King of Hungary, had firmly to maintain the sovereign rights assigned to him by Article 18 of the Defence Law of 1888, which empowered him, in case of necessity, to summon to the colours and to dismiss the reserves and special reserves. He earnestly exhorted the nation to make this double task easier for him, in order to clear the way for those constitutional labours which depended for their fruition upon a good understanding between the King and the nation. Count Khuen-Hedervary accepted the King's view of the resolution which had been projected with his consent, and agreed to remain in office.
Lukacs Ministry. Peace, however, was not restored. The Justh party, which represented the extreme wing of the Opposi- tion, insisted that the crisis could only be definitely closed if the Defence bill were shelved and electoral reform given the first place on the parliamentary programme. As Khuen-Hedervary no longer commanded a following sufficient to enable him to carry the Defence bill, with its considerable increase in the number of recruits, he was forced to resign on April 16 1912. He was succeeded by Ladislaus von Lukacs, hitherto Minister of Finance, who had said that, if everything else failed, force must be met by force. In a stormy session, on May 22, Count Stephen Tisza was elected president of the House of Deputies in succession to Navay a symptom of the decidedly bellicose temper of the majority. The new president lost no time in doing what had been expected of him. With the fearlessness and iron energy characteristic of him he succeeded on June 4 in carrying the Defence bill through the House, amid scenes of violent uproar. At his orders the police entered the House and removed the deputies of the Opposition. Members who had been suspended, but defiantly attended the House, Tisza or- dered to be thrown out by the police. The deputy Julius Kovacs, who for breaches of order had been suspended for 30 sittings, entered the House on June 7 with the cry " There is still one member of the Opposition," fired at Count Tisza, but without wounding him, and then shot himself. The Count remained utterly unmoved, and continued the session as though nothing had happened. But the House could only debate under armed protection; it was frequently prorogued; and in these circum- stances little could be done to restore wholesome conditions.
In Croatia, too, the year 1912 was one of disorder. The newly elected Diet met on Feb. 7 only to be immediately dis- solved. The newly nominated Ban, Eduard von Cuvay, tried to suppress the disorders in Agram with an iron hand. In April the constitution was suspended; and several unsuccessful attempts were made during the year to assassinate Cuvay, who had been armed with the powers of a commissioner of the Crown.
The year 1912 witnessed the death of two notable Hunga- rians, the aged Gen. Gorgey, who died on Dec. 17, and Count Albin Czaky, one of the creators of the political reform of the Church, who died on Dec. 15. At the close of the year the Government introduced into Parliament the projected Fran- chise bill, for which urgency had so long been pleaded.
When, after several days' interval, the Hungarian House of Deputies again met under police protection, Zoltan Desy, a former secretary of state and now a deputy, brought an action for libel against the prime minister Lukacs. The Budapest court acquitted Desy of the charge of slander brought against him by Lukacs, on the ground that he had proved that Lukacs in 1910, in connexion with the conclusion of agreements with the Hungarian Bank and Joint Stock Co., had accepted more than 3,000,000 kr., not indeed for himself but for party pur- poses, which was contrary to good morals. This was a sentence of condemnation on the Lukacs Cabinet; and on June 5 Tisza was appointed prime minister.
Tisza Ministry. With the same unbending will with which, as president of Parliament, he had conducted the business of the House, Tisza now conducted the affairs of the nation in the face of unceasing protests on the part of the Opposition. He saw a further means of strengthening his system of government in securing State control of the administration of the counties (comitatus) , which had hitherto been in the hands of elected officials; for if these were nominated, they would be entirely
dependent upon the Government. This attempt at monopoly by the Government party was met with violent protests on the part of the Opposition, which was still further embittered by the consciousness that the King no longer stood as ruler above parties. As for Tisza, he set no limits to his will when he believed that the interests of the State demanded that it should prevail. Believing as he did that peace would be imperilled if the opinion gained ground abroad that the military power of the Dual Monarchy was broken, he carried a motion through the House of Deputies on Jan. 28, raising the contingent of recruits by 31,300 men, of whom 13,676 were to be drawn from Hungary. While the Government succeeded in raising a loan in London, the first for several years on the English market, Tisza tried to come to an accommodation with the Hungarian Rumans in the matter of their national claims. He declared publicly that the system hitherto pursued of enforcing Magyar only as the language of teaching in the schools had been mis- taken, and that more attention must therefore be paid to the demand for instruction in the mother tpngue. The Rumanian National Committee, however, refused to agree to Tisza's proposals. The refusal was, indeed, couched in conciliatory terms which left the door to future negotiations open. The door was slammed as the result of a bomb-explosion in the episcopal palace of Debreczen on Feb. 3, which raised a storm in Parliament and in the press. The outrage which happily was unsuccessful was directed against the life of the Greek- Uniat Bishop Miklossy, who in the controversy as to the use of Rumanian or Magyar in the liturgy had declared in favour of Magyar. For this outrage the Rumanians were blamed, and at the same time the opinion gained ground that the originators of this unsuccessful attempt at murder were tools of Slav agita- tion. In any case, the discussions as to those responsible for the crime caused bitter feeling between the Hungarians and Rumanians. On March 28 there was a hostile demonstration of the " Rumanian Culture League " at Bucharest against Hungary, and at the same time the Rumanians of Transylvania were celebrated there as " our oppressed brethren beyond the Carpathians," which led to sharp rejoinders in the press.
Hungary and the World War. Into the midst of these squab- bles, and just as Tisza was accusing the Opposition of publicly proclaiming their support of the Triple Alliance and at the same time playing into the hands of its enemies, there came suddenly, on June 28 1914, the news of the murder of the Arch- duke Francis Ferdinand and his wife at Sarajevo. In Hungary the death of the Archduke was felt as a relief. His dislike of the Magyars was well known, and also his objection to the system of Dualism. In truth, his aim had been nothing les than the overthrow of the form of the State as constituted by law. In the political systems which he from time to time favoured whether Trialism or a Federalism he had assigned an important political role to the nationalities living in Hungary, and always in an anti-Magyar sense. Exactly a month after the Sarajevo crime Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia (July 28), and the Hungarian Parliament was prorogued for ; indefinite period. When it met again, on Nov. 30, its attitude was that of an unexpressed vote of confidence, and, after the storm and stress of the last years, gave the impression of " a magnificent symphony " to quote the Budapesti Hirlap.
It was only now, during the war, that a series of grievances, which had raised the most violent disturbances in Parliament, were settled in the sense of the Opposition. A decree of the Minister of the Interior, issued on Nov. 7 1914, authorized the wearing of the colours and emblems of the various nationalities, provided these were not identical with those of foreign countries and that the idea of the Hungarian State was also symbolized. The Government published the correspondence of Tisza with the Metropolitan of Hermannstadt in Transylvania, in which a reform of the National Schools Law was promised in order to meet the wishes of the non-Magyar inhabitants of the kingdom in the matter of the denominational schools. It was also decided to legalize the use of the mother tongue in direct inter- course with State officials. Finally, a prospect was held out of a
