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.