Propaganda

CZECHOSLOVAKIA

Dr. Benes, Czecho-Slovakian Foreign Minister, made a speech at Prague in which he defined the attitude of Czecho-Slovakia toward Hungary. After he had finished his opponents said: " No one should know the disposition of his country toward another better than Dr. Benes, but when he resorts to choosing facts calculated to reveal Hungary in the most odious light, his assertions sink to the worthless level of propaganda."

In the course of a long tirade against Hungary, Dr. Benes made it plain that Czecho-Slovakia backed France against Britain and the other Allies in the matter of refusing Hungary permission to raise an international loan freed from the obligations imposed by the Treaty of Trianon. The reason is, so far as he made it evident, that Hungary, unlike Austria, has accepted her treaty obligations only under protest.

Hungary is in a different position from Austria. Austria is a republic by the will of a majority of the people. Hungary is a monarchy by popular sentiment, but deprived of a King by the will of the Little Entente (Czechoslovakia, Yugo-Slavia, Rumania). The Habsburgs were not excluded from returning to the throne of Hungary by the Treaty of Trianon, and, despite the endeavors of the Little Entente through the Council of Ambassadors, the Habsburg family still remains eligible to reascend the throne, providing the Allied Powers approve. Czecho-Slovakia sees a danger to her new-won autonomy, if the Habsburgs come back to Hungary. This is partly true. There are 1,200,000 Magyars out of a total population of 13,595,816 in Czechoslovakia. According to reports, these people would prefer to be under the Habsburgs as constitutional monarchs rather than in a republic where freedom counts for less than did that of the Czechs in the last decades of Franz Josef's reign.

In Hungary religion is identified with the Crown of St. Stephen. The Habsburg family is the only one that can succeed to the Hungarian throne in the eyes of a very great majority of Magyars. Dr. Benes, it is argued, should not forget that he has outraged both the religious and royalist feelings of his neighbors many times in the stand which he and his associates took against the attempts of the late Emperor Karl to regain the throne of Hungary.

The attack on Czecho-Slovakia goes farther. In the peace settlement Hungary lost 119,847 square miles of land, or over two-thirds of her territory, together with her richest mining districts and nearly 3,500,000 Magyars, or about one-third of her pre-war Magyar population. To this must be added the fact that Hungary was less guilty in the events that led up to the outbreak of the War than was any other of the Central Powers. Yet she has suffered more severely than any of the late enemy countries.