THE TABLES TURNED ON HUNGARY
The Treaty of Trianon, signed on June 4, 1920, destroyed a kingdom
that had existed for a thousand years by allotting two thirds of the
territory and population of the historic realm to Czechoslovakia,
Rumania, Jugoslavia, and Austria. Before the collapse of the Central
Empires Hungary had a population of about twenty-two millions, nearly
half of whom were Hungarian. After the treaty the population was
reduced to seven and a half millions, in the proportion: Hungarian,
88.4 per cent; German, 7; Slovakian, 2.2; and about 110,000 Croatians,
Rumanians, and Serbians. In order to accomplish the liberation of
subject nationalities, Hungarians were put under foreign yoke, all
(with the exception of part of those given to Rumania) in contiguous
territories, as follows:
Subject to Czechoslovakia 1,084,000
Subject to Rumania 1,705,000
Subject to Jugoslavia 458,000
Subject to Austria 80,000
The Paris Conference, on the recommendation of military experts,
changed the boundary between Austria and Hungary, south of the Danube,
in order to protect Pressburg (Bratislava), given to Czechoslovakia for
a port. There was the added motive of creating a breach between the
former allies. The large number of Hungarians put under Czechoslovakia
was due to two considerations: to afford the new state a long Danube
frontier; and to make possible an Entente airplane and military
base close to the capital of Hungary. An ethnographic frontier with
Rumania was rejected because of the promises to Rumania during the
war to induce her to intervene on the side of the Entente Powers. The
Czechoslovak frontier was carried across the Carpathians to include
Ruthenia, and nearly half a million Hungarians were transferred to
Jugoslav nationality, so that Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Jugoslavia
might have common frontiers and railway communications in friendly
territory.
The Entente Powers had fought to liberate subject races, not simply
to give border populations a change of masters. But the new countries
needed strategic frontiers and economic resources. Therefore their
liberation necessitated the slavery of one third of the former master
race to the former subject races. Defeated Hungary saw the principle of
self-determination invoked in behalf of other peoples for the purpose
of despoiling her, but ignored when for economic or strategic reasons
the liberated peoples needed territories inhabited by Hungarians. It
was a case of turning the tables. Might once more made right. The
Hungarians were given a dose of their own medicine. The outcry against
the Treaty of Trianon, whose terms were announced just after Hungary
had passed through the Bela Kun Communist reign of terror and the
occupation and pillage of Budapest by the Rumanians, was universal. But
the vanquished Magyars were as powerless to protest effectively against
the Treaty of Trianon as the Germans had been a year earlier to reject
the Treaty of Versailles.
Hungary lost most of her hydraulic power, forests, paper-mills,
cereals, potatoes, honey, silk-cocoons, coal, and everything else that
went to make up the economic life of this Danubian region centered at
Budapest. In the era of steam-power and world markets, Hungary, like
other states, had developed as a whole, each region fitting in a scheme
of things that made the different parts dependent upon one another.
Commerce and manufacturers were concentrated at Budapest, which was
equipped with transportation, warehouses, and banks to handle the
business of the entire country. Fiume had been the common port for all
the Hungarian provinces. Now in her shorn state, cut off from access
to the sea, and with the former subject regions raising tariff-walls
against her, what was left of Hungary, and especially the city of
Budapest, seemed to be condemned to ruin.
But when one visits Hungary three years after the signing of the Treaty
of Trianon and asks for an honest answer to the question, “Is the
present Hungary a hopeless proposition, a state that cannot live?” one
does not get a categorical affirmative. Nor have any leaders whom I
interviewed declared that the payment of reparations was impossible,
provided a definite and reasonable sum was finally agreed upon. When I
probe, and try to get at the bottom of the grievances, I discover that
my Hungarian friends are invariably comparing the present situation,
and its calamities, with what Hungary used to be.
Like the Turks, the Hungarians won and maintained by superior force
a privileged position in a vast country which they shared with other
peoples. They were a dominant race, who tried to impose their language
and culture on others. When they fought the Germans to retain their
independence and arrived at the compromise of the Dual Monarchy, it did
not occur to them that self-government was a privilege as precious and
as advantageous to other peoples as to themselves. And, now that they
have lost their dominant position in the same way in which they gained
it, that is, by war, it is hard for them to reconcile themselves to a
more humble station in life. They accepted the treaty, for they did not
intend to commit national suicide. But after the power to impose their
rule upon others has gone, they retain the curious feeling that they
still ought to be considered as possessing the inalienable right to all
the regions they once ruled!
One criticizes the Treaty of Trianon, not because one has sympathy
with Hungarian grievances based upon national pride and interest, but
because the frontiers as now drawn are unwise and impolitic if we are
looking for a durable world peace and for an end to the intolerable
burden of universal military service and heavy armaments. The millions
of Hungarians, now aliens in adjacent territory, create a new
irredentist problem so dangerous that the Succession States have had to
form an alliance to meet it, and the alliance calls for the indefinite
maintenance of standing armies to hold the Hungarians down. More than
this, with an irredentist question keeping them apart, it is going to
be difficult for the neighboring peoples, whose economic interests are
interdependent, to reëstablish normal relations.
There is little fear of a fresh outbreak of Communism. That disease ran
its course in the first months of the disaster, and the people are
cured. Bela Kun and his friends gave a practical demonstration of the
working of Communism that was convincing enough to satisfy the present
generation of Hungarians! The aim of the Hungarian Government is to
endeavor to bring about a commercial _rapprochement_ with the former
subject peoples in such a way as to free trade relations and exchanges
as much as possible from the inconveniences of the new frontier
barriers. Through passenger and freight trains, tariff reciprocity,
abolition of passport formalities, good will on the part of those who
make and enforce regulations of international intercourse--these are
what Hungary needs to get on her feet again. The country is able to
feed itself and to export cereals and cattle. Once trade relations
are resumed with her neighbors on a reasonable basis, Hungary can get
to work, balance her budget, and pay reparations. But will Rumania,
Jugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia give Hungary a chance to revive? Will
they consent to allow the people of the provinces they have taken to
form once more the old habit of going to Budapest? There is the rub.
The frontiers of Trianon unfortunately influence the Succession States
to view the question of _rapprochement_ from the point of view of
political security.
Hungary now has within her narrowed borders a homogeneous population,
and her unrivaled geographical position on the Danube remains. Most of
the national hatreds and racial feuds that used to make the Budapest
Parliament an arena of wild animals and cause Hungarian statesmen to
tear their hair have been transferred to Belgrade and Prague. Less
than half the population of Jugoslavia is Serbian of the Orthodox
persuasion, and less than half the population of Czechoslovakia is
Czech. The minority elements are already causing trouble. Because of
their Hungarians and other foreigners, notably their Germans, the new
states fear to take the steps toward economic agreements that are
dictated by common sense. Political considerations outweigh material
advantages.
The Hungarians, despite the oppression of non-Magyar elements, were
good stewards. They developed the country materially with skill and
energy, and the prosperity of Budapest is well deserved. Not because
it was favored by legislation but because of its key position on
the Danube did Budapest become a railway-center. The railway lines
exist, and the city is equipped to serve the population of the whole
region. The Succession States have neither the large cities in annexed
territory nor the geographical position to do as well economically by
the regions over which they are now ruling as Hungary did. And they
suffer equally with her the loss of unhampered access to the sea. The
Succession States are as much afraid of giving Budapest its old-time
accessibility to the regions that used to depend upon it as the French
are afraid of allowing Germany to rehabilitate herself by the free play
of economic laws.
Unless Hungary finds, then, that she can get along alone she must try
to form a union with Rumania or to overthrow by force the Treaty of
Trianon.
The first possibility is advocated by many Hungarians, who argue that
it is better for Hungary to look to the east than to the west. The one
benefit of the disaster of 1918 was freedom from German overlordship.
The Hungarians have too vivid a memory of being weighed down by Vienna
and latterly by Berlin through Vienna to look forward with satisfaction
or equanimity to a new _Drang nach Osten_. It is pointed out that the
Rumanians need Hungarian friendship to make Transylvania and the Banat
of Temesvár contented under Rumanian rule. Transylvania is shut off
from Rumania by high mountains and looks naturally to the west. All
the outlets from the Banat are to the west. Another argument in favor
of a close understanding with Rumania is that the Rumanians are, like
the Hungarians, an island of radically different nationality from the
surrounding Slavs.
Rumania does not receive Hungarian overtures any too cordially. Nothing
short of a Russo-Bulgaro-Turk combination would induce Rumania to
advocate a revision of the Treaty of Trianon and the entry of Hungary
either into the Little Entente or into an alliance and customs union
with Rumania. That may come, of course, but it is not probable.
Practical-minded Hungarians realize that Rumanians object to them for
much the same reasons that they object to the Germans. The West knows
how to impose political domination through cultural superiority. And as
Berlin and Vienna are to Budapest, so Budapest is to Bucharest.
The alternative is what has always been the lot of Hungary, the
decision to find her support in Teutonic Central Europe at the price of
industrial inequality and political vassalage. It is probable that when
Russia returns to her old self she will resume her Balkan policy. This
will drive Italy once again, with sounder reason than last time, into
an alliance with Germany. Then Hungary, mourning her lost provinces,
will be a valuable ally.
The Paris Conference had a glorious chance to detach Hungary
permanently from dependence on Central Europe and make it worth
her while to live an independent life. It was in the power of the
conference to draw the frontiers of Hungary along ethnographic lines,
using one weight and one measure in dealing with the border-land claims
of all the Danubian states. This great occasion was missed.
Two influences from the outside have given new life and hope to the
smoldering fires of Hungarian Nationalism. For a while after Admiral
Horthy and the Whites overcame the Communists, Hungary was prostrate.
The people were apathetic. The Treaty of Trianon was a crushing blow,
and there was the tendency to regard it as definitive. But the attitude
of the Entente Powers themselves, first in encouraging Turkey to
resist the application of the Treaty of Sèvres and second in agreeing
ignominiously to make a new treaty with the Turks when Mustapha Kemal
Pasha successfully defied the Entente decrees, has given new hope to
the Hungarians. What the Angora Nationalists did--the Turks are kinsmen
of the Hungarians--the Magyars can do. All they have to wait for, as
has been demonstrated by the events in Asia Minor, is fresh discord or
simply lack of harmony among the Entente Powers. Then the Hungarians
feel that they may not have to wait for the recovery of Germany, but
can get the help of the Italians against the Little Entente. Is this
an absurd hope? Experience makes justifiable an emphatic negative!
The other inspiration that has come from abroad is the success of
Fascismo in Italy. The Hungarians have long had “the wakeners,” an
organization formed as the Fascisti group was formed to suppress
Communism and Socialism. The August, 1922, revolution in Rome
strengthened immeasurably the influence of “the awakeners” in Budapest,
where, in the Wenkheim Palace, a new society, closely modeled on
the Fascisti, and with similar rites, is aiming to set up a Fascist
government.
The “Argrad Blood Association” and the “Turanian Association” are
moving for a Hungarian alliance with Mohammedanism. More significant
still is the “Hungarian Defense League,” a militarist organization of
former officers which still controls secretly the notorious military
“Detachments” that played the decisive rôle in suppressing Bolshevism.
These various organizations have recently spread into Slovakia,
Bukowina, Transylvania, and the Banat of Temesvár. The Succession
States are beginning to experience the inconvenience of holding large
alien populations.
The only factor in the situation that prevents the irredentist
movements from being already serious--alarmingly serious--is the
agrarian question. Hungary is still under the domination of the
land-owning classes, while peasant proprietorship has won its way in
Rumania and Jugoslavia and is making progress in Slovakia. Most of the
large landowners in the now “unredeemed” lands of Hungary are Hungarian
aristocrats; and the peasants, although Magyars, knowing the failure
of land partition to make progress in Hungary, are not sure that they
would be better off if they returned to their old allegiance. Up to
this time the oppression of Hungarians in the liberated states has been
confined to landowners and townspeople; and the Hungarian peasants
have, in fact, profited by this.
The agrarian question, until it is settled by the disappearance of
great estates, plays a rôle the importance of which can hardly be
overestimated in the newly awakened national rivalries in border-lands
from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The Poles are confronted, for
instance, with an embarrassing dilemma. They want to drive the Germanic
influence out of the Baltic states because it is a menace to their
ambitions. But German influence in the territories ceded by the Treaty
of Versailles to Poland and in the Baltic states is based upon the
landed aristocracy, which is the foundation of Polish influence in the
Russian border-lands and Eastern Galicia. Advocating agrarian laws
helps Poland in some places and acts as a tremendous boomerang in
other places! So it is with the encouragement of irredentist movements.
If nationalism finds its support largely with the aristocracy, and
they have to go to the peasant masses in coveted border-lands to
spread their movement, when the “unredeemed” regions are added to the
so-called mother-land, the promoters of the irredentist movement are
the first to suffer. It has recently happened that way in Rumania.
To-day Hungarians, both peasants and proprietors, are wondering which
is the more important, national pride or class interest.
When we study problems and reconstruction in a topsyturvy world, we
find that they are not new problems. They are old problems, couched in
different terms, perhaps, and clothed a bit differently. But they are
the same problems for all that; is not geography the same, distribution
of wealth the same, and human nature the same?