Site designed and created by Razvan Paraianu.

© Created in January 2001, Last revised: January 3, 2004

CHAPTER XIV

Association and Assembly in Hungary

"The laws are merely an instrument for concealing the arbitrary action of the government." — Count Apponyi (now Minister of Educa­tion) at the elections of 1896 (eighth ward of Budapest, October 25).

THOSE who talk of personal freedom in Hungary either do not know their subject, or are guilty of deliberate misrepresentation. It is merely ridiculous to talk of liberty of the subject in a country where societies, unions and clubs of all kinds, public or private, have to obtain Governmental sanction for their existence and can be arbitrarily dissolved at any moment by Ministerial order ; where the Minister of the Interior can actually dissolve a political party as illegal; where the previous intimation of public meetings is not a mere formality, but is used by the local authorities as a means of paralysing all opposition ; where boys are expelled from school for talking their mother tongue in the streets ; where political offenders are detained for weeks and months untried in prison ; where candidates for Parliament arc arrested or reduced to silence ; where an electoral address is often treated as a penal offence ; where deputies are prevented from address­ing their constituents and Parliamentary immunity is sus­pended for purely political reasons.

The reader will be disinclined to believe that such things are possible in the twentieth century in a State which boasts of possessing the most ancient constitution on the Continent. But if he has read the preceding pages at all carefully, he will probably have realized that the resemblances between English and Hungarian institutions, of which Magyar statesmen talk so glibly, are superficial and non-essential. Habeas Corpus, press freedom, strict severance of the judicial from the executive arm, unrestricted right of association and assembly — are conceptions wholly alien to the Magyar spirit, and indeed are incompatible with the monopoly of political power by a single race. It is with the last of these four liberties that I propose to deal in the present chapter.

No Law of Association has ever burdened the Hungarian statute book, and the formation of societies depends upon the goodwill of the Government. The Law of Nationalities (1868, xliv. § 26) guarantees in the most precise terms the right of all citizens, irrespective of nationality, to found associations and societies for the furtherance of language, art, science, trade or agricul­ture, to collect funds for their support and to prescribe their own language. The most important of the non-Magyar societies, the Matica Slovenska or Slovak Academy, was however dis­solved in 1875 by Coloman Tisza,[1] on a charge of political intrigue, and its entire funds and buildings were illegally con­fiscated. Closely following upon this act of oppression, a Minis­terial order was issued on May 2, 1875, by which every associa­tion is bound to submit its statutes to the Government, and can only be definitely constituted after the official sanction has been granted. This has often been withheld or interpreted in the most absurd and arbitrary fashion, and with every decade since the Ausgleich the reins of reaction have been drawn tighter. In 1898, when the intolerable condition of the agricultural labourers led to a so-called " Agrarian Socialist " movement, Bánffy enforced the rescript of 1875 with the utmost severity, and on February 26 of that year issued a fresh order to the county authorities, empowering them to punish any infringe­ment of the rules of association or the slightest connexion with a suspended or dissolved association, with fines and imprisonment up to £8 and fifteen days. Thus under Bánffy, than whom no statesman ever described himself as a Liberal with less justice, it became virtually impossible to form societies at all. Twenty-eight of the existing associations were dissolved, including two in Czeglcd with 3,742 members.[2] In the county of Szatmár the heads of an association number­ing 300 members were summoned to court, and the dissolution of their society announced to them. When their members continued to meet in defiance of the order of the court, gendarmes forced their way into the building, and one of the members was killed in the ensuing scuffle. A capital example of the strange grounds on which permission is sometimes with­held, is supplied by the case of several associations of agricul­tural labourers in the counties of Bács and Torontál in 1898. These could not be sanctioned, ran the official verdict, " because the towns contain sufficient associations following exactly ana­logous aims, and hence those who wish to found the association can satisfy their desire for further self-culture within the limits of already existing associations. Moreover, through the for­mation of fresh associations the powers of those already exist­ing would be weakened."[3]

In November, 1874, the Government imposed its veto upon the Slovak temperance leagues of north Hungary. The so­called " rosary " temperance society which had been founded in O-Bystrica in imitation of Father Mathew's institutions, secured within a few months no fewer than 30,000 members, and its founder was encouraged by this success to invite several Redemptorist Fathers from Galícia to extend the activities of the society. This was treated by the authorities as " Pan­slavism," and the Fathers were obliged to withdraw. The real reason of Governmental action, however, was that the Jewish publicans found it impossible, owing to the new move­ment, to pay their rents to the country magnates whose in­fluence was paramount in high quarters.

Perhaps an even more characteristic example is that of the Slovak singing society of Tiszolcz. In 1879 a number of citizens of this little town submitted to the authorities the bye-laws of their proposed society. These were rejected owing to some trivial technicality, and the amended rules were simply ignored. In December, 1886, the petitioners filed a new copy, and were promptly fined 15s. for inadequate revenue stamping ; on appeal the fine was reduced by one-half, and a higher court disallowed it altogether. In May, 1887, the county authorities decided that in view of Pansláv manifestations in the district the bye-laws must be disallowed, and the Govern­ment, when appealed to, declined to interfere. In 1890 a fresh draft of the bye-laws was submitted to the county author­ities, who refused to recommend their adoption, owing to the " Panslavism " rampant in Tiszolcz ; and again the Govern­ment dismissed the appeal. At the next general elections, one of the leading county officials undertook to recommend the bye-laws for approval, if the petitioners would support the Government candidate. A new draft was therefore submitted, and the name of the proposed society was changed to please the whim of the county clerk. But after endless delays the Government merely returned the bye-laws to the municipality of Tiszolcz for an expression of opinion, and their sanction was no nearer than before. To this day the town has failed to obtain permission to found its singing society ![4]

In the same way the Roumanians have in vain attempted to obtain official sanction for the formation of an Agricultural Association, and numerous women's and teachers' leagues and reading clubs.[5] InSeptember, 1870,the Catholic Slovaks founded the Society of St. Adalbert at Tyrnau, for the publication of cheap literature for the people, especially religious and devotional books, calendars and collections of popular tales.[6] From the very first the society had to face the hostility of the Magyars, and has been repeatedly in danger of dissolution. At its second general meeting in Nyitra, in September, 1871, its proceedings were cut short by a crowd of roughs, and no help was given by the authorities. This incident was actually greeted with approval by a number of Magyar journals, and the Minister of the Interior declined to order any inquiry, though the facts were laid before him.[7]

In 1870 permission was refused to the Roumanian students of Kolozsvár to form an academic society " Minerva," on the grounds that there were already enough of these societies, and that 70 or 80 Roumanian students were too few to form a society ![8] In 1886 an association of the Roumanian ladies of Szatmár for literary and benevolent aims was forbidden on similar grounds.[9]

In 1888 sanction was refused to a society of Roumanian workmen for advancing funds in the case of sickness, on the ground that no need was felt for such a society[10]; and in 1890 to a society of Roumanian ladies of Kolozsvár in aid of Greek Catholic girls' schools, on the ground that the latter did not require any help.[11]

A flagrant example occurred only last spring of the vexatious manner in which the non-Magyar politicians are affected by this lack of the right of association. On February 18, 1908, several of the Roumanian deputies in the Hungarian Parlia­ment opened a small political club at Arad. Shortly after­wards the police of that city applied to Parliament for the suspension of the immunity of Messrs. Goldis, Suciu, Pop and Oncu, on the ground that the club had been opened without previous intimation to the police, and that its statutes had not as yet received the sanction of the Minister of the Interior. At the end of July, Messrs. Suciu and Pop were sentenced to a fine of 150 crowns each, with the alternative of eight days' imprisonment; the other two deputies were acquitted.[12]

But this act of political vexation is a mere trifle compared to the attitude adopted by Dr. Wekerle's first Cabinet towards the Roumanians. For in 1894 Mr. Hieronymi, the Minister of the Interior, went so far as to dissolve the executive com­mittee of the Roumanian National Party, thus placing an arbitrary limit upon the programme which a political party may adopt, and indirectly challenging the non-Magyars to employ violent measures to secure what they might not attempt by constitutional means. This iniquitous step was justified on the ground that a political organization based upon some special racial individuality violates the unity of the political Hungarian nation ("a politika magyar nemzet"), and hence no Hungarian Government can tolerate permanent organiza­tions on a nationalist basis within the frontiers of Hungary.[13] At the elections of January, 1905, Count Tisza's Government declared that it still stood "irrevocably on the standpoint" of Mr. Hieronymi. No more scandalous infringement of political rights can well be imagined, and Dr. Wekerle may be congratulated on the fact that, intolerant as his second Cabinet is in all racial matters, it at least has not attempted to enforce this reactionary decree of his first administra­tion.

The Minister of the Interior even goes the length of dissolv­ing trade unions, whose very existence in Hungary is recent and precarious.[14] As the statutes of trade unions require the sanction of the Minister, they often lie for years unheeded or are simply rejected altogether. Even the present Coalition Government, which makes so great a parade of its enlightened policy of social reform, has not hesitated to annul trade unions in the interests of employers of labour. In 1906 the waiters' union in Arad was suspended, the miners' union in Pécs (Fünfkirchen) was annulled.[15] In December, 1907, the chief szólgabiró of Békéscsaba, accompanied by police and gendarmes, took possession of the Peasants' Club, ejected its members by main force, seized all its papers, books and loose cash and closed and sealed the building.[16] In January, 1908, the captain of police in Kaposvár provisionally suspended another union, because, in the words of the newspaper report, " it attempted to terrorize a printer's assistant."[17] In February, 1908, the Minister of the Interior dissolved the iron and metal workers' union in Györ (Raab), because it had organized a boy­cott of the waggon factory in that town.[18] Such incidents are, however, as nothing compared to the general uncertainty under which the Socialists work, and which helps to explain, if it does not justify, the acrid tone habitually employed by their representative organ the Népszava.

The treatment of the Social Democrats in Hungary during the last ten years has no parallel west of the Vistula. In 1898 agrarian disturbances and the threatened agricultural strikes were met by a veritable reign of terror on the part of the Government. Not merely was the Socialist Press muzzled and confiscated. The help of the postal authorities was requisitioned in order to obtain the private correspondence of the leaders ; domiciliary visits and arbitrary expulsions took place in many of the chief towns, and large numbers of workmen were forcibly photographed by the police. Peasants were for­bidden to visit neighbouring districts or arrested for travelling without passports in their own country![19] In the brief space of eighteen months — from June 13,1897, to December 31, 1898 — sentences were passed against Socialists for political agitation, which reached the total figure of 171 years and 80 days, in addition to fines of over 30,000 crowns. Meanwhile a highly reactionary measure received the sanction of Parliament, which, under pretence of " regulating the legal relations of agricultural employers and employed," made organization or strikes on the part of the workmen well-nigh an impossibility. By these drastic steps the Government temporarily crushed the agrarian movement among the peasants, who, despairing of improved conditions in Hungary, began to emigrate in thousands, until by the year 1907 many districts had been depleted of the flower of their population. The alarming increase of emigration dates from the Bánffy-Darányi repression ; and it is highly significant that Banffy's Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Darányi, should continue to hold the same office under the Coalition Government.[20] During the winter of 1907-8 the financial crisis in America and the consequent unemployment put a check to emigration from Hungary, and the figures for 1908 will therefore be less alarming. During the past three years Socialism has again begun to gain ground in Hungary, partly owing to the disgust felt by the working classes at the manner in which politicians wrangled over a barren constitutional issue, while neglecting the most pressing economic questions. In 1905 the Agricultural Labourers' League numbered 13,814 members ; at the end of 1906, 48,616 members ; in June, 1907, 72,562 members in 577 groups. Since then several hundred branches have been dissolved, with the result that in December, 1907, the numbers had sunk to 11,910 in 145 groups. In the year preceding this latter date, 698 agricultural labourers were sentenced by szólgabirós to 6,721 days (=18 years, 261 days) and 29,772 crowns in fines ; while sentences amounting to 62 months and 4,300 crowns were passed on Socialist news­papers by the Budapest courts alone.

A slovak festival,

(From the painting by Joža Uprka.)

PUBLIC MEETING

II

No public meeting of any kind may be held in Hungary with­out previous intimation having been given to the szólgabiró and his formal permission having been granted. Intimation is of course necessary in most Continental countries, and there is no doubt a good deal to be said for such a formality. But to make the holding of a meeting dependent upon the whim of some local bureaucrat, opens the door to every kind of abuse and petty tyranny. In the case of " patriots " — in other words of adherents of the Government — the permission is accorded as a matter of course ; but applications made by non-Magyars or Socialists are treated in a Very different manner. Either they are not dealt with till the last moment and then rejected owing to some technicality, such even as a blot or a mistake in spelling, with the result that the meeting has to be postponed ; or they are refused on the flimsiest pretext, or finally they are ignored altogether.[21] Magyar ideas of freedom of assembly may be gathered from the debates of May 9 to n, 1878, when a Ministerial Order of Tisza restricting this freedom was under discussion. The famous Szilágyi defended the citizen's right of resistance to illegal measures of the authorities, and based his contention not only on the practice of all constitutional states, but even on the new criminal code of Hungary itself. Tisza, however, polemized against what he described as a " street­riot doctrine," and Parliament approved the restrictions which he had imposed.

In 1894 a meeting of Slovak electors of the Turócz district, convoked to discuss the question of the nationalities and electoral reform, was simply forbidden by the szólgabiró; and indeed for many years previous to the Széli Ministry it was well-nigh impossible for the Slovaks to hold a political meeting of any kind.[22]

In 1898 a Ministerial order was sent to all county and muni­cipal authorities, by which popular meetings are only per­mitted if announced twenty-four hours beforehand and sanctioned locally. Any neglect of this rule, or the continu­ance of a meeting after it has been dissolved, are punishable with fourteen days and £8.[23] Meetings were then forbidden wholesale, in the hope of crushing out the Agrarian Socialist movement. As an example of the reasons adduced for such refusal, we cannot do better than quote the words of the captain of police in Czegléd (June n, 1898): "The meeting is not allowed," he wrote, "because it does not seem suitable that the workmen should concern themselves with questions which offer no advantages to them, or should be roused to excitement in public assemblies." A well-known story in Hungary tells how a waggish official once forbade an open-air political meeting for want of space, the proposed "room" being" too cramped and low." As recently as October, 1907, the notorious szólgabiró of Holies, on the Moravian frontier, Szabó by name, forbade a political meeting on the following astonishing grounds: " I cannot sanction the holding of the popular assembly, firstly . . . because in the matter of 'Universal, secret, equal and communal suffrage,' it is not mentioned in what sphere the exercise of this suffrage is aimed at — whether in communal or municipal autonomy, or in the Churches, or in the State. It is not stated in what connexion this right of franchise is to be exercised, and it is also not made clear whether this right of franchise, whose propaganda it is desired to proclaim, is to be exercised in the territory of the Hungarian State or in that of another State."[24]

An equally outrageous case occurred the same autumn in Pressburg, where a joint political meeting was to have been held in favour of Universal Suffrage by Mr. Bokányi and another Socialist leader, and a number of non-Magyar deputies. Per­mission was refused because speeches in Slovak were announced. And yet there are many thousand Slovak workmen in the city, to say nothing of the surrounding population.

Even when permission is granted, a police officer attends officially and has the right at any moment to dissolve the meeting or deprive the speaker of the word. Any phrase which might be construed as a demonstration against the authori­ties, against the upper classes, against property, is apt to draw down this fate upon the meeting. For instance, on July 23, 1899, the Slovaks of Liptó St. Miklós held a public meeting, in which they demanded the use of the Slovak language in the schools. One of the speakers, a schoolmaster named Salva, who has since been suspended for " Pansláv agitation," was admonished by the szólgabiró, Mr. Jóob, to avoid using the term" Slovak," and even when he substituted for it the word " man," he was not allowed to proceed.[25]

On February 3,1908 the Socialists of the county of Vas held a congress at Szombathely (Steinamanger), but hardly had the secretary begun to read the annual report when the police official who was present dissolved the meeting, on the ground that the speaker was inciting against employers of labour.[26] In April, 1908, the Socialist apprentices of Budapest wished to hold a congress, but Dr. Boda, the captain of police, refused his permission and declared that he would never allow persons under tutelage to hold meetings of any kind.[27] In the same month the Social Democrats had summoned a congress to meet at Békés during Easter week, and delegates from 214 communes had announced their intention of attending. At the very last moment the chief szólgabiró of the district for­bade the opening of the congress, on the grounds that the holding of assemblies at Easter is offensive to religious senti­ment, and that the programme of the meeting, in advocating the nationalization of land, involves an " incitement against property," in the sense of the criminal code.[28] According to the report of the Social Democratic Party, over 200 Socialist meetings were prohibited in Hungary in the year 1906-7 alone.

But if the right of assembly is thus interpreted in Hungary on ordinary occasions, what is to be said of the manner in which it is applied at parliamentary elections ? Freedom of speech depends not upon the letter of the law, but upon the whim of the local officials, and prosecutions are frequent for phrases used in electoral speeches and programmes. A whole book might be written to describe the illegalities of a single general election. But rejecting all stories of victims and opponents and merely Consulting the files of a Ministerial organ during the elections of 1896, we find that (apart altogether from rioting, cavalry charges and volleys of ball cartridge) in Aranyos-Maróth two priests and a clerk were arrested for canvassing, by order of the High Sheriff,[29] that in Ugod the szólgabiró arrested the priest of Jako because he " instigated the peasants,"[30] and that in Kisucza-Ujhely the priest and his curate were arrested owing to their " unbounded agitation."[31] Needless to say only the most glaring cases are chronicled in the official Press ; the arrest of an opposition candidate at the height of the election is by no means an unheard-of incident in Hungary, and the supporters of a non-Magyar are treated with the very scantest ceremony. A szólgabiró has even been known to expel a Social Democratic candidate from his constituency, on the pretext that the Minister of the Interior's permission had not been obtained for his candidature. At a bye-election in Bazin (Co. Pressburg) in the spring of 1907, two Slovak deputies were actually ejected from a village where they wished to address a meeting on behalf of the Slovak candidate, Mr. Ivánka ; and similiar treatment has repeatedly been meted out to Roumanian deputies in Transylvania. Candidates are fre­quently prohibited from addressing their constituents.[32]

Reasons of space prevent me from describing the endless restrictions placed in Hungary upon the personal liberty of the subject, at least of the non-Magyar subject. A whole book could be written upon the affronts and vexations by which the official classes seek to render the lives of nationalists intolerable. Meanwhile the incidents which I propose to quote will perhaps impress those readers whom the recital of broken and neglected laws has left unmoved.

A careful system of espionage is organized by the local notary and szólgabiró, the Jewish innkeeper proving a valuable auxiliary ; and the appearance of a foreigner in an outlying district is viewed with great suspicion, unless he is in the company of some " patriotic " Magyar, bent upon showing him " Potem­kin villages." A Ruthene professor from Galicia who has devoted many years to the study of folklore and peasant customs, visited some years ago a small Ruthene colony which still exists in the great plain of Hungary. When he went among the peasants and talked to them in their native lanugage, the szólgabiró scented treason and asked him for his passport. It was written in Polish. What further proof was necessary ? He was arrested as a Pansláv agitator, and was detained in the local jail until a telegram from the Austrian Premier to Budapest released him from his uncomfortable position.[33] In the autumn of 1907 Dr. Paul Blaho, the Slovak Member of Parliament, entertained some Czech journalists, personal friends of his own, at his house in Szakolcza without announc­ing their arrival to the police. For this, on February 3, 1908, his parliamentary immunity was suspended, not on the ground that the law had been violated (for it had not), but that the visit had political objects ![34] In the same way another Slovak deputy, Mr. Skyčák, entertained a Bohemian priest at his house for a single day, and having omitted to notify his ar­rival, was sentenced by the szólgabiró of Námesztó to a fine of £8.[35]

Every effort is made to prevent the erection of public in­scriptions of any kind in a non-Magyar language ; and as a result, there are not half a dozen inns with Slovak inscriptions throughout Slovensko — a territory as large as Lancashire, Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland, and inhabited by over two million Slovaks. The Jews, who hold most of the drink licences in their hands, dare not put up notices in Slovak for fear of the proprietor's disapproval.[36] Even such notices as " Beware of the steam tram," or " Keep off the grass," are generally posted in Magyar only ; and of course in every railway station and post office of the kingdom all inscriptions are exclusively Magyar. The Slovak or Roumanian peasantry who are ignorant of the language, are ordered about like cattle by the officials whose duty it is to attend to all passengers irrespective of language ; and I myself have more than once seen the booking-office window slammed in the face of a peasant who dared to ask for a ticket in his native tongue. The inconvenience caused to foreigners who are expected to recognize the historic towns of Hermannstadt, Kronstadt, Tyrnau, and Pressburg under the alias of Nagy Szebcn, Brassó, Nagy Szombat, and Pozsony, is trifling com­pared to the injustice suffered by the non-Magyars, who are thus treated as aliens in the country of their ancestors.

The same fate follows the non-Magyars after death. The Town Council of Budapest has prohibited the erection in the leading cemeteries of the city of tombstones bearing non-Magyar inscriptions. This act of petty interference with the most sacred family rights was of course directed against the 130,000 Germans and the 30,000 Slovaks who live in Budapest. In some churchyards in the north of Hungary it has been found necessary by the Slovaks, who were unwilling to place Magyar inscriptions over their dead, to resort to neutral Latin as the only language which they could employ without opposition.

In a country where the racial feud throws its shadow upon the graves of the dead, it was hardly to be expected that the non-Magyars would be free to erect monuments to their national heroes. In 1895 public subscriptions were invited from the Roumanians of Transylvania for the erection of a monument to Jancu, their leader in 1848 ; but the Minister of the Inte­rior prohibited this action and confiscated the money which had already been collected by the " Albina " Savings Bank. This money was deposited in a bank in Arad, and after a lapse of nine years, instead of being restored to the original sub­scribers, was arbitrarily handed over by the Minister of the Interior to the Roumanian literary and cultural League, a society whose avowed aims are the very reverse of Jancu's admirers.[37]

When in October, 1902, a handsome monument was erected to Matthias Corvinus in the market place of Kolozsvár, John Motia, a Roumanian priest, had the temerity to remind public opinion that the great king whom the Magyars celebrated' as one of the glories of their race, was a Roumanian by birth, and had even less of Ärpád's blood in his veins than the present writer. After quoting the ancient proverb " King Matthias is dead, and with him justice has died," he reminded his readers that Corvinus, should he rise from the dead, would see close to his statue the home of modern justice, where the flower of his Roumanian nation were sentenced for their loyal appeal to his successor.[38] The Jury Court of Kolozsvár sentenced Father Motia for this article to a year's imprisonment and a fine of 1,000 crowns, for incitement against the Magyar nation­ality and glorification of a criminal act. The Curia annulled this decision and ordered a fresh trial, but the court again imposed the same severe sentence. On June 2, 1904, the Curia at length acquitted Motia of laudatio criminis, and sen­tenced him on the other charge to two months and 20ocrowns.[39]

But it is not merely monuments which are regarded as illegal; the most harmless objects are liable to confiscation, if they serve the purpose of encouraging a non-Magyar language. In 1907 the American Slovak League issued national medals, bearing on the one side the head of Dr. Paul Mudroň, the well-known Slovak advocate in Márton, and the words, " Já som pisni že som Slovak " (I am proud to be a Slovak), and on the reverse the phrase, 'Za tu našu slovenčinu " (For our Slovak language).[40] Following the custom of many German patriotic and charitable societies, the League also issued Slovak stamps. On April 3, 1908, the Minister of the Interior, Count Andrássy, issued a special order to all county assemblies, forbidding the sale or use of these stamps and medals, and enjoining"the confiscation of the latter.[41]

In December, 1907, the attention of the County Assembly of Csík was drawn to the fact that certain Roumanian parishes were employing seals with Roumanian inscriptions ; these were promptly confiscated.[42] In the same month the Court of Rózsahegy ordered domiciliary visits in all the photographic studios of the town, in the hope of discovering the negative of a snapshot of Father Hlinka's arrest. This photograph had been reproduced as a picture postcard and widely cir­culated in the North of Hungary ; it was now confiscated, as constituting the glorification of a penal act.[43] A reproduc­tion of this photograph will be found on the opposite page ; it is given not for its artistic value, which is nil, but as an example of what a Hungarian Court regards as laudatio criminis. Great severity is shown to those non-Magyars who venture to carry distinctive banners or colours either at elections or on other occasions. Two ministerial orders of 1874 and 1885 prohibited the use of all save the Hungarian national emblems, though of course no law to that effect exists.[44] A few examples will suffice to show how these orders have been interpreted. In 1886 forty-eight youths of Brassó (Kronstadt) were sentenced for wearing Roumanian tricolour ribbons at the Easter festivities to eight or ten days' imprisonment each and fines varying from 100 to 160 crowns. In February, 1900, twenty­four youths of Salistye were condemned for the same offence to twelve days' imprisonment each, or a total of nine months

and eighteen days; in October, 1903, two priests and an advocate to two days and 100 crowns each. In April, 1908, another Roumanian priest was sentenced to eight days and 200 crowns, because he had decorated the acolytes at the funeral of a parishioner with Roumanian colours.[45] At the elections of 1906 in Verbó seven Slovak peasants from Brezová were sentenced to ten days and 150 crowns each, and five others to five days and 100 crowns each, for carrying white banners on the polling day. This is an ancient custom at Hungarian elections, signifying that the voters of a particular village are voting solid for one candidate ; but it was treated by the local Magyar authorities as savouring of Panslavism. Most incredible of all, however, was the fine imposed upon two Slovak patriots for allowing their children to run about with two­coloured ribbons on their dress !

Even an after-dinner speech or the dispatch of a telegram may lead to serious consequences. In 1892 Gustáv Maršal, a Slovak medical student, was brought before the Court of Újvidék (Neusatz) on the usual charge of " incitement," incurred in a toast which he gave in a company of jovial friends. In his post­prandial eloquence, he was charged with saying that the Danube is and will remain a Slav river. On its banks grow many wil­lows : if only a Magyarone could hang on each ! The lower court and the Royal Table in Szeged acquitted Maršal, but on appeal by the Public Prosecutor, the Curia found that his speech revealed " a deep hatred towards the Magyar nationality," and therefore sentenced him to six months' imprisonment.[46]

The celebration of anniversaries dear to the non-Magyar population is frequently forbidden. The Roumanians are not allowed to commemorate February 28, of the date of Horia's rising in 1785, which broke the chain by which the serfs were bound to the soil; nor May 15 the day of the Roumanian Assembly at Blaj (Balázsfalva) in 1848, and the national oath of loyalty to the Emperor as Grand Prince of Transylvania. In the same way in 1893 the celebration of the centenary of the poet Kollár's birth was absolutely prohibited, and this decision of the county authorities was confirmed by the minister of the Interior. In Mosócz an attempt was made to place a wreath upon the house of Kollár's birth ; but this was frustrated by gendarmes, who scattered the poet's admirers and trampled the wreaths and flowers under foot. In Turócz St. Márton an order was issued that all guests must be announced to the szólgabiró within an hour of their arrival in the little town, under pain of a heavy fine or immediate expulsion. A dinner arranged in honour of the occasion in the Slovak club was prohibited by the authorities ; gendarmes with fixed bayonets guarded its entrance and even prevented an evening dance and the singing of a choral society. A formal greeting sent by the Slav Society in St. Petersburg in honour of the great poet, was opened by the postal authorities and con­fiscated.

On September 8, 1892, a monument was to be unveiled in the little churchyard of Hluboká over the grave of the Rev. J. M. Húrban, the leader of the Slovak bands in 1848. From far and near the country people flocked into Hluboká to be present at the ceremony. But before this could take place, gendarmes appeared upon the scene and ordered the crowd to disperse, threatening to use force unless their orders were strictly obeyed. Only two or three of the nearest relatives were allowed to enter the churchyard at all, and in their indignation at this cruel treatment, they very naturally renounced the ceremony.[47] The pupils of the Roumanian gymnasium and commercial school of Kronstadt (Brassó) have for a number of years past secretly placed wreaths on the grave of Andrew Muresianu, the author of the Roumanian national song " Desteapteto Románéi " (Roumanians awake). In May, 1908, seventeen schoolboys were brought before the police of Kronstadt on this charge, but all denied having taken part in the demonstration. The captain of police required the head master to supply the names of the offenders within twenty-four hours, as otherwise a disciplinary inquiry would be opened against the school.[48]

Of the difficulties with which the non-Magyar press and con­sequently the literatures of the non-Magyar races have to contend, we have spoken in another chapter. A brief allusion may be made here to the attitude of the Magyar authorities towards the theatrical performances of the nationalities. A campaign had long been conducted by the Magyar Chauvinists

SLOVAK TOMBSTON ES.

(Carved and painted)

against the existence of the German drama in Hungary ; and when on December 20, 1889, the German theatre of Pest was burnt to the ground, the Town Council withheld permission for its re-erection. On November 29, 1894, a Magyar deputy delighted Parliament with the blasphemous phrase: "It is to God's help that we owe the burning of the German theatre." In 1896 an order was sent to the directors of all Hungarian watering-places, forbidding them in future to accept offers from German theatrical companies. In the same year Slovak theatri­cals were prohibited in Miava, Rózsahegy, Tiszolcz and Brez­nobánya[49]; and anything more ambitious than amateur or peasant plays is almost invariably forbidden in ' Slovensko." In Versecz, the last German performance was held on September 14, 1897; the manager, in a farewell address, announced that the Minister had refused to renew his licence, and that his com­pany were now without a home.[50] As a special favour of Count Apponyi, the Minister of Education, to whose province all theatrical matters belong, one of the leading Bucarest actors was allowed to go on tour in Transylvania last summer, after his performances had already been vetoed by the local authori­ties.

Perhaps, however, the most outrageous examples of interfer­ence with personal liberty are those connected with the Magyari­zation of family names. Not merely are all non-Magyars entered in the registers and in all public documents under the mangled Magyar form, but petitions are rejected by the Courts if even their signatures retain the non-Magyar forms. Worst of all, pressure is put upon the officials in all Government ser­vices — especially the railways and post office- — to adopt Magyar names. Three striking examples of this will be found in Appendix xxv.

Even in purely commercial matters the Government exer­cises an unfair pressure upon the nationalities. Two examples of this must suffice. In 1903 a limited company was started in Turócz St. Márton, for the manufacture of cellulose. The ven­ture was financed by the Tatra Bank, and a capital of 1,500,000 crowns was all subscribed within a few months. Some of the directors of the board, who were all Czechs or Slovaks, obtained from the Minister of Commerce the promise of the necessary "concession " when the works were ready. On the strength of this, the factory was erected and finished in 1904 ; but on the day when the machinery was first tested, the High Sheriff appeared with gendarmes and ordered the factory to be closed. For eighteen months the new factory remained idle ; permission for the opening was steadily withheld. At length, the Czech shareholders grew tired of the deadlock, and accepted an offer of purchase from a rich Jewish Magyar bank (the Hungarian Credit Bank) which already owned two cellulose factories. The very day after the sale had been effected, the new " patrio­tic " owners began to work the factory without waiting for the concession, and all opposition on the part of the authorities vanished.

A typical example of the difficulties encountered by the young Slovak banks is supplied by the following incident, which I give in the words of a Magyar newspaper : " In August, 1907, Mr. Skyčák, the Slovak deputy, summoned the shareholders of the Slovak People's Bank founded in Jablonka to a new general meeting, because the Court had declined to register the institu­tion owing to formal errors (in the application). The szólga­biró of Turócz, Bulla, however, broke up the meeting forcibly, because foreign citizens also wished to take part in the meet­ing."[51]

It is not necessary to enlarge further up on this subject. The large number of instances which I have adduced above, even at the risk of wearying the reader, should have made it abun­dantly clear that the liberty of the subject and the right of assembly and association are virtually non-existent in Hun­gary, or at best are at the mercy of administrative officials whose standards are hardly those of Western Europe.