"Good, Safe Investment"

Although European bankers had promised to provide all the money for the $50,000,000 international Hungarian loan, keen satisfaction was displayed in Hungary when a reallotment of the loan to the extent of $10,000,000 was made to a group of U. S. bankers. Said Premier Count Stephen Bethlen: "We had already obtained from the principal banks of Europe guarantees for the whole of the $50,000,000 required. Our appreciation of the present American action is therefore relatively disinterested and all the more sincere." Describing the policy of his Government as one of peace and reconstruction, the Premier continued: "Within the last three months, Hungary has raised more than $18,000,000 internally as capital for the new national bank and State requirements, and has simultaneously raised and collected taxes, so as to increase the revenues for the first four months of this year to a point far higher than the estimates of the financial experts of the League of Nations.* The actual yield of our principal taxes exceeds by 46% the League's anticipation and by 80% the yield of 1923. "Our own Hungarian bankers, although they have already raised a new internal loan, are showing confidence in the foreign loan by taking $2,000,000 of it. The bankers of the other European countries, who offered to provide the whole $50,000,000, were evidently satisfied with the security we offered. Now the American bankers have also decided that Hungary is a good, safe investment. Hungary will spare no effort to prove that she merits the confidence which Europe and America have now placed in her."

* Hungarian finances are now subject to the control of the League of Nations, which is represented at Budapest by League Commissioner Jeremiah Smith, Jr., of Boston (TIME, Apr. 1, May 12).