Hungary’s Internal Policy.[1]
The Western democracies lay stress on the rights of the peoples and aspire to a new order in Europe, resting upon peace and reconciliation among the nations. Unhappily, there are grave obstacles to the realisation of this noble idea, and notably a misapprehension of certain cardinal facts which have determined in the past and must still determine in the future the relations between the European nations.
In their recent speeches Mr. Lloyd George and President Wilson stated that the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary was not one of the war aims of the Entente. This statement implies that no radical change in the Dual Monarchy is necessary, and that some democratic reform would suffice to appease its oppressed peoples and thus lay the foundation of a durable peace. Recent events and tendencies in Austria-Hungary, however, reveal a very different prospect; and close observers cannot fail to see that the relations between the subject peoples and their masters have evoked such bitterness as to render a constitutional settlement altogether chimerical. The oppressed races have given repeated proof of their resolve to persist in the struggle for complete independence; and those of our readers who know something of the war of extermination and enslavement waged, in particular, by Hungary against her non-Magyar citizens, cannot fail to ask themselves whether a continuation of the struggle is likely to be conducive to future peace in Europe.
In his famous book on Mittel-Europa, Herr Naumann, whom no one could accuse of hostility to the Magyars, wrote as follows:—
“The Magyars are conscious that their State is based on an agglomeration of nationalities. They know that they are outnumbered, and form less than half the population, and that, under an equal and impartial law and a just distribution of electoral constituencies, they might be speedily driven from power by the union of the others. This situation imposes upon the Magyars, whose will to rule has created the State, the double duty of countering openly or secretly the equalising tendencies of democracy, and of increasing the numbers of the Magyar population.” (P. 89.)
In point of fact ,the Magyars have throughout this war striven, with feverish haste, to convert polyglot Hungary into a uniform State imbued with Magyar mentality. In this effort Magyar policy has shown two faces, one for home opinion and one for abroad. At home the policy of Magyarisation is pursued with open violence, while abroad lip service is paid to new ideas which serve as a convenient screen for ulterior ends. Thus since President Wilson’s democratic programme, and the march of the Russian Revolution, the Magyars have assured the whole world, through their official agencies and their agent in every coutry, that the heritage of the reactionary Count Tisza has descended to a democratic government which will act in the spirit of Western democracy. It is, however, only necessary to pass in review the various reforms introduced by Tisza’s successors, in order to realise how little prospect there is of racial reconciliation. No sooner had Count Apponyi reentered the Ministry of Education than he forbade the reopening of the Roumanian teachers’ training colleges—the Serbian schools were closed during the crisis of July 1914—on the ground “that during the occupation of Transylvania by the Roumanian troops the attitude of the Roumanian teachers was unpatriotic.” Apponyi himself, during a visit to Transylvania, explained his programme very clearly.
“I visited the frontier districts,” he said, “in order to get a personal impression of the measures needed for the cultural defence of the country. I had conversations with the high sheriffs, school inspectors and schoolmasters. As regards the training schools, I shall not modify my point of view. My aim is to strengthen everywhere the national Magyar State. I have begun by multiplying the State schools in order to place a barrier along the frontier and ensure the safety of the Magyar racial islets by linking them up with one another. This whole policy follows a definite plan which, if not completed by myself, will, I hope, be adopted by all my successors in office.” (Az Ujság, 12 December, 1917.)
He recently set up a special Cultural Committee, whose duties were defined by one of his subordinates in a recent interview—
block
This vast programme, cynically presented as a model of modern education, will completely destroy the already feeble instruction of the non-Magyar peoples in their mother-tongue. The school question has always been one of the most burning in Hungarian internal policy, the non-Magyars seeing in their schools the last hope of preserving their race. While preparing the total suppression of non-Magyar education in Hungary, Count Apponyi seeks to promote Magyarisation by other means. As Minister of Public Instruction he is the supreme authority in certain ecclesiastical questions. Knowing that the nationalities of Hungary, excluded from all share in politics, rely upon their religious institutions as a last stronghold of national tradition, the Magyars have set themselves to gain control of the Churches and to Magyarise the faithful from the pulpit through the medium of Magyar
- ↑ Reprinted from the New Europe, London, February 28, 1918.
