György Litván

Post-Trianon Hungary in Foreign Affairs

A Correspondence

 

...

The participants were six in number. Oszkár Jászi, a sociologist and bourgeois-radical politician, had been Minister for National Minorities in the Károlyi government of late 1918. Count Albert Apponyi, a leading political figure since the turn of the century, had headed the Hungarian delegation at the Paris Peace Conference. Count László Széchényi was Royal Hungarian Minister in Washington, DC. On the American side, William R. Castle was chief of the Division of Western European Affairs at the State Department, Archibald Gary Coolidge was a Harvard professor and the editor of Foreign Affairs, and Hamilton Fish Armstrong was on the staff of the same journal. Valuable research on the subject of this article has been done in recent years by two young Hungarian historians: Tibor Glant on Apponyi's visit to the United States, and Gergely Romsics on articles in Foreign Affairs relevant to Hungary. The author would like to thank them for the information and documents they have made available.
Oszkár Jászi had been a leading figure in the Hungarian democratic revolution that broke out in 1918, but during the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic, which followed it, he went into exile in Vienna. As a prominent member of the democratic exile community, he edited the Bécsi Magyar Újság (Vienna Hungarian News), which appeared until 1923, and struggled, even in harness with leaders of the surrounding Little Entente countries, to overthrow the Hungarian counter-revolutionary regime and bring about peace and reconciliation in the Danube Basin. Jászi arrived in New York in September 1923 after long preparations.
He was to make a countrywide lecture tour to present his ideas and plans for the Danube region and to unmask the Horthy regime as a threat to regional peace, combatting its propaganda among American academics and students.
Jászi had been born in 1875 in Nagykároly (Carei), ceded to Romania under the peace treaty, and he arrived on a Romanian passport with a visa issued by the United States consul in Bucharest. He could not have known that he owed his visa to luck and the goodwill of Consul Palmer, since Géza Daruváry, the Hungarian Foreign Minister, had ordered his country's Washington envoy months before to ensure the Americans did not authorise Jászi's entry. In the State Department at the time Hungarian Prime Minister, Count István Bethlen, Minister to the U.S. Count László Széchényi, and the latter's American wife, née Gladys Vanderbilt, exercised considerable influence. Castle, a close personal friend of Széchényi's, had done his utmost to keep Jászi out, and according to Széchényi's report, remarked after the event, "There is nothing to be said about the matter except to apologise."
Jászi's presence was even less desirable because it coincided with the arrival of Count Albert Apponyi, the grand old man of Hungarian conservative politics. He was there to put his reputation, connections (and fluent English) behind an application for a loan approved by the League of Nations vital to Hungary's economic consolidation, which members of the Hungarian emigré community were trying to make conditional on the regime granting democratic rights (universal suffrage, etc.). The situation would obviously lead to a clash between the two men and their supporters, which soon occurred.
On his arrival, Jászi wasted no time in recruiting support from the liberal press in New York. On September 16, The New York Times carried a long interview with him under the headline "Jászi Here to Aid Hungary's Peoples". A further interview in the same paper on October 7 was headed "Jászi Says Apponyi is Hapsburg Aid". Jászi's trump card was Apponyi's royalist position, which he played in the knowledge that the American public was inimical to the deposed house of Habsburg. He did so not without grounds, but not quite justly, because the Count was there to make political preparations for the loan. Jászi, however, warned the Americans that the loan would be used for purposes of which they would not approve. The next article about Apponyi appeared in The Nation on October 10. This presented, with respect but without any embellishment, the political career of the Count. It emphasised his opposition to extending the franchise, his support for the wartime alliance with Germany, and the fact that Apponyi, having requested and received life-saving assistance from Mihály Károlyi during the 1919 Communist dictatorship, later made no move to defend the ex-president in exile. On the other hand, the article conceded that the Count was the only leading politician in Hungary to have boldly opposed the White Terror of 1919-20.
Apponyi replied to the Times interviews in an open letter published in the paper on October 11. He naturally accused Jászi of being unpatriotic in trying to obstruct the loan. He contrasted his own work on behalf of "democratic progress" with that of Jászi and his associates, with their "unnecessary and frivolous revolution" and responsibility for its consequences.
The reply from Jászi, who had moved on to Washington and was busy with his lectures, did not appear until October 21, under the headline "Apponyi and the Loan", slightly shortened, but still prominently displayed. First, he repudiated the false historical account designed to compromise him:

To enfeeble the strength of my arguments Count Apponyi applies the time-worn methods of his erstwhile Jesuit teachers, and presents my case to American public opinion by confusing the two last Hungarian Revolutions as one and the same thing, and placing the responsibility for both on the shoulders of the Count Károlyi Government. This statement however is a pure falsification of history.

As for Apponyi,

He was never regarded as a liberal and a democrat in the past... In the Hungary of today Count Apponyi's role has changed and he is at present regarded as a liberal progressive. This change however is not due to a metamorphosis of Count Apponyi's character but to the total collapse of public liberties in Hungary.'

Finally, he explained his position on the loan:

We do want a loan. But a loan for peace and creative work. A loan beneficent for the Hungarian people. But we do not want a loan for war and for feeding the Horthy camarilla and the Habsburgist officers.

After that article, Jászi's belief that he had emerged victorious was supported by a Times editorial enquiring whether the loan was for peace or for warlike purposes, and quoting in this connection some warlike statements about territorial revision that the Regent Horthy had made. But Apponyi too was hailed as the victor, by his chronicler, Imre Jósika-Herczeg, whose Apponyi és Amerika (Apponyi and America) appeared in New York in 1926.
Apponyi, incidentally, soon left the city, and after a short tour, the country as well. Jászi, on the other hand, stayed, and not content with the dispute in the Times, wrote a long open letter for the January 2, 1924 number of The New Republic, entitled "Kingdom or Republic in Hungary?" This summed up the differences between the two men:

Republic and monarchy have an almost symbolic significance. They are the ideas of diametrically opposite values. This is the problem which Count Apponyi considered as so small in importance to bring to the attention of the American people or which he considered as a purely internal problem of Hungary while he asked for American assistance in many problems.

(According to Count József Somssich, Hungarian Minister to the Vatican, the article contained "hair-raising things" and it could be seen "by what methods the treacherous propaganda works.")
This ended the American duel between the two Hungarians. Minister Count László Széchényi, in a report sent to Budapest on December 10, 1923, also thought it was time to assess matters. Jászi's lectures, he thought, did not pose any special danger, although his university tour had been prepared by some very influential figures. But Jászi "is a poor lecturer, due to his stumbling address and his poor English." However, "a much more serious danger than his lectures are his articles, which unfortunately show a masterly hand, not only in their composition, but in the smoothing of the English as well." (Jászi's writings were usually touched up by Emil Lengyel, a journalist friend.) "It is no easy matter to offset Jászi's performance here," the minister complained. "What could be happier than to appear before the American public as a political victim and appeal against this to traditional American open-heartedness?" Nor had the patronage of the Little Entente done Jászi any harm there, because the ideas about the Little Entente held by pacifist circles were vague. "What recommends Jászi [to them] is precisely that Hungary's neighbours look upon him with confidence."
But Jászi's most "dangerous" piece of writing was yet to come. It appeared a few days later, on December 15, in the influential journal Foreign Affairs, which had been founded a year earlier. When he was given this opportunity, Jászi felt it was important to explain more thoroughly to the American educated public what had been happening in Hungary and the Danube region in recent decades. The result was his longest study, "Dismembered Hungary and Peace in Central Europe", which aroused strong interest at the journal's offices and in the Hungarian Legation and the State Department in Washington.
Jászi tried first of all to outline for American readers the international position and role of Hungary, and at the same time he put forward his underlying idea:

Economically, geographically, historically Hungary always has been an important part of Central Europe. Should she continue in her present state, alternately despairing and in the throes of a feverish dream of revenge, there is small possibility for serious work of reconstruction and the establishment of a sane equilibrium in the Danubian countries.

In the present situation, in which the government of Count István Bethlen had been striving for consolidation for two years, he did not see any essential change since the first years of the counter-revolutionary course, because in his view, the structure of power and the objectives had remained the same. To make this plain, he outlined all the factors which had instigated the atmosphere of national hatred and mutual suspicion in the region, and which favoured the revival of militarist systems and the development of dictatorships, red or white.

In the light of the foregoing facts, I think the importance of the Hungarian problem is clear. The chief victim of the historical forces I have enumerated was my unhappy country. We lost about two-thirds of our territory, with the most valuable industrial and commercial resources, and fifty-nine percent of our population. This tragedy was further accentuated by the fact that very important Magyar minorities came under foreign domination.
When it came to explaining the causes and effects of this tragedy, Jászi's analysis was opposite to what was argued by Hungarian officialdom. He blamed the war and the erroneous national minorities policy on the still surviving ruling elite.

There are two ways open for mutilated Hungary to set about restoring her strength and healing her wounds. The one would be a democratic and pacific way: the reformation of her agricultural organization, democratization of her public life, and the adoption of an energetic initiative in developing sincere cultural and economic relations with the neighboring states. Unfortunately the way out just indicated is barred for the Horthy regime. According to their ideology, Hungary was innocent of complicity in bringing on the World War. The essential aims of this oligarchy are the restitution of the Habsburgs, the restoration of the former frontiers, the renewed domination of Magyars over alien races, and, above all, the maintenance of the large feudal estates.

In furthering the dual purpose of the article - to present Horthy's Hungary as the main threat to peace in Europe and thereby his plan for a Danube confederation as the one long-term possibility - Jászi used some not entirely spotless arguments. In fact, the danger of a Habsburg restoration had largely disappeared by then, while the nationalism of the Little Entente countries was not much less virulent than the Hungarian government's, and they showed no inclination to return Hungarian-inhabited territory voluntarily or to make real preparations for a Danube confederation. However, the idea and importance of the federation was firmly and convincingly before his liberal American readers.

 

LETTERS BETWEEN COUNT LÁSZLÓ SZÉCHÉNYI AND A. C. COOLIDGE

Count László Széchényi
to A. C. Coolidge
January 2, 1924

My dear Professor Coolidge:
Will you allow me to address to you this letter, both in your capacity as editor of "Foreign Affairs" and as a friend of Hungary.
There is no review I am following with such keen interest, ever since the first issue, as your "Foreign Affairs", and you can therefore see my surprise upon noticing in the December issue an article on Hungary by Oscar Jaszi.
I want to make it clear that it is none of my business what you see fit to publish in the review, but I consider it my duty towards you to call your attention to certain phases of Jaszi's personality of which you might not be aware inasmuch as they developed since your historic mission in Budapest.
Without having to dig into Mr Jaszi's past, I simply wish to call your attention to the facts that he came to this country, posing as a Hungarian, with a letter of introduction from President Masaryk, possessing a Roumanian passport, and that the invitations to his Washington lectures were sent out in the envelopes of the Yugoslav Legation. As long as the millenium has not come yet and the lion and lamb do not lie down together, these facts should make Mr. Jaszi's mission to this country appear "fishy" to any impartial observer, to say the least.
Whatever Mr. Jaszi writes about the past may be taken by the American public as the expression of the personal views of an individual, to which after all every person, no matter what his record, has a right. However, what Mr. Jaszi writes of the present conditions of a country where he has not set foot since the spring of 1919, ought to be discounted as hearsay and not considered as authoritative on the subject. This explains Jaszi's vituperations against the present Government of Hungary, which if actually based on true facts would make it unthinkable that the present negotiations for a Hungarian loan could be carried on.
The pending negotiations for a Hungarian loan give the explanation of Mr. Jaszi's present propaganda in this country, he having stated clearly in his speeches and articles that he wished to make the "democratization" of Hungary the condition for the loan. It is also very plain from what Mr. Jaszi has written and said that by democratization he means to put himself and his friends into power again in Hungary. This he wishes to accomplish by foreign interference and by outside pressure, instead of appealing to the Hungarian people. There is grim irony in the fact that Mr. Jaszi and his friends are posing abroad as champions of Hungarian democracy, when the undeniable fact is that Count Michael Karolyi and his Ministers, of whom Jaszi was one, established the only dictatorship known in Hungarian history.
When Mr. Jaszi speaks of "we" in connection with events of the late fall of 1918, he is absolutely correct, for everything was done by "we" without consulting the country about it. "We" dissolved Parliament, "we" put ourselves into power - by "the grace of God" and not by the choice of the people - as no elections were held and not even preparations made for same during the five months the Karolyi régime lasted. In view of these undeniable facts, it sounds rather humorous to read "we introduced universal suffrage and the secret ballot, with proportional representation".
(Owing, no doubt, to respect for the quarters who openly sponsored his American tour, as stated above, Mr. Jaszi deals with the oppression of minorities in the Succession States with a gloved hand, and while he does not deny it, he makes it appear that the new rulers are merely adopt-ing "many of the methods of the old Magyar system" in regard to their minorities. Lest you might take me for prejudiced in quoting the voice of the Hungarian minorities, I take the liberty of referring to the former so-called subject races of Hungary "liberated now". The Roumanian representatives of Transylvania in the Bucharest Parliament are solidly in opposition, and even the late Take Jonescu said shortly before his death that no such electoral corruption had ever been known in Hungary as witnessed during the last elections in Greater Roumania. The Saxons of Transylvania, who had not been too friendly to Hungary, deny the Roumanians claim that they are doing no worse than the Magyars have done to the Saxons in the past, and point out that while they had ground for complaints before they are faced with extirpation now.
I do not need to call your attention to conditions in the Yugoslav Parliament and to the comparisons Croatians are making between the present and the former Hungarian rule. Croatia was the only part of the old Hungarian Kingdom where a non-Magyar race formed a compact large majority, and it was granted the far-reaching autonomy of which Irish leaders, like Griffith, said and wrote that to obtain similar autonomy for Ireland was their ambition.
The fact that both Roumania and Czechoslovakia have such compact Hungarian majorities within their borders, and they seem to show no intention to emulate the liberal example of the much maligned Magyars in Croatia. As to the Slovaks in Czechoslovakia, I do not know whether you have seen the letter addressed to Secretary Hughes6 by the Slovak newspaper men of America, which hardly shows a jubilant liberated spirit on the part of those Slovaks who, living in this country, can express their opinion.)
The fact, however, that even a man of the stamp of Jaszi cannot help but acknowledge a certain amount of rough dealing with Hungary at the peace conference and since, would warrant - seems to me - opening the pages of "Foreign Affairs" to a real Hungarian, one who could speak of conditions there from personal experience.
Very sincerely yours,

(Count László Széchényi)
Minister of Hungary

A. C. Coolidge
to Count László Széchényi
January 4, 1924.

My dear Count Széchényi:
I wish to thank you for your letter of January 2nd and for the very friendly tone in which it is written. I have appreciated the feeling you must have had about Mr. Jászi's article and I am glad of an opportunity to speak to you frankly and confidentially on this subject.
The two obvious people who have been in this country recently to whom I might have turned for an article about Hungary were Count Apponyi and Mr. Jászi. For Count Apponyi I have great regard besides the recollection of pleasant personal relations. I have felt, however, that he was too closely identified with the old régime and too nearly in an official position in his present visit for me to wish to appeal to him. Whatever he wrote would have been regarded as a straight propaganda article. Mr. Jászi I met when I was in Budapest and he was in the Government. He impressed me as a man of unusual intelligence and I also have had a good opinion of his "Der Zusammenbruck [sic] des Dualismus". When he came to this country he wrote to me. Naturally he said nothing about any connection with the Jugoslav Legation and it is only from you that I learn of his possessing a Rumanian passport. It happened at one stage that we had a panic and thought we should be short of material for our December number and must get an article in a hurry. I decided to call upon Mr. Jászi, who I knew would produce one, trusting to our editorial power to keep it in proper bounds. Between ourselves, what he sent in was much more extreme than what we printed. Indeed we toned it down more mercillessly than, I think, any article we have accepted since the review was started, so much so that I should not have been surprised at a protest from Mr. Jászi himself.
As for another article on Hungary representing a different point of view, I should like to have one but not immediately. This is partly because our plans for our next two numbers are pretty well mapped out by now and partly because after almost every issue we have letters from people who disagree with some article and wish to have it replied to without delay. We have refused in every case. We come out only once in three months and it would be impossible for us to allow everyone who wished to answer back to have a chance to do so. We prefer to wait a while and then, if need be, let the question be taken up again as a fresh one from another angle.
Curiously enough I wrote yesterday to Castle mainly about the Jászi article and asked him to speak to you concerning it if he got a chance. I am, therefore the more grateful to you for turning to me directly and giving me an opportunity to explain the case.
Very sincerely yours,

Archibald Cary Coolidge

Count László Széchényi
to A. C. Coolidge
January 10, 1924

My dear Professor Coolidge:
Many thanks for your letter of January fourth. I was glad to learn that you took my letter in the same spirit in which it was written. I was also glad to know that you would like to have another article on Hungary, representing a different point of view, thought not immediately because your plans for the next two numbers of FOREIGN AFFAIRS are pretty well mapped out by now.
I confess though that I was rather surprised to learn that whatever Apponyi might have written would have been regarded as a straight propaganda article, while you apparently thought differently of Jaszi who notoriously hasn't done anything else for the last three years than to write propaganda articles of the most nefarious and misleading kind. I fully appreciate what you say in the middle paragraph on page two of your letter. I should say nothing if the article in question had been written by an American whether friendly and fair or not. As long as you did find room, however, for an article by one "Hungarian" representing an extreme view, it would unquestionably enhance the impartiality of the magazine to have the other side heard.
I still hope therefore that it will be possible for you to find room for another article on Hungary, preferably in your next number.
In addition to what I wrote in my last letter in regard to Mr. Jászi's somewhat curious patronage by the Little Entente,
I wish to add that I understand that Prince Bibesco,7 the Romanian minister in Washington D.C., has written a letter to the Columbia University protesting against the fact that it didn't give an opportunity to Mr. Jaszi to counteract Apponyi's "lies".
Very sincerely yours,

[Széchényi]
Minister of Hungary

A. C. Coolidge
to Count László Széchényi
January 14, 1924

Dear Count Széchényi:
Many thanks for your letter of January 10th. I can only repeat that I am very sorry that I did not know earlier about Jászi what I know now. I can't help feeling that you rather overrate the importance of his article which is not an impressive one or likely to be remembered. Jászi until he came here at least has been little known outside of his own circles. Count Apponyi has an internationl reputation, which was what I had in mind when I said that what he wrote would be regarded as propaganda. I am afraid that there can be no question of our taking a Hungarian article for our next number and I do not wish to make definite promises for the future but I shall keep in mind the desirability of having one.
Very sincerely yours,

Archibald Cary Coolidge

LETTERS BETWEEN OSZKÁR JÁSZI AND H. F. ARMSTRONG

Oszkár Jászi to H. F. Armstrong
April 19, 1924

Dear Mr Armstrong:
An incidental remark of yours during our conversation of a few days ago concerning certain rumors about my mission here, corroborated my impression which I had in the course of my lecture tour here and there, namely, that somebody has systematically calumniated me in this country, describing me as an agent of the Little Entente. Of course, I know very well that Horthy's emissaries and big Jewish financiers make an exasperated campaign against my activity but I have symptoms that also other factors - purely American - co-operated in this shameless calumniatory undertaking. Even, on one occasion, the name of Mr. Castle (of the State Department) was mentioned to me in this connection, but when eagerly asked for further information, the gentleman concerned withdrew his remarks, saying that that he knows nothing specific in this case.
All these calumniatory rumors offend me very much, all the more because even in the worst days of the white terror in Hungary, when the Hungarian upper classes lost entirely their heads and when all public men of the opposite platform were ignominiously vituperated, I was perhaps the only man whose integrity was not questioned even by the brigands of Horthy. They called me "fool", a "fanatic", a "doctrinaire", but even these servile people did not dare to attack my bona fide conviction, for everyone knows in Hungary that I always lived in a complete moral and political independence. After the collapse of the Hungarian democracy and during my exile in Vienna the extremely low standard of my life was almost proverbial so that with the greatest stretch of imagination no calumnies could be levelled at me. And when President Masaryk, in consequence of our scientific connection of many years, offered me a professorship in Czechoslovakia, I refused it categorically, saying that I want to safeguard my entire independence.
Under these circumstances the calumnies of certain anonymous Americans offend me very much. I know, as everyone at Vienna knows that Mr. Castle is an ardent supporter of all the reactionary movements in Central Europe, still I can scarcely believe, that a man of his standing could become a calumniatory instrument in the hands of the Legation of Admiral Horthy at Washington.
At any rate, you would oblige me very much by giving me accurate information about the calumnies of which you heard and naming the persons who you think are connected with this campaign. Knowing the details solicited I would immediately start legal proceedings against those im-famous persons. I am longing to unveil their base machinations before the public opinion of your country.
Les amis de mes amis sont mes amis. The protectors and friends of Horthy (a man in close friendship with notorious murderers and blackmails) cannot be honest people.
Thanking you in advance for your efforts to elucidate this mean campaign of diffamation, believe me, dear Mr. Armstrong,
Yours very sincerely:

Oscar Jászi

H. F. Armstrong to Oszkár Jászi
April 21, 1924

Dear Prof. Jaszi:
Thank you for your letter of April 19. I am sending your denial of the various allegations against you up to Prof. Coolidge with the request that he send a copy to Mr. Castle of the Department of State, who, undoubtedly, will be glad to have your statement laid before him.
Yours sincerely,

[H. F. Armstrong]

 

György Litván
who headed the Institute for the History of the 1956 Revolution between 1991-1999, has published widely on modern Hungarian history.