Magyar Kiralyi*

Saying that he hoped to see the royal regime re-established before his death, Count Albert Apponyi, (pronounced Ar'-pan-yee) 81, Grand Old Man of Hungary, said to pressmen at Geneva:

"Nine-tenths of the Hungarian people, including, myself, would gladly welcome the return to a monarchy. Budapest would receive our exiled Queen and Prince Otto as our King with enthusiasm, but the big European powers object to this natural and rational solution of the simple dynastic problem.

"Therefore the royal family remains in exile instead of reigning in our capital."

Apponyi Albert Grof (which is the Hungarian way of saying Count Albert Apponyi) has been a life-long monarchist. Born in 1846, two years before the famed Kossuth revolution, he was closely identified with the liberal Kossuth and Deak parties, although his policies while in office were not always liberal according to Anglo-Saxon standards. And throughout his 55 years of public service he has upheld the monarchical principle and latterly the Habsburg dynasty.

Once, before the War, Count Apponyi visited the U. S., receiving a great ovation. And once after the War (TIME, Oct. 1, 1923), he traveled to the U. S. to plead the cause of his mutilated country. Standing erect, well over six feet tall, gaunt & sinewy, his grizzled beard almost covering his necktie, he is a commanding figure. And speaking a dozen languages fluently--English almost perfectly--with a rare gift for oratory and inescapable charm, he has made himself a world-wide figure, known intimately, and usually beloved, by the statesmen of at least two continents. It is doubtful if the word of any living Hungarian carries as much moral weight as that of Count Apponyi.

It is probably true that nine-tenths of the Hungarian race favors the return of the Habsburg dynasty, not so much because it has any special love for that Royal House as because the return of the Royal House has been forbidden and its members proscribed by the Allies, particularly by the Little Entente (Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Jugo-slavia).

Twice in 1921 the late onetime Emperor Karl (King Karl IV of Hungary) attempted to regain his Hungarian throne; each time he was thwarted: the Little Entente powers, by threatening armed intervention, forced Admiral Nicholas Horthy de Nagybanya, Governor of Hungary, and his able Premier, Count Stephan Bethlen, to oppose his ill-advised return and to hand him and Empress Zita over to the British, who exiled him to Funchal on the Island of Madeira, where he died on April 1, 1922, of pneumonia.

These events were bitter pills for the Hungarian monarchists. Legitimists flocked to the Opposition; moderates became reactionaries; even Socialists were swayed to monarchism; the onetime Emperor became almost a martyr and his little son, "King" Otto, became a national idol. Count Albert Apponyi was one of the last Hungarian statesmen to see his rightful King alive. Said he once: "I shall never forget the shame of visiting His Majesty at the abbey at Tihany [where he was temporarily imprisoned by Hungarian troops prior to his delivery to the British]. If I had never been a monarchist before, I should have become one during my painful, short conversation with the King. I assured him that the sacrifices he was making would ever be remembered by the Hungarian nation and that his cause was Hungary's. It was terrible that Hungarians should have so debased themselves as to hand over their monarch to an enemy without even a fight."

That was more than five years ago. Since that time the situation has changed. Hungary was compelled by the Little Entente to pass a law forever excluding the Habsburgs. But Hungarians regard this law as an act of duress. At the first possible opportunity they will pass another law; but whether that law will restore Otto to his royal rights, proclaim his popular cousin (Albrecht) king or allow the National Assembly to elect whomsoever it pleases, nobody can say. All that Hungarians are conscious of is that their "Kingless Kingdom on the Danube" is an anomaly that, for political reasons, must soon be decided one way or the other.

*Hungarian for "Hungarian King" (pronounced Mod'djor Kee' rye-ce).