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:

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?