Hungary After Trianon

Extract

If there is one thing which, above all others, impresses the mind of the casual traveller through post-war Hungary, it is the amazing resistance to an adverse fate which the people of this Central European country are presenting. Rhapsody—the word most frequently thought of in connection with Hungary—according to my dictionary means : an enthusiastic, high-flown utterance or composition. Well, in so far as its application to post-war Hungary is concerned, this word means something totally different. Hungary’s greatest rhapsody, something infinitely finer than Liszt ever dreamed of, is the slow, firm, unwearying heroism with which she is meeting the trials of Trianon.

Before attempting to show what an amazingly plucky fight Hungary has made since the war, it is necessary that I sketch very briefly the condition of the country before that upheaval.

A thousand years ago the Magyars crossed the Carpathians and settled in the fertile lands to the west; and, from, the time of King and Saint Stephen in the eleventh century, when the nation embraced the Catholic faith, to the commencement of the last war, these people have gone on and on, steadily building up a national culture and a national feeling second to none throughout the world. As early as the fifteenth century, under the rule of Matthyas the Magnificent, Hungary was known as the most brilliant renaissance kingdom in Europe. By the fourteenth year of the present century the country had achieved a civilisation which could not but deeply impress all who came within its influence.