely an excuse; he was less of a menace to the policy of Magyarisation in prison than in parliament.

On December 6th the famous Hlinka sentences were pronounced. As the result of his advocacy of the Slovak cause, Father Hlinka had become a popular figure, and on the occasion of his arrival in the village of Rozsahegy a crowd assembled to meet him. It was dispersed by gendarmes without disorder, but a week later Father Hlinka and a number of other Slovaks were arrested and left for five months in prison without trial. The accused were charged with instigation against the Magyar nationality. Ninety-seven witnesses were summoned for the prosecution and close upon forty for the defence, but of the latter all save four were disallowed by the court. Father Hlinka was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and a fine of 1,500 crowns. One of the other defendants was sentenced to a year and 900 crowns; one to four months and 300 crowns; three to a total of sixteen months and 800 crowns, and the remaining six to three months each and a total of 5,500 crowns.

On January 31, 1907, a man was sentenced to five days’ detention and a fine of 60 crowns for threatening to disturb the peace during an election.

On February 11th the manager of a Slovak paper was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment and a fine of 80 crowns for the crimes of incitement against the Magyar nation and of approval of acts contrary to law. His offence was the publication of an article inviting the prayers of the populace for Juriga, Hlinka and other condemned Slovaks. On the 19th of the same month a contributor to the same paper was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment and a fine of 400 crowns in connection with the same offence. On February 28th and March 27th two other Slovak editors who had ventured to criticise the actions of the Magyars were sentenced, one to two months and 400 crowns, the other to a year and 1,200 crowns.

On April 12th a man was sentenced to fourteen days and 50 crowns for words used in the course of his election speeches.

On April 8th six Slovaks were fined 50 crowns each for having organised a collection to pay the fine of deputy Juriga. On the 19th a man was sentenced to three months and 100 crowns for inciting the people against the Magyars in an article contributed to a Slovak paper.

On April 24th four citizens were sentenced to 34 days’ imprisonment for daring to offer opposition to Magyars who were trying to wreck Slovak political meetings.

On May 1st Hlinka was awarded an additional sentence of one month’s imprisonment and a fine of 500 crowns for criticism of the actions of a Magyar official.

On May 2nd a man and twenty-three women of Zohor were sentenced to imprisonment totalling three years and ten months. They had requested that a priest of the name of Zak should be appointed to the parish. The ecclesiastical authorities had overridden the expressed desire and the right of the parishioners and appointed a well-known advocate of Magyarisation, Imrich Hojsik. No sooner had he been appointed than the women of Zohor drove him out of the commune.

On June 17th four men of Lab were sentenced to three months’ imprisonment each for having shown in their windows, on the occasion of a religious fête, portraits of Juriga.

On June 9th and 10th the local school examinations took place at a Slovak village. The school children decorated the school with flags of the Slav colours in honour of the event. This was interpreted by the Magyar authorities as an attack against the independence of the Hungarian State, and the three masters in charge of the school were sentenced to fifteen days’ imprisonment and a fine of 200 crowns each.

During the same month a printer was sentenced to detention for fourteen days for an article discovered in a newspaper which was printed by him but which circulated entirely beyond Hungarian territory.

On July 15th a man was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment and a fine of 50 crowns for having criticised in public the actions of a Magyarising priest who had denounced certain Slovak journalists from the pulpit.

On July 21st three Czechs were arrested in the village of Lucky, having been denounced by the public notary for the crimes of speaking to the women and children of the place and making inquiries as to the methods of Magyarisation employed in the schools. One of them was detained in custody for four weeks, and was only released on the intervention of the Austrian Minister of Justice.

This extraordinary list will serve to show the measures taken by the Magyar authorities against the men of the non-Magyar nationalities in the name of justice.

But it must be borne in mind that the Magyar system of representation bore hardly on the Magyar lower classes as well as upon the non-Magyar nationalities. Although the lower class Magyar was not submitted to the persecution which was the lot of his non-Magyar neighbours, he was almost equally disenfranchised. Oscar Jaszi, an enlightened and liberal Magyar, in a book written in 1912, said: “The pressure of agrarian feudalism weighs as completely upon the other nationalities as upon the Magyars themselves, and the pressure consists in _an Asiatic administration, unjust taxation, bad schools and economic usury of every description_. But the oppression of the nationalities is much more serious than that of the Magyars. The Magyar Junker, maddened by nationalist hatred, sees in the non-Magyar peasant even less of a man than in the Magyar peasant.”

The spirit of the Magyar oligarchy has not changed; as will be shown later, it is as opposed to the principle of democracy as it has ever been. The Hungarian Republic of to-day hides the germ of reaction within the husk of hypocritical pretence. To permit any extension of its boundaries would be to surrender anew to despotism nations which after years of suffering have at length escaped from its toils. Sympathy with the tortuous policy of Hungary means sympathy with the forces of reaction and of a feudalism which has long been extinct in all enlightened countries. The Magyar trades upon the revulsion of feeling which all generous nations experience towards a beaten enemy, in order to secure the consent of the world to his schemes for imperilling the existence of the non-Magyar nationalities.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] _Racial Problems in Hungary._