The Social and Economic History of Hungary: Its Present Outlook

Mr. President and Gentlemen,--I should not have considered my trip on this continent complete did it not extend to some extent over Canada. I want to put before you on this occasion nice words concerning future greetings to Canada. You have heard that sort of thing so often that it may appear commonplace to you, but I insist that the impression of greetings almost overwhelmes me, for in visiting some parts of this Dominion I am visiting one of our most powerful opponents and still one of the selfcommanding, free and independent countries of which the great British Empire is made up. I never had that impression brought home to me in such a powerful way as at the luncheon in Chicago, the typical American city if there is any, the Queen of the Middle West of the United States. I would be extremely lacking in gratitude if I could take any

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His Excellency Count Albert Apponyi is one of the most celebrated men in Europe. He has been fifty-three years in the Hungarian Parliament as Premier, Speaker and Minister of Education. Of an old aristocratic family, he is a Monarchist and a Liberal. He speaks English fluently and eloquently, and at Versailles showed himself master of five languages.

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other meaning from the most cordial and kind reception I met with in Chicago and everywhere else in the United States. At that representative luncheon in that representative city, I met a representative man of the great British Empire about whose politics the minds of his countrymen may be divided, but who still is a conspicuous embodiment of the spirit which pervades the British Empire, and who at a most fearful crisis succeeded in getting its energies collected and in putting them into effect, with the result we all know. (Applause) I saw there, so to say, before me the combined greetings of the two large sections of the Anglo-Saxon races of the efficient British Empire and of the United States of America--and I was almost overwhelmed by that impression, especially when comparing these with our own small country which I cannot say I represent, because I have no mandate to answer, but to which I belong, and of whose mentality I am, after all, perhaps the concluding specimen. (Laughter)

What affected me above that feeling of comparative smallness was this, that if there are large differences between the nations as to size and power, the souls of nations are equal; and soul met soul at that meeting, and in that episode which was mentioned by your President. I met Mr. Lloyd George and exchanged a few words of greeting, which was absolutely natural that we should do; but the striking incident was this, that noticing this friendly intercourse between two men who represented nations which in the war had been on two opposite sides, the whole community rose by instinct and cheered and applauded. (Applause) They considered it as typical, as representative of the great reconstruction through modern unity of all those people who represent types of that common human civilization who meet again, regardless of the past, in common work for the common ideals of humanity. In that common work, that constructive, uplifting, progressive work my nation is glad to play a part which is far greater than her numbers would indicate. (Hear, hear)

We have been at war lately, and the military movements are familiar to you, so you will remember that the importance of a military body does not wholly depend upon its numerical strength, but, to a large extent, upon the strategic importance of the post it occupies. Considering that question, my nation occupies one of the most strategic points in the permanent struggle of the forces that work for progress, for civilization, for advance as against those forces which draw humanity backwards. We are placed on a debatable ground between two types of culture-between the higher Western type and the lower Eastern type. When our forefathers embraced Christianity a thousand years ago, that was the hour that decided our future fate, and it was not unimportant for the fate of humanity at large. We took it not from France, we took it from Rome, which was at that time the only representative type of Christianity; and from that moment our lot was thrown in with the lot of the West. From that moment we developed on highly original lines according to our rational individuality, according to the peculiar fitness of our race for political organization. We developed in the spirit of the West; we gradually made our own the conquest of the West; we became emphatically Western; we stood for the West for 150 years to repel, successfully at first, the fierce onset of Turkish power; and when at last, abandoned by all Europe, we succumbed in that struggle, it was at a time when the Turkish power was already at its decline. Hungary seemed lost, but Europe was saved; and in the saving of Europe we assert we had no mean part. (Applause)

Later on that struggle continued between the forces of the West and of the East, between those forces of culture which alone are progressive, which alone possess the power of adaptability, and the other forces that underlie conservatism. Nothing can be preserved that cannot adapt itself to changing conditions, and Western Civilization alone possesses that adaptability. When, later on, that struggle was no more fought out with arms but with the weapons of culture, of education, and of a certain type of camouflaged business and morals, and political organization, there answered to it a progress towards democracy, towards fairness to all, a progress towards an international spirit which is quite compatible with a reasonable national spirit. At that time Hungary stood for the West, and whatever territories Hungary occupies are held for the West; whatever she loses are lost to the West. That is why the lot of Hungary is not a merely local affair of a small people of 8,000,000; it is that of a veritable debatable ground of two cultures, of two civilizations, and it is a question of the prevalence of the higher or the lower one. So I find some comfort for the idea, which is not very well known in Western Europe, and perhaps still less in this Western Continent, that our Hungarian problem is no mean part of the problems of humanity.

I have another comfort in feeling that after all we have much in common in our own mentality, in our own psychological position, with the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race. We have in common a spirit of fairness and of truthfulness. I may tell you one detail in connection with Toronto just to show the fairness which I experienced here. During the two years of the war when the United States were still neutral I had some correspondence concerning the origin and responsibilities connected with war with my friend, Professor Mavor, of Toronto. I tried to the best of my powers to make out a case for the side to which my country belonged, and what I represented to him in that series of three letters was all reproduced and printed in the University Magazine of Toronto. I call that fairness (applause) to open the columns of a magazine to an opponent in the midst of war, and to publish what an enemy has to say for himself.

On the other hand, I shall mention two documents concerning my own country which I am more proud of than of the records of battles won. The first one relates to the fact that when the war broke out lots of people belonging to enemy states could not go to their homes, so we had in Hungary lots of French and English-teachers, governesses, servants, business men, newspaper correspondents. After the Armistice all those citizens of ex-enemy states assembled at Buda Pesth to be sent back to their countries under direction of their commissions. They all signed a document, hundreds of signatures of French and English men and women, in which they expressed their high gratitude and appreciation of the courteous and chivalrous way they had been treated throughout the war in Hungary, never having been made to feel that they belonged to an enemy state, even in conversations concerning the war having regard to the presence of persons whose feelings could be hurt by a too keen expression of ours. That is one of the documents that we have. (Applause)

The other document is this. When the delegation of the Swiss Red Cross went through all the belligerent states to inquire into the condition of war prisoners, the report states that in no country did they find war prisoners so fairly or humanly treated as in our country, Hungary. (Applause) I think, Gentlemen, I am justified in considering those two documents as two titles of glory for my small country. They express the sense of fairness, and that sense which has something of the sporting spirit in it, especially when you have nothing unfair to reproach him with. (Hear, hear) No Hungarian soldier was charged with inhumanity or unfair proceedings in those enemy states which we had occupied. (Hear, hear) We may very well say that we did not fail to use chivalry with our enemies. Then we may shake hands when the contest is over, and say, "Well, we had our own views concerning the aims which we had; you were absolutely persuaded that we were wrong, and the responsibility of the war rests with the Central Powers; you acted on it with absolute good faith, and we admire your efforts for the cause which you considered just. We had different ideas concerning the question, and we acted up to our beliefs. Well, you have won, but now there is an end of it, let us join hands again for those great common aims of humanity which, after all, are the aims towards which every nation should tend in its own interest." (Applause) That is why that audience in which the most distinguished men of the United States were present rose and applauded and cheered when they saw two representative men of the belligerent states shake hands together. It was an indication for the future. (Hear, hear)

Well, Gentlemen, when the war is ended, when peace is concluded, the common interest is always for peace, to really put an end to war, to prevent future wars. Through all the United States I heard this, and I think it is very much the case in this country, too. We fought that war in order that it should be the last of wars; we fought it to obtain a victory not of our arms and countries only, but of the principles for which they stood, of liberty and democracy. That is what inspired hundreds and thousands of young men to risk their lives in this cause. Though I stood on the opposite side, we also have our memories, our reasons which we must always remember, so I never should demean myself to carry the sympathy of any audience, especially a Canadian or American audience, by reference to the memory of those who sacrificed their lives for their cause. So, in that spirit of cordiality, I respect the good faith and the ideal motives which inspired you on the other side. But the higher, the more disinterested, the more ideal and inspiring those motives have been, the more important it is for you to ascertain that the aims for which you fought have been obtained; that all those troops were not immolated in vain; that really peace has been made more secure than before; that really the spread of liberal and democratic ideas is more energetic and fuller of promise than before.

Now, what is the answer which I as a European from the Eastern part of Central Europe can give to that question from my own experience? I give you, first, the answer which I heard from Lloyd George in one Chicago address which I was privileged to listen to. He closed his speech by saying, "Democracy is in danger; so one of the aims, at least, seems not to have been fully attained." And Lloyd George added, "We must stand in defence of it, and if the three great branches of democratic organization-the British Empire, the United States and France-stand together, then democracy may still be saved from the perils that surround it." That is all very well, Gentlemen, but may I add something to that sentiment? The three great democratic powers of the West should stand together in that struggle, which is by no means finished, for the permanence of democratic ideals, but they cannot effect it alone. If they stand alone for it, then they stand for it in a warlike attitude. They must find allies for the peaceful struggle all over the world. They must find such allies especially in Europe, in Eastern Europe.

And this is another important feature of the situation of my nation. I have said that my nation is on the debatable ground between Eastern and Western ideals--and an advanced outpost of the West. I say that in the still pending and perhaps to some extent more difficult contest between democratic and progressive ideas on the one hand and ideas of retogression on the other, my nation, which in the Eastern part of Europe can be found the only reliable one, is alive, and gives to people of Eastern culture those democratic institutions borrowed from the West. We are the only ones who are inspired by those ideas, the only ones who have inbibed them, the only ones who through many imperfections and lapses, many failures and blunders, have made them part of their organism. The only flesh and blood of those who represent the Eastern cultures are the community of my small nation. (Applause)

You have probably heard that a wave of reaction passed over Hungary lately. Gentlemen, that must be explained and understood. Yes, Hungary went through not only the horrible trials of war, but afterwards went through two useless and frivolous revolutions, the second of which signified mob rule at Buda Pesth, signified Bolshevist rule at Lassit for four months. Now, it is only natural that this distortion of democratic ideas, this violent action against the whole social organization of a country, should have produced a violent reaction, as shown sometimes by destructive criminal conduct. But it was only a passing wave; it was not the spirit of the nation. We are returning to normal conditions of life; we are returning to take up the thread of our noble traditions, and the noblest of them is that, towards the middle of the last century, the privileged classes of Hungary, without any pressure from the lower ones, but on their own account, abolished privileges and introduced democracy effectually by a method of ruling which in other countries has been accomplished only through revolutions. (Loud applause) Those noble traditions we are taking up again; and if the great democracies of the West, whether in Europe or on the American Continent, think it fit and necessary to make a new stand for democracy in the spirit of peaceful co-operation and fellowship, they will find on the most dangerous and debatable ground only one ally which offers itself for their purpose, and that ally is the Hungarian nation.

But, Gentlemen, why is democracy in peril? I will tell you; because new democratic organizations in the vanquished states are burdened with the unpopularity attaching to the treaties of peace which they had to accept. On the peace treaties, again, I have the most illuminating word of Lloyd George to quote, which struck me when I listened to him. He gave us a vivid account of some passages of the war in which the Canadian and United States troops decided the issue of most important battles, and he said that when Amiens was in danger and the German attack was proceeding, Germany at that time had the power to conclude peace on the principles proclaimed by President Wilson, but she did not choose to do so; she went on with the struggle in the forlorn hope, and she brought herself into a situation where it was impossible for her to negotiate, and so the peace treaties were concluded without negotiations, and on the basis of one-sided dictation. That, says Lloyd George, was not to the advantage of either side; it was not to the advantage of the victors to be able to dictate the terms of peace. That may seem a paradox, but it is a paradox inspired by profound knowledge of human nature, and by that highest type of statesmanship which, rests on a fundamental psychology. (Applause)

It is not in frail human nature to be able to bear an access of power without being tempted to abuse it. History is full of incidents which illuminate the truth in the case of individual men. The most conspicuous example of it is Napoleon the First, the greatest genius not only of military but of political organization. In my mind he is perhaps greatest as a political organizer, having given to France that magnificent structure of government which survived all the revolutions which France had to pass through afterwards. Napoleon, after enjoying a period of almost irresistible power, and holding absolute sway over everything in Europe, got into that state of mind which defies power until the limits between the possible and the impossible fail to be perceived, the impossible is attempted, and a total collapse follows.

Now, that law which holds for individuals--that too great excess of power is not beneficial, but harmful to them because the temptation to abuse it is almost irresistible, human nature being what it is, that same law holds good in the case of nations, and perhaps more strongly than in that of individuals, because an individual by his training, by education, by moral force, may emancipate himself from the law, but nations never can. The law of national security operates with the same compelling and irresistible force which regulate the physical nature; and if nations after a long war are in a situation which makes them have to dispense with negotiations, if nations are in that state of exasperation, of exaltation, in that state of intoxication which a long war and final victory produces, if nations have it all their own way, if nations do not see any force controlling them, if nations know that they can do whatever they please, the Caesar's curse is their inevitable end; and statesmen, be they ever so wise, are unable to resist the currents of opinion which urge them beyond the limits of what is reasonable. (Applause)

The result of the peace treaties, such as have been concluded, is the logical outcome of the fact that they have not been concluded in a spirit of peace, not in a spirit of compromise, not in a spirit which will secure, as is absolutely legitimate, such advantages to the victors as can be reasonably secured, and still take into consideration those higher principles on which depend the safety of those advantages which they secure for themselves.

It is impossible that peace treaties between nations alienated by struggle and victory should be concluded by cool attention given to facts, and by cool consideration given to the natural principles of political construction. No, the victors are inspired by a wish to inflict as much humiliation as possible on the vanquished opponent; to win to themselves and to their allies the utmost advantages, regardless of the future, regardless of their being safe constructions. I can hardly blame anyone for it. If blame rests on somebody it is certainly on the military policy of our former allies who missed, not for themselves only but for us--for at that time we did our best to obtain peace--the opportunity of concluding it on fair terms on the basis of negotiation. But the result is the same.

The constructions of the peace treaty are not based on a cool consideration of facts and of natural principles of political construction. They are condemned because they endanger the rule of democracy. Just in the same way the other great aim which you have before you, to make peace secure for generations to come, has not been obtained because the new constructions do not rest on principles of organic political construction.

I wish to give you only a few examples to illustrate this. To begin with, there is the most arduous and more acute question of the moment--the reparations question. There can be no doubt that exacting reparation is just and is fair. I know no sensible man throughout Europe, not even a sensible German, who would deny it. Germany has to pay to the limit of her paying capacities for the damages which her armies occasioned in the countries she occupied. But how has that question been solved in the peace treaties--or rather, not solved? It is a common question to us, because over our heads, too, hangs the problem of reparations. It has not been solved at all. But you have the question propounded, and its solution has been entrusted to a commission, which may impose conditions on a trodden down and humiliated people, but bitterness will be kept alive in the vanquished nation. Through generations the distinction between belligerents will be maintained, while it should be the object of a peace that was meant to be real and permanent to obliterate that distinction as soon as possible.

Then you have the question of disarmament. It has been laid down as a principle, and it is one of the chief enactments of the Covenant of the League of Nations, that a general disarmament should take place, militarism should be done away with once and for all. Disarmament was effected directly in the vanquished states under those clauses of the treaty. That is a principle which affects Hungary, and it is said that in order to progress more securely towards the goal of general disarmament Hungary has to disarm thus and so. This goal, the ultimate end, the general principle, has been laid down in all the peace treaties. As a matter of fact what do we see?

Just yesterday I read in the papers a telegram that a great French loan-not so much in cash as in arms and ammunition-is to be awarded to the little entente states to make their armaments complete. We in Hungary are reduced to 35,000 soldiers. The neighbouring states around us, these little entente states, altogether have 500,000 under arms in times of peace. You all know to what excess militarism obtained in France. You have two sets of nations, one of which is disarmed and has a feeling of being defenceless, a feeling that the neighbouring states may walk into it when ever they please to do so. These live in a continuous state of unrest and humiliation, while the other is more strongly militarized than it had been before the war. Gentlemen, this queer state of things, in practical opposition to what has been announced in theory, is justified how? That the maintenance of such a military establishment of one side of militarism is the only means of maintaining the status quo as laid down in the peace treaties. That may be true; I grant it; it is the only means; but if this is the justification of one side of armaments it is a condemnation of those peace treaties whose status can be continued only by real or potential violence.

Those are the general features of the peace treaties, which continue the maintenance of two categories of nations. Well, that will not do. Whatever you may think of the superior or even exclusive responsibilities of the vanquished states for the war it will not do to maintain permanently a distinction between the two separate nations--one of them wicked, the other just and good; the one of them being angels, that you may invest them with absolute power over the world and they will never abuse it; the other one being the devils, that you must disarm, that you must put at the mercy of the other set of nations. That will never do.

What is the other situation? Is it that the millions of men who belong to the vanquished nations should bear such a state of things, and never get rid of them? What that will lead to, we see in Germany. I happened to stay for a couple of weeks in Germany this summer. The object of my journey was entirely non-political; it was my good chance to meet some prominent German statesmen; but what I learned in Germany was not derived from my conversations with those statesmen. The most convincing lesson I got, and the most frightening, was an article I read written by the head of the extreme reactionary nationalists, in which he complacently dwelt on the possibilities of a coalition between the communists and the extreme nationalists. It is a foolish idea, but still it has deep roots in the consciousness of the masses. It is what I warned the Supreme Council of when I was at Paris as President of the Hungarian Peace Delegation. I warned then not to settle matters in that way, because it brings about nearly always a coalition of all those who despair, which is a most dangerous thing, and will certainly cause the doing of silly and foolish things. Not only will those who are responsible feel the result of it, but the whole world may be shaken by it. Despair is evil counsel, and it is the only thing that is listened to when hope fails.

I might illustrate, by an example of my own country, the meaning of the statement that the peace treaties have not based their construction on the national law of political construction. I will do so in another lecture which I wish to deliver here soon. I will only give you two or three hints. Hungary has lost two-thirds of her population. This dissection has been effected on the plea that she was not rationally united, that there were different races in Hungary, that it was safer to reconstruct nations and political bodies on the basis of an ethnographic principle. Very well, I do not want to discuss that question of principle; but how has it been effected? On the basis of democratic principles? Of the ten million people we have lost 3,500,000 are Magyar, and of this last number nearly 2,000,000 live on territories bordering on the grain land which is left to Hungary. So that in the just execution of the ethnographic principle those territories ought to have been added to Hungary even had they not belonged to her, yet they have been taken away. I protest that principle.

Second, the new construction--Czecho-Slovakia, Greek, Roumania, Jugo-Slavia--which have been increased at the expense of Hungary, are just like Hungary with one difference, that in the case of those Eastern shores at least, racial leadership has been transferred from a race of higher culture to races of lower culture. The result is that the new political constructions are just as little possessed of the organic principle of racial unity as Hungary had been, but by way of compensation they have got none of the other principles. They have not geographic union, they have not economic independence, they have not the benefit of the plenary system, and they have not that history of 1,000 years. That means something, Gentlemen. You may decline to accept history and long possession as a juridical title, but you cannot reject history as a witness, and if history tells the same thing through ten centuries, then she gives voice to the nature of things.

But that is not all. When I became aware officially, as the head of the Hungarian Peace Delegation, of the terms of the peace treaty, it was, to use a euphemism, offered--I would rather say imposed upon us. We took a firm stand against it, on what basis? I as the representative of the Hungarian nation, her official representative, with full power to sign or not to sign whatever I saw fit, declared in the name of the Hungarian nation, and pledged our national honour for it, that whatever the free will of the people concerned in the territories which were meant to be taken from us should decide upon, we should accept as definite and never challenge, because we did not wish to retain a single soul against its will in our Dominion. On the other hand, whatever would be taken away from us without regard to the will of the population, whatever should be taken away from us in the cattle-like procedure in the case of human beings, we should consider as a matter of violence which perhaps we would have to resign ourselves to, but we never could accept as legal. We asked for a plebiscite, and declared beforehand that we should abide by its result. Our opponents declined. By declining they declared, without wishing to do so, their adherence to the unholy cause of the principle of population; they declared their intention to take them away whether the people concerned wished it or not.

This is our standing. We represented not only the claims of superior culture, not only the claims of history, not only the claims of the natural laws of geographic and economic unity, but we represented the claims of the will of the nations concerned. Our opponents represented the refusal of that will. I am not ashamed of the part we played in that contest.

Those, Gentlemen, are features of the situation in Europe as created by the peace treaties. You know the rest. You know the economic distress which breaks a part of Central Europe, and with it probably the whole of the civilized world. Up till now the peace treaties have failed to fulfill their double object-to lay down the basis of permanent peace and rest in Europe, and to secure the progress of liberal democratic ideas. Unless some correction can be found for that state of things, those nations who fought with the ideal purpose of serving the progress of mankind, of serving the spread of the rule of democracy and making peace secure, have suffered a sad political defeat though they have won a splendid military victory. How can this be remedied? Not by new violations. Should you infer from my denunciations of the peace treaties that Hungary has an intention to try and subvert them by violence, you would be greatly mistaken. We are intensely patriotic, and in the hour of our destruction we are perhaps still more so.

I never felt more warmly attached to my country in every fibre of my heart and soul than since I saw her in the deepest state of misery which ever history has compelled her to dwell in. But we are teaching ourselves that our patriotism should lead us never to entertain a patriotic ideal which is not consistent with the higher aims and requisites of human progress and improvement. In them we seek our safety. This inspires us with unbounded confidence in our future-that however we may ourselves submit to severe criticism, we find not one of our national aims, which is not in perfect accord with the highest ideals and aims of humanity. (Loud applause)

SIR JOHN WILLISON expressed the thanks of the Club to the speaker.