Chapter XI · HUNGARY AND DEMOCRACY

The result of the War may justly be described as the victory of liberal ideas and the triumph of democracy. The autocratic empires have disappeared, and upon their ruins have been built up a series of States in which the Government is founded upon the will of the people. Hungary under her present regime is the only exception. In name a republic, she is in fact ruled by an oligarchy which controls her policy, both internal and external, in its own interests and without reference to the welfare of the mass of her people. The whole history of Hungary since the Compromise demonstrates the opposition exerted by the Magyars to modern democratic ideals and the intensity of their struggle for the maintenance of privilege. We see the Magyar ruling caste, represented by such men as Apponyi and Tisza, straining every effort to deprive not only the non-Magyar nationalities, but the lower classes of their own race, of every vestige of participation in the legislation of the country. Nor did their measures of repression stop at disenfranchisement. Popular education was made as difficult as possible, lest the downtrodden classes should find in it a means of equalling their masters. Every commune in Hungary had its local despot, the nominee of the greater despot at the head of the county, who was in turn the trusted deputy of the central Government. The life, public and private, of the individual was in the hands of these men; the possession of ideas contrary to the policy of the ruling class was so practically discouraged that the only alternatives before the Hungarian citizen were their abandonment or else emigration to a country where the political atmosphere was purified by the breezes of freedom.

Under these conditions it was natural that the Hungarian nation should become divided into two contrasting and antagonistic sections: the Great Magyars, the upper classes which formed the military caste, and the uneducated and politically unimportant lower classes, which formed the mass of the nation. The War brought a measure of enlightenment to these latter, as it brought enlightenment to so many hitherto unconsidered fractions of the world’s population. But, owing to the policy of their masters, they sought this enlightenment not from their own countrymen, but from the disciples of Marx, who whispered in their ears the delusive but enticing doctrines of Communism. The sense of patriotism was killed, and no clear ideas were born in them to replace it.

The long pressure of the War and the final realisation of defeat let loose upon Hungary this accumulated flood of supreme dissatisfaction. But those who were dissatisfied knew only that the ancient form of government was corrupt. Their lack of education in the past, and the influences to which they had recently been subjected, made it impossible for them to visualise the true principles of democracy. It was too late for Karolyi and his associates to build up on the ruins of the old Monarchy any enduring structure of popular government. The stream had been dammed up too long; the dam once broken, the raging torrent refused confinement in constitutional channels. Bolshevism, the sinister tutor of the Magyar populace, was already entrenched, largely by the influence and financial support of the Jews. Karolyi was hated by the Great Magyars for what they termed the surrender of the ideals of the Magyar State, and mistrusted by the people as a member of the ruling class. From the first his fall was inevitable. Hungarians have blamed the Entente for what followed, but outside agencies had little influence on the course of events. The scourge of Bolshevism which swept over Hungary was in reality the inevitable consequence of the traditional Magyar policy, as surely as the Reign of Terror in France was the inevitable consequence of the policy of the Monarchy. Hungary lay helpless at the feet of a gang of ruffians who maintained themselves by the simple expedient of affording a licence to the lowest classes of an exasperated populace for unrestrained robbery and violence.

Nor was it Hungary who saved herself from this orgy of destruction and bloodshed. The various attempts at counter-revolution were utterly unsuccessful until the world became alarmed at the prospect of the plague spreading. To Rumania was assigned the task of restoring order, and in her execution of it she displayed an ability and a restraint which will for ever redound to her credit. Bolshevism was extinguished, and Hungary was once more given a chance to take her place among the nations of Europe.

From the first it was made clear to her that modern Europe could not tolerate a reactionary Monarchy in its midst. The new democratic States had suffered too greatly at the hands of that Monarchy to render it possible for them to view its re-establishment without alarm. But there was nothing to prevent the Magyar nation from choosing for themselves an unrestricted middle course between the rock of absolutism and the abyss of Soviet misrule. It might have been imagined that her recent history would have taught Hungary wherein lay her political salvation.

But the suppression of Bolshevism had produced a swing of the pendulum as violent as that which had followed the collapse of the Monarchy. To those who had suffered under the blood rule of Bela Kun and Szamueli the old ruling class appeared as their only saviours. They thought only of the vengeance against their late oppressors, and their untrained minds did not foresee the effects of the reinstatement of the very class from whose yoke the War had released them. But the restored military clique perceived their opportunity and from the first took full advantage of it. On the pretext of extirpating the remains of Bolshevism, they secured their ascendancy by the removal of those who were likely to oppose them, and by the erection of national institutions which could be relied upon to support their policy. The world at large and even the Hungarian proletariat were deceived by their specious promises, and it was not until their unsuccessful attempts to restore the Monarchy revealed their true aims that either perceived their mistake.

Hungary to-day differs little from the Hungary of the years before the War. It is ruled by an oligarchy whose agents strive their hardest to disguise the fact. The old oppression of all democratic ideals continues, rendered more dangerous by the determination of the jealous rulers of the State to undermine their neighbours, in whose territories these ideals flourish. Hungary, while professing poverty and proclaiming her impossibility to exist within the limits imposed by the Treaties, expends her revenues in the maintenance of a military organisation with which at the propitious moment to attempt the invasion of the surrounding States. Despite the teachings of history, despite the convictions of the modern world that territories belong to the races which inhabit them, the Magyars still insist upon their ridiculous conception of a “unitary Magyar State,” and pretend a divine right to the lands over which St. Stephen ruled. The prosperity and wealth of the nation is sacrificed by them to the vision of the restoration of the former Hungary, while the political consolidation of the present Hungary remains uncared for. It is the fable of the dog and the bone over again.

The statement that under modern conditions no nation can continue to exist in splendid isolation has become the sheerest truism. Every nation is more or less dependent upon the goodwill of its neighbours, more especially those nations upon the continent of Europe which are surrounded by States with which a reciprocal intercourse is an essential to their existence. But on the other hand, apart altogether from any exhibition of definite hostility, no oligarchy can secure really sympathetic consideration by the popular mind of a democratic country. Hungary’s rulers complain of the coldness of their neighbours; of the antagonism displayed towards them by the Entente Powers. But they make no attempt to bring their country into line with the requirements of the present day; they seem unable to comprehend the very meaning of the principles by which democratic states are governed. A recent Magyar apologist compares the state of Croatia-Slavonia under Magyar rule with the state of any of the great British Dominions. He apparently believes that the height of democratic ideals was reached by the permission accorded to the Croatian deputies to deliver speeches in their own language in the Budapest Parliament.

Until Hungary abandons her present reactionary tendencies and adopts in their place the liberal ideas which from time to time have for an instant shown themselves within her borders,⁠[55] only to be quenched by the energetic action of the Magyar oligarchs, she cannot hope for the sympathy of the world. Her actions must be regarded with mistrust; the utterances of her leaders must be judged only by their actions. Defiance and propaganda can be no substitute for a genuine intention to abandon the errors and the absolutism of the past, and to develop a true Hungary along the lines of modern progress.

Meanwhile, Hungary’s neighbours, eager to proceed to the restoration of normal conditions within their borders, and prepared to devote all their resources to that end, are compelled to spend a large proportion of their energies in watching Hungary and concerting measures of defence against her aggressions, moral and physical. They dare not expose an unguarded flank to the Awakening Magyars, whose declared object is the restoration of the former Hungary by force of arms, or to the “League for the Defence of Hungary’s Integrity,” which strives towards the same end by force of propaganda. Central Europe is conscious of the volcano in its midst, and longs only for the fires in the volcano to become extinct, so that it may become a firmly established democratic mountain. Nowhere is there any antagonism to Hungary as a State. One of the foremost leaders of thought in the new States has said: “There can be no doubt that the democratic ideas and principles of all these neighbour States are just one huge guarantee of peace and order, and of the definitive creation of friendly relations and a commonsense system of live and let live among the various nations. If the popular classes in Hungary grasped in this respect their political and national problem, they would quickly recognise in what manner this crisis should be solved. Ninety-five per cent. of their difficulties with their neighbours would diminish the moment these neighbours perceived a tendency towards democracy and republicanism, and could be without anxiety regarding the internal regime in Hungary.... History teaches us that we and the Magyars cannot live in permanent opposition and hostility to each other.”⁠[56]⁠

It remains then for the Hungarian nation to abandon its present policy of obstinacy and wilful blindness. However great her efforts may be, they will not enable her to reverse the flow of the river of modern tendencies. The old days of isolation of State from State are gone, never to return, and the establishment of a mediæval feudalism is no longer possible in modern Europe. Unless Hungary consents to look facts in the face, unless she abandons her propaganda and her armed bands and sets herself to develop the Magyar race as the nationalities she once described so contemptuously as “subject races” have already developed themselves, the future can hold nothing for her but ruin. The false policy of its rulers is rapidly driving the “thousand years old Magyar nation” towards collapse and ultimate extinction. At the field of Mohacs Hungary fell gloriously, her valour overcome only by overwhelming odds. But, unless the Magyars abandon their present “awakening” for one more in accordance with practical politics, the fall which threatens their country now will be the ignominious failure of a nation which refuses to grasp its own destiny.

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