Homage to Harmsworth

To pronounce the word "Trianon" casually, at Budapest, is to poke up live coals of Magyar patriotism and evoke recital of how the Allied Powers "ravished and dismembered" Hungary by the Treaty of Trianon in 1920.

_ Today, after eight long years, the national indignation is still keyed to such a pitch that, last week, half a million Magyars welcomed with huzzahs and showered with Spring blossoms a bewildered young Englishman who entered Hungary with the words "Revise the Treaty of Trianon!" upon his lips.

The young man is the Hon. Esmond Cecil Harmsworth, 30, son of the most potent British newspaper tycoon, Viscount Rothermere,* 60, who for years has trumpeted with his Daily Mail and other blatant new organs: Restore to Hungary at least a part of her dismembered lands, which now belong to Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia and Rumania!

Last week the British Viscount who thus champions defeated Hungary before the victorious Allies, sent his son to Budapest, to accept the nation's thanks. As young Esmond Harmsworth approached the Capital in an open motor car the demonstration in his honor became so fervent and spontaneous that he was fairly mobbed by hearty wenches in bright peasant costumes who roughly seized and thoroughly kissed his hand.

When Budapest was reached the Hungarian Parliament extended a unanimous, rising vote of welcome to the son of Lord Rothermere. Flags and bunting fluttered. The Mayor of Budapest came in stately regalia with symbolic gifts of bread and salt. A pageant of three hours' duration trooped past. Justinian Cardinal Szeredy blessed. And, as evening fell, weary Esmond Harmsworth was motored across the Danube and up a steep winding street which leads to the huge, once royal, palace of Archduke Friedrich and Archduchess Isabella. There, at the table of two Habsburgs whom royalist Hungarians still acclaim as royal, was served a banquet worthy of the days of snowy-haired Franz Josef, late King of Hungary and Emperor of Austria.

Strangely enough the Hon. Cecil Esmond Harmsworth was not officially received either by Prime Minister Count Stephen Bethlen or by His Serene Highness, Admiral Nicholas Horthy de Nagybanya, Governor of the Kingdom of Hungary, who reigns in place of the departed Habsburgs. This important double omission was made at the insistent request of the British Foreign Office, perhaps because Viscount Rothermere has recently broken with and withdrawn the support of his newspapers from British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin (TIME, Nov. 7).

Presumably no vestige of pique at the enforced omission remained in the mind of Esmond Harmsworth, next day, when he accepted for Lord Rothermere a made-in-Hungary automobile with a chassis of re-enforced silver and a body overlaid with hammered gold. The donor, Herr Franz Bert, pioneer Hungarian motor manufacturer, was reported to have spent upon his well-meant if gaudy gift $200,000.

* Brother and principal heir of the late Lord Northcliffe who had no children.