Tightrope- Walker Dies

A swarthy, little Magyar, with almond eyes, bristling, black mustache and sensuous lips that spat Hungarian, German, French, English, Italian, Spanish and Russian with the staccato speed of a Browning machine gun, died in Budapest last week. He was 46-year-old Count Stephen Csaky, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs, in whose aristocratic veins flowed the blood of Hungary's unscrupulous, wheedling past. Assured of a career by virtue of birth, Count Csaky became Europe's foremost professional in the art of diplomatic tightrope-walking even after the rope had become a Balkan tangle.

In 1938 he recognized harmonious cadences between Axis plans and his own ambitions. He was present in Munich when the mold for Europe's "New Order" was laid, and when, as a consequence thereof, Czecho-Slovakia was dismembered, he snatched morsels for Hungary. In 1939, he led Hungary out of the League of Nations and joined the New Order triumvirate as the first outside power. "I have formal assurance," he declared, "that Germany does not intend to attack either Rumania or anyone else." A few months later he was in Rome pleading with Mussolini to dissuade Hitler from occupying Hungary. War brought him wholly into the Axis camp. His reward: a slice of Rumania.

Last month he went to Yugoslavia to sign a treaty of "constant and perpetual friendship." He returned desperately ill--from something he had eaten, no doubt. Uremic poisoning followed. Sinking rapidly last week, he uttered his valedictory: "Hungary will take an active share in building the new European order--particularly in remolding southeastern Europe."

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