Chapter VI: Hungary and Her Neighbours

The issue of the War had proved beyond dispute that the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy could no longer exist in the form in which it had existed previously. Apart altogether from the various _coups d’état_ which had already shattered it beyond repair, the very nature of the victory which had been achieved made a redistribution of the nationalities which had composed it a sacred duty. In the eyes of the majority of the human race the War had been a struggle between the power of Might, as represented by Germanism and Magyarism, and the power of Right, as represented by the Allied and Associated nations, to use the convenient formula of the Treaties. In the past, Might had stood for the acquisition of territory, irrespective of the wishes of the inhabitants, in order to strengthen the aggressive power of the great nations. In the future, Right was to proclaim the doctrine that the allocation of territory must be governed by the will of those who lived within its borders.

This was the true meaning of self-determination. The small nationalities, bound against their will to an alien race and forming a factor of its aggrandisement, were now to be given the opportunity of working out their own salvation. Europe, so long subjected to the swords of the dominant Powers, was again to be resolved into the nationalities, hidden for so many years on the maps under the patches of colour which marked the empires of their masters, but none the less sentient and race-conscious. The nationalities, freed from their chains, could choose their own form of government, and in the future were to stand or fall according to the measure of their capacity for self-government, displayed in the manner in which they made use of their freedom. It is important to remember that the rise of the new nations was a natural result of the War, and not an artificial structure of the Treaties. “Democracy had triumphed over autocracy, and nationality over oligarchy. The absolute rule of the Emperors of Germany and Austria-Hungary, of the Sultan of Turkey, of the Tsar of Bulgaria, had been destroyed; the innumerable minor potentates of Germany had disappeared....

“The races of the Hapsburg Monarchy, previously exploited by an Austro-Hungarian oligarchy, were freed. Poles were liberated from subjugation to Austria, Russia and Germany, and had already constituted themselves into an independent State. When the Paris Congress assembled, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugo-Slavia had already existed as free States for three months. This is important to remember, as it is often loosely said that the Treaty of Versailles ‘created’ these States. The Treaty ratified their independence, of which they could certainly have only been deprived by force.”[30]

The true reason for the establishment of the new States must be fully realised. They were the manifestations of national will, and were not erected by the victorious side as monuments of their complete defeat of the Central Empires. Indeed, it is not too much to say that in some cases the existence of the new States proved an embarrassment to the Allied diplomatists. Had their boundaries been determined by the tribunal of the victors alone, had they been composed of such portions of the Central Empires as the decision of this tribunal deemed the just spoils of war, there might have been some justification for the complaints of the Magyars and their sympathisers that Hungary had been unjustly dealt with. But of this there was no pretence. The existence of the new States was a _fait accompli_, it only remained for the Powers to see that they were indeed formed in genuine regard for the wishes of the nationalities. It was not a question of rewarding friends or punishing enemies. The world had learnt that the surest way of sowing the seeds of future war was to tear from the vanquished any part of its territory inhabited by a people of its own race. The Allies were scrupulously anxious to avoid any opportunity of creating in any nation a just hunger for territory brutally torn from it. Racial preference was to be the deciding factor, not the wish to weaken an enemy lest at some future time she might again be dangerous. Indeed, in more than one case enemy nations were awarded districts which had previously been beyond their frontiers. The transfer of the Burgenland from Hungary to Austria is a case in point. In this case, as in all others, the matter was decided by the wishes of the population.

But--fortunately or unfortunately--geographical exigencies have a modifying influence upon the theory of self-determination. Theory demands that self-determination should extend downwards to the individual; practice cannot pursue the process of integration beyond comparatively large communities. This difficulty has been brought home to the British nation in the course of the settlement which it has entered into with Ireland. “How far was the principle of self-determination to extend? If Ireland had a right to secede from her union with Great Britain, surely Ulster had a right to secede from the rest of Ireland?... During the latter months of the year, various local bodies in the Six Counties proclaimed their allegiance to Sinn Fein ... but in their turn certain parishes in the dissentient areas protested against such a course, and, to go a step further, individual Sinn Feiners within these parishes evinced a disposition to determine themselves in opposition to their neighbours.”[31]

It was, of course, the same story with the boundaries of the new nations. Geographical considerations and the necessity for short and easily defined frontiers made it impossible to exercise the principle of self-determination to the theoretical limit. Nations had to be considered as Nature had made them; their boundaries already existed and it was impossible to alter them. The result was that the problem of minorities still prevailed, though in a very modified form. In no case could the new nations or the old be so delimited that their boundaries included no individual of an alien race. The best that could be done was to reduce the necessary minorities as much as possible, and to secure the insertion of safeguards in the Constitutions of the reformed nations which should guarantee the minorities in those nations from oppression.

It is difficult to see how the Magyar propagandists can maintain, in the face of these very obvious facts, the contention that injustice was done them by the Treaty. The whole history of Magyar rule is one of ill-treatment of what they themselves stigmatised as “subject races” and the release of these races from their yoke is only an act of elementary justice. This point was ably expressed in a reply to one of Lord Newton’s articles on Hungary: “_The fundamental error made by Lord Newton is due to his assumption that the Treaty of Trianon constitutes a punishment to the Magyars for their conduct during the War. Far from it. The Treaty of Trianon is a mere act of elementary justice, rendering it impossible in the future for a number of races to be ruled over by a nation whose past record most clearly demonstrates that it is utterly devoid of the most rudimentary qualifications for such a task._”[32] Injustice would have been committed had the victors, for example, taken the Alföld, or some other Magyar district, from Hungary as the spoils of victory and awarded it to the Czechs, Serbs or Rumanians as the price of their support during the War. It is important to distinguish the two motives. Slovakia, for example, was taken from Hungary not as a punishment but because her previous misrule had determined the Slovak nation to cast off her chains. Nothing but a coercion as brutal as her own would have brought Slovakia back into the Hungarian hegemony. The Magyars of Hungary may regret the loss of territory which was once hers, but that regret will not be reciprocated in Slovakia. Had the Alföld been taken from Hungary, on the other hand, both the Magyars of Hungary and of the disunited Alföld would have felt the same passion for reunion and a longing to right the injustice done to them. And it is these mutual passions and longings which breed future wars.

So much for the establishment of the new nations. But in order to justify the continuation of their existence it is necessary for them to give proof of their capability of ruling the races under their sway in the true principles of freedom and democracy. Four years have now passed since their establishment, and, in the light of all evidence, it is fair to say that they have as far as possible in so short a time supplied this proof. The autocracy and oligarchy of the old order have given place to the democracy of the new; the old methods of tyranny have yielded to the modern methods of popular suffrage and government. The freed nations, allowing for certain temporary difficulties and local mismanagement caused by the disregard of official policy by certain inexperienced officials, have introduced for themselves and for the minorities within their borders a new era of liberty which contrasts strikingly with the coercion under which they suffered. But there is an exception to this happier state of things in Central Europe, an ugly shadow upon the fair picture. The Magyars, “the most truculent people in Europe,” have not seen fit to alter by a hair’s breadth their traditional domineering policy. Crushing her racial minorities, now greatly reduced, but still a factor in world politics, beneath her feet, Hungary looks with angry and covetous eyes towards the territories which formed part of the “thousand-year-old Unitary Hungarian State.” Her people cannot realise that the age in which territory was held by the sword has disappeared, and that its place has been taken by an age in which men strive to build States in accordance with the wishes of their inhabitants as a whole and not of their ruling classes alone.

In the present chapter and the two which follow it, I shall endeavour to show how the democratic and enlightened state of the nations delivered from the Magyar yoke contrasts with the sullen and rebellious attitude of Hungary. Magyar propagandists, anxious to create a feeling for the revision of the Treaties in favour of Hungary, are prone to speak of the “Balkanisation” of Europe and of the “mushroom States” so created. The surest way of refuting them is to demonstrate that these so-called “mushroom States” are energetically developing themselves in accordance with modern ideals and enlightened practice, while Hungary remains wrapped in the oligarchic dreams of the past. The liberated nations look forward to the light; Hungary turns her eyes back to the days when Arpad and his wild horsemen scoured Central Europe for the captives of their spears.

Of the new States Czechoslovakia is necessarily the most interesting, both because it is a new name upon the map of Europe and because it includes the Slovaks, who were probably the most sorely oppressed of the former Hungarian nationalities. But although it is a new name on the map, it must not be forgotten that Czechoslovakia is mainly the recrudescence of one of the oldest nations of Europe, the Kingdom of Bohemia. The instincts of nationality and self-government, so long in abeyance, are none the less living forces among the Czechs and their kindred the Slovaks, and these instincts have given proof of their existence in the form in which the Republic has developed. “The revived State was faced by a formidable cultural problem in Slovakia and Ruthenia, as a result of the Magyars having repressed all national education and literature in those districts. Particularly since the Apponyi Education Acts of 1907, Slovak education had been virtually abolished, since the few hundred denominational schools which still survived were only nominally Slovak. To-day there are in Slovakia more than 2,600 new Slovak national elementary schools; over 80 grammar schools; over 30 secondary schools and also the beginnings of its own university. In Ruthenia, also, there are already about 700 Ruthene elementary schools, in addition to grammar and secondary schools and also infant schools. Moreover, the Republic is also turning its attention to the hygenic improvement of this much-neglected country; State hospitals are being established, and epidemic and endemic diseases are being stamped out. It may be said without exaggeration that the cultural policy here pursued by Czechoslovakia has few parallels in the new Europe....

“All the national minorities have their schools; the Germans, by reason of their numbers and their high development, have, in addition, their own university, two technical high schools and an agricultural academy (this latter established by the Republic).”[33]

“The Charter of the Constitution expressly declares the Czechoslovak Republic to be democratic, and the State to be unified, not federative. Only the territory of Ruthenia enjoys a special position with regard to public rights. In accordance with the Treaty of St. Germain the autonomy of this territory is guaranteed, and besides this, the members of the national assembly elected in Ruthenia are admitted to full rights of discussion and participation in all acts of the National Assembly.”[34]

It is instructive to compare the position of Ruthenia in Czechoslovakia with that formerly occupied by Croatia-Slavonia in Hungary. Theoretically the cases are to some extent parallel, but in practice they are as wide apart as the poles. The Czechoslovak Government has made it its business to develop, at considerable expense to itself and with no prospect of reaping a reward for many years, if at all, the territory of Ruthenia, one of the most backward in Europe. On the other hand, the Magyars, in their treatment of Croatia-Slavonia, had done their best to hinder the development of the country lest it should evince resistance to the Magyarising policy of its masters. “The Hungarian Government, through fear and hatred of the Slavs, deliberately prevents the progress of the country (Croatia). The service of the State railways is arranged of set purpose to confine Croatian trade to Hungary and hinder its development elsewhere. Even communication with Vienna is made difficult, for the Magyars are afraid of the Austrians coming to an understanding with the Slavs.”[35]

We have here an example of the entirely different outlook of the new States compared with the narrow self-seeking of the old. If it were necessary to make any defence for the policy of entrusting the smaller nationalities to the government of their kindred, the cases of Ruthenia and of Croatia-Slavonia might be cited as evidence of the wisdom of that policy. In the first we have an example of an active and sympathetic democracy striving to confer the benefits of modern civilisation upon a community backward through the oppression of its late masters; in the second we see the process by which oligarchy hoped to render a subject people subservient to its will. Those who are inclined to spare Hungary a measure of sympathy with her claims from a spirit of chivalry towards a beaten nation, should remember that she still practices the measures of coercion which made her rule hateful in the past, and that any extension of her influence would deprive a corresponding number of human beings of their new-found liberty.

Contrast, for example, the liberty enjoyed in Czechoslovakia with the servitude under which the subject nationalities of Hungary lived before their release. “A special section of the Constitutional Charter is devoted to the so-called ‘fundamental rights and liberties’ of the citizens, which are comprehensively enumerated. Privileges derived from sex, birth, or calling are not recognised; all residents of the Republic are guaranteed complete and absolute security of life and personal freedom of which they cannot be deprived except upon legal grounds. Private ownership is inviolable and may be restricted only by law. The Constitution guarantees complete freedom of the Press, of assembly, freedom of instruction and of conscience and religious creed, liberty of expressing opinion, the right of petition, postal inviolability and domestic liberty. Marriage, the family and motherhood are placed under the special protection of the law. All these guarantees and rights are protected by the Supreme Administrative Court, which sees to the legality of public administration.”[36]

Nor are these provisions mere words. In the new States the freedom so dearly won is a treasured possession. The examples of Austria and Hungary are present to the mass of the population as well as to their rulers. Neither have the least intention of imperilling the future existence of the new States by incurring the resentment of the racial minorities they contain. The Magyar minorities, as might be expected, are vociferous on the subject of their imaginary wrongs, which consist in the inability to display their alleged racial superiority. Despite the inevitable confusion resulting from the many changes of government, it is safe to say that no minority community in the new States has more than trivial grievances, which are due to the period of transition and will disappear as soon as the machinery works with greater freedom.

I may be allowed to quote at length from an eminent authority on the subject. “It cannot be emphasised too strongly that it is the duty of this country--of all who desire to see reconstruction and stable conditions in Europe, and a new life budding among the ruins of the old world--to give their active help and sympathy to the new States--Poland, Bohemia, Rumania and Jugoslavia--and to help them to adjust their mutual differences, to overcome the internal difficulties created by war, and to organise their shattered political and economic systems. That is a perfectly practical programme for the future; and I contend that it is the only programme for that part of Europe which has the slightest prospect of success.

“During the War those who advocated the break-up of Austria-Hungary as the key to political (as opposed to purely military) success, were condemned in certain quarters as being merely destructive in their aims, and as putting forward a programme which, owing to its criminally impossible character, was calculated to prolong the War. Some of us never hesitated to take up this challenge; indeed, we claimed that, so far from being impossible, this programme was the only sure road to victory, and that although Austria-Hungary was rotten to the core and uniformly unsuccessful in the field, she none the less provided Germany with the ‘cannon fodder’ (35 millions of unwilling victims!) and with the strategic frontiers without which she could not have ventured upon, still less maintained so long, her struggle against the whole world. Even in high politics you cannot put the cart before the horse; and it should have been obvious from the first that if the League of Nations is the goal (and it must be the goal of all sensible students of foreign affairs) you must have your nations there, before you can form them into a league. So long as Europe contained a whole series of anti-national States like Austria-Hungary or Turkey or the Old Russia, holding down by main force a score of nations struggling to be free, it was obviously impossible to devise a scheme of order on any basis save that of the Holy Alliance, whose members, starting from the highest moral professions, ended with what was virtually a mutual insurance against the spread of liberal and progressive ideas. It is only now that most of these nations have at last been set free, that it is possible to set to work in earnest upon the task of constituting a League of Nations.”[37]

These words were spoken in 1919, and the sequel has demonstrated the truth of the ideas which underlie them. Not only have the new States, in the close alliance known as the Little Entente, proved that their common policy is directed towards the insurance of the peace of Europe, but they have even proposed and secured the admission of Hungary to the League of Nations, in the face of the doubts expressed by the Powers. This action of the new States, each one of which has suffered and is still suffering from the effort made by Hungary to undermine their influence and their reputation in the eyes of the world, is a striking example of their determination not to allow resentment or the memory of old oppression to interfere with the peaceful settlement of Central Europe. The speech of Dr. Osusky, the delegate of Czechoslovakia, in recommending the admission of Hungary to the League, was a solemn warning to Hungary that her admission was only due to her expressed undertaking to abandon the policy she had hitherto adopted. He explained that Article 1 of the Covenant laid down that no State could be admitted to the League unless it showed a sincere intention to observe all its international obligations. Hungary, by the Treaty of Trianon, engaged to disarm and abolish compulsory military service. It was true the latter had been abolished by law, but he had observed in Hungarian newspapers in the present year notices calling up the classes of 1898 to 1902 for military training, and at Szeged, in February and March, violent demonstrations took place against the application of compulsory military service. The inter-Allied Commission of Control appointed by the Peace Treaty had obtained evidence of a number of facts which would seem to show a certain lack of sincerity on the part of the Hungarian Government in applying the law abolishing compulsory military service, and it had had to apply certain important reservations as to the way in which this law was applied with regard to the destruction of material of war. It was true that very little concealed material had been found, but in the opinion of the Military Commission this alone did not form sufficient proof that none existed, and certain obstacles in the way of control and investigation had been placed by the Hungarian Government in the way of the Commission. The Treaty of Trianon laid down that all subjects of the Hungarian State should enjoy equal political rights. Without wishing to call attention at length to the condition of the Hungarian minorities, there was the Hungarian Law, Article 25 of which provided that only Hungarian inhabitants whose moral spirit was considered satisfactory would be allowed to vote as electors. The abolition of this law had been frequently demanded, but, so far, the Hungarian Government refused to do so, on the ground that its provisions were necessary for the protection of the Hungarian race.

Notwithstanding these facts, the Committee of the League had recommended the admission of Hungary on the strength of a solemn undertaking on the part of Count Banffy by which Hungary firmly declared its intention to observe all its international engagements. This solemn declaration had been noted by the Committee, and its terms allowed of no doubt whatever, especially as regards the question of the restoration of the Hapsburg dynasty. On the strength of this declaration alone had the recommendation been made, in fulfilment of the policy of the new States. Dr. Osusky concluded by remarking that he hoped this evidence of the spirit which animated these States would be of assistance to Hungary in the fulfilment of the undertakings of Count Banffy. As the result of this speech, Hungary was admitted to the League on September 18, 1922. She has yet to prove that she merits this act of forgiveness on the part of her once oppressed nationalities.

It must be realised that the democratic tendencies of the new States are such that the condition of the Magyar peasant and working classes is far more favourable under Czech, Rumanian or Serbian rule than it was formerly, or for that matter is now, under the rule of the Magyar oligarchy. The Magyar system of election, justice, assembly and many other State-controlled functions bore very heavily upon the Magyar poorer classes, who were, in fact, oppressed in much the same manner, though to a lesser degree, as the racial minorities. In the new democratic States the Magyar landowner is equal legally and politically to the labourer of his own or any other nationality. It is this fact which clouds the Magyar understanding, and makes it impossible for a member of the Magyar ruling classes to see any good in the organisation of the new States. The idea of the divinely bestowed superiority of the Magyar over the man of any other Central European nationality is so firmly implanted in Hungary that it is impossible for anybody brought up in the traditions of Magyar supremacy to believe that States conducted upon any other lines can possibly survive the wrath of heaven. But in some cases there are other more mundane forces at work among the Magyar landowning class. It is perhaps largely as the result of these forces that the rulers of Hungary are straining every nerve to produce a feeling in favour of the return of the territory of the “subject races” to the Magyar yoke. The present regime at Budapest is very largely swayed by the influence of the Magyar feudal magnates, and these magnates are very large landowners in Transylvania. The Teleki, Banffy and Bethlen families alone owned no less than 200,000 Joch (284,000 acres) between them in what is now Rumanian territory. They argue that this was Hungarian land, and that its transfer to Rumania was an act of injustice. The fact that these great estates were owned by Magyars is, of course, no argument for the return of a territory inhabited by a majority of Rumanians, but it serves as an argument in Budapest. The influence of these families upon Admiral Horthy’s Government is at all events sufficient to cause the leader of the State to refer to Transylvania in the terms already quoted.

It is the uncompromising attitude of the Magyar ruling classes towards the democratic leanings of the Magyar peasantry of the minorities remaining in the States bordering Hungary which causes the greater part of the difficulties met with by the administrations of those States. The Magyar peasantry would show no marked hostility towards their new rulers, especially as they begin to understand and experience the vastly improved position to which they can raise themselves, were it not for the constant encouragement and instigation they receive from those whom for generations they have been accustomed to regard as the masters of their destinies. In their disgust at finding their aristocratic and hereditary privileges disregarded by the new Governments, the Magyar nobility owning land in the new States leave no stone unturned to incite their fellow-nationals, of whose welfare they have hitherto been singularly indifferent, to protest and even rebellion. The war of the Magyars against the new States is not only a war against the hated nationalities, but even more--a war between the hereditary privilege of oppression and the democratic ideal of liberty.

The present book has no concern with the attitude or the policy of the States surrounding Hungary, except in so far as these concern that country. Enough has, therefore, been said in this chapter to show the divergence between their ideals and the traditional predatory tendencies of the Magyars. We may sum up by saying that the goal towards which the former are working is enlightened and progressive, while that of the Magyars is obscurantist and reactionary. In supporting the new States we are supporting the cause for which so many of the English-speaking race laid down their lives in the Great War; in supporting the Magyars we are risking the regeneration of the very circumstances which made that war inevitable.

FOOTNOTES:

[30] A. L. Kennedy, M.C., _Old Diplomacy and New_.

[31] See the author’s _Ireland_ in 1921. I should, perhaps, apologise for quoting my own words.

[32] Jaroslav Cisar, in _Eastern Europe_ for October-November 1921.

[33] President Masaryk, in the _Slavonic Review_ for June 1922.

[34] _The Czechoslovak Republic_, Cisar and Pokorny.

[35] _The Slavs of the War Zone_, W. F. Bailey, C.B.

[36] _The Czechoslovak Republic._

[37] From an address delivered at Edinburgh on October 22, 1919, by Dr. Seton-Watson.