The Phoenix Land (41 page)

Hohler accepted my proposed solution, and so I, having obtained my government’s approval, gave it to him in writing.

This document put an end to all the unholy complications brought about by the king’s
putsch
. It is true that Benes’s attempts at blackmail had not wholly come to an end, for he now claimed that we pay the cost of the Czechoslovak mobilization. This was going too far, even for the Council of Ambassadors, and was sternly rejected.

One evening during that awful time I received a strange
communication
.

It was very late. I had stayed all day at my desk in the Foreign Ministry; had I been anywhere else, anxiety would have been the end of me. I needed to be there so as to be at hand if any news came in on which I would have to take immediate action. I was there each day from morning until late at night, remaining long after my secretary and cabinet chief had gone home. It was sheer worry that kept me there, for it was always possible that one of our neighbours might have provoked a border incident and used this as a pretext to invade us. I had withdrawn the border guards from the frontier to lessen this danger. I had prevented our mobilization, as I have already mentioned; but the consequence was that had Benes or the Yugoslavs attempted a strike, I alone would have been responsible for our defenceless state, and I could never have borne to have had that on my conscience.

Those were terrible nerve-shattering hours.

It was one of those awful evenings – I fancy it was during the first week of the Czech mobilization that someone knocked at my door and entered. It was one of the older clerks who was doing duty on the switchboard. I asked what he wanted, and he told me that a highly confidential communication had come in from Vienna and that it was something he could tell only to me and face-to-face. I replied that we could not be more alone as we were the only two people in the building.

So he read me what had arrived.

Our chargé d’affaires in Vienna reported that he had received a visit from an individual who had declared his intention of killing Benes and had come to the Hungarian representative simply because he had no money with which to make his escape and so was asking us for a million crowns (due to inflation this was not a large sum in those days). The chargé d’affaires asked what he should do.

I shuddered as I heard this. All the same, I asked a few
questions
. Who was this man? Where did he come from? Did they know him?

My clerk was unable to give me a proper answer. The message had been very cryptic. The name of the man had not been
disclosed
, which was not surprising; and all they had said was that he was a German-Moravian and a passionate supporter of the emperor, which is why he had decided to do this. He only needed the money to escape afterwards. Vienna asked only for one word: yes or no. Nothing else: but they wanted it at once. There was to be nothing in writing and so no trace of our complicity. But they wanted an immediate reply.

I made my decision at once. I said ‘No!’ and this was wired to Vienna that evening.

I tell this now not to represent myself as a Cato-like hero or as deserving a halo like the early Christians who, if struck on the right cheek, promptly proffered the left. Neither do I maintain that Benes owed his life to me. Few assassinations succeed where the assassin is not ready to lose his own life. And when they do succeed, like Caserio Princip and other fanatics, it is when they have no care for their own safety. We have seen recently that none
of the attempts at killing Hitler have been successful because in each case the assassins tried to save their own skins, not that I thought of this at the time.

Although I at once rejected the proposal, it did flash through my mind how advantageous it would be for us if Almighty God, in his infinite mercy, were to remove Benes from this Vale of Tears. But somehow assassination is alien to the Hungarian character. In our entire history there has only been one instance of it, in the fourteenth century, when Kis-Károly, Carol the Small, of Naples had been crowned king by a group of
hereditary
magnates in the aftermath of the long-drawn-out disputes over the succession following the death of Lajos I and was killed by followers of the Queen Mother Erzsébet in February 1386. In other countries there have been countless instances, but not in Hungary. Maybe it is a sign of weakness, or a lack of fiery temper, or even an incapacity for hypocrisy. It is also possible that if one Hungarian becomes enraged with another for some political reason and rants about it loudly and without restraint, someone will get to hear about it – even if he imagines he has spoken out only in secret, and he will find himself arrested before further trouble can be made.

I repeat that I do not recount this so as to blow my own
trumpet
. I write it because it is true, and because it forms part of the picture of these troublesome times.

Later I found out who this mysterious would-be assassin was. He was a junior clerk who had tried to be many things in his life, including a private tutor and a dockworker, and who was an excitable and ambitious man. Restless and fanatic he seems to have ended his days in a lunatic asylum. I was told his name, but I have now forgotten it.

In drawing up the balance sheet of King Karl’s mad
adventure
we must not lose sight of all the damage it did.

In foreign affairs it spoilt forever our relationship with the new states and put an end to any possibility of later understanding. It was due to the king’s
putsch
that the
‘Little Entente’
was formed. Before that happened we had been on fairly good terms even though we had not signed treaties to prove it and we all still had complete freedom to act as we might wish. This had been clearly
shown by our discussions in Marienbad. From then on, instead of having a friendly alliance with Austria and Czechoslovakia, we had to contend with the anti-Hungarian ‘Little
Entente
’ under the leadership of Benes. It was no longer possible for us to discuss mutual problems with each state individually, because all issues had to be submitted to all three, with the result that nothing ever got decided.

The
putsch
also caused great damage to the Hungarian army, which was then in the process of being reorganized. Many of our best and most experienced officers left the service because of their divided loyalties between the new oath to Horthy and their former oath to the king. Instead we found ourselves with a much less effective cadre, for very few of the new officers had had any wartime experience.

There were also divisions in all ranks of society. The Catholic lesser clergy and most of the great landowners, and those with average sized estates, became Legitimists. This was especially true in western Hungary. The clergy hoped, through the
influence
of Queen Zita, to obtain important places in the hierarchy of the Church, while the aristocrats, with only a few exceptions, refused to accept any public duties, thus aping the example of the French Legitimists, when Louis-Philippe, Napoleon III and the Third Republic came to power after the fall of the Bourbons. The young Hungarians of noble families went even further. The French at least were willing to serve in the army or as diplomats, because they believed that thereby they were serving their
country
rather than its present government. The young Hungarian aristocrats, on the other hand, stopped short of this and, because they were the most talented of their generation, had command of other languages, were in better financial circumstances and had more knowledge of the world, and were therefore at that time the most suited to a diplomatic career, their abstention had a most unhappy effect on our representation abroad. By taking this
attitude
they also did damage to themselves and, in their idleness, found little else to do but amuse themselves gambling and
drinking
– and not a few ruined themselves doing it.

Our immediate loss was the Burgenland. As I have already written, the Venice Agreement stipulated that, until the
plebiscite that was finally to establish our new borders, our armed forces would remain there under the command of General Ferrario. But after Lehár had led them away to Budapest with his lies, they had all dispersed and had been replaced by foreign troops, mostly Italian
carabinieri
, and this had made the locals believe that Hungary had abandoned them. Although the plebiscite still went well in and around Sopron, the modifications of the proposed new frontier, according to the famous
Lettre d’Envoi
for which we had hoped after Venice, were now lost to us. Instead of a rational border which would have been much to our advantage, we found ourselves bound to accept the nonsensical rearrangement of the frontier lands as occupied two years later by Austria, which was to prove so much to the detriment of the local inhabitants.

I do not hold poor King Karl personally responsible for all this. He was a naïve man: weak as putty in the hands of those who wanted to obtain power through him. Truly responsible were those who turned his head with news which they knew not to be true; who were well aware of the realities of the situation in the country; and who, as experienced politicians, could not have failed to understood the ruin that restoration would have brought with it.

They were the real culprits, and no amount of justification can ever absolve them of their guilt.

Chapter Seven

The king’s adventure was over, and less dramatic times followed. Nevertheless, I had plenty to do. There were so many documents I had to study and much I had to store in my memory that, for days at a time, I would be at my desk from morning to night, often until as late as ten or eleven o’clock. The Burgenland crisis and the king’s
putsch
had meant that for over two months
decisions
on every essential measure had been postponed, and so speed was vital to clear up the backlog.

Our first task was to establish our embassies abroad. This had already been started before, but now we had to decide about two of the most important – London and Washington. There were also a number where our ambassadors had resigned after the king’s
putsch
and where new men had to be found.

This was also the time for our first discussions with the Soviet Union over the release of 26,250 Hungarian prisoners of war. The other ranks had been sent home in 1919 and 1920, but the officers had not yet been released. An agreement in principle had been reached by the Teleki government, but no details had been decided. We had to make contact through the Soviet Embassy in Vienna. After much discussion we finally reached agreement in Riga. If I remember rightly it was on the basis of nine to one – nine of our officers for every one of those Soviet soldiers who had been thrown into prison after the fall of the Communist regime in Budapest. Although some of these – ten or twelve, I fancy – who had been given long or short prison terms, the majority had been condemned to death. I was much relieved that these men had been saved and would be able to take up a normal life again in Russia because I am, and always have been, opposed to the death penalty for political offences. Freedom of opinion is
a basic human right, and although it may be justified to deprive a man of his liberty for the sake of public order, I consider it
barbaric
to deprive him of life. That can never be a matter of
justice
: only of political revenge.

It was at this time that we signed the peace treaty with
America
. This was done with much ceremony. We gathered at the American Embassy, which was then situated in the town house of the Széchenyi family on Andrássy Street. The treaty
document
had been prepared on a splendid sheet of parchment and was signed by the American ambassador and myself. The seals were applied, and it was this part of the ceremony that revealed how backward the old European countries could seem,
compared
with the technical advances of the New World.

First we had to melt the sealing wax, which was not easy as the seal itself was the size of a pocket-watch, and this meant that the wax had to be stirred while being heated so as to remain fluid. Khuen-Héderváry did the stirring with exemplary zeal, but even so the first two attempts were unsuccessful, and the wax had to be re-heated again and again until the deed was finally done. Not so the Americans who produced a clever little machine that was just placed on the document and, in one second, the Stars and Stripes and the American eagle were stamped on the page.

I was somewhat ashamed of our old European backwardness, all the more so as there were several American reporters there who took photographs throughout the ceremony and who seemed to find our archaic methods infinitely comical
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.

When the signing was over this important event was brought to an end with a number of impressive speeches declaring that from then on everlasting peace would reign between our two countries. These were not empty words, for we all believed it.

At that time nobody could imagine that the day would come when a Hungarian foreign minister would be mad enough to declare war on the most powerful country in the world
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.

Our most serious problem in appointing new ambassadors lay in deciding who should represent us in London and Washington.

I would have preferred to have György Festetics for London. His mother had been a daughter of the Duke of Hamilton, and so he had many relations in England. We had served together
when I had been sent to England, and he was a highly
experienced
man with very sound judgment. Unfortunately, he would not accept the post. Despite this, I remained on good terms with his father who, even after the Legitimist
putsch
, continued to support my efforts. As it was, I found myself obliged, for want of a better man, to appoint Lászlo Szapáry, the former governor of Fiume, an ex-diplomat who was now quite elderly. At first he did his work well, but after a while declined into senility, fell in love with a young typist and started to neglect his work. He had to be recalled; but this happened after my time.

My choice for Washington was Lászlo Széchenyi. It was true that he had never held any official post but, as his father had been ambassador in Berlin for many years and his brother Dénes had been the last Austro-Hungarian ambassador in Denmark, he had grown up in an atmosphere of diplomacy. Lászlo was a realist and had a steady nerve. He had often been in the United States, which he knew well, and his wife was Gladys Vanderbilt, of the family of railway millionaires. For me this was a most important point in his favour since it would make a great deal of difference to the style of our embassy if it could rely on the support of her brothers’ millions.

I could not admit this at the time, for Gladys was immediately suspicious that her husband had been chosen because of her. This, of course, was true; but it was not only because she was rich.

Gladys Vanderbilt was not only very beautiful she was also one of the most intelligent women I have ever met. She had a good heart, and in spirit she had become remarkably Hungarian. Even if she had not had a penny of her own she would still have been a wonderful support for her husband. After long
correspondence
the appointment was finally agreed; and in this Lászlo’s elder brother Dénes was a great help, for together we explained to her that her husband would have been chosen even if she were not his wife. Her last worry was that her husband had no experience in office matters, but this was resolved when I assured her that the highly professional János Pelényi would remain with him in Washington until Széchenyi had fully learned his trade.

Pelényi was indeed a great help. He had gone to America at the beginning of 1920, officially as a delegate of the Protestant church, but with semi-official diplomatic status. He had an exceptional brain and a huge capacity for work. Before 1914 he had been consul in Cleveland. Just before war was declared he had become engaged to a charming but penniless American girl, and it was a measure of her sympathetic character that she waited for him until he was able to return after the war had ended.

When I first took office I had wanted to appoint him as
counsellor
at our Washington embassy, with the rank of head of
mission
. There was, however, just one serious obstacle: what would the man live on? America was a very expensive country, and the pay was not enough for a man with a family to support. As it stood, he could not possibly accept the appointment. I wanted to establish a special rate of pay for Pelényi and so discussed his promotion with Khuen-Héderváry before raising the matter with Nuber, whose job was to control all payments made by the foreign office.

I called him and told him what I proposed to do. Nuber demurred. I do not know if there may have been some old grudge between him and Pelényi dating back to the days when Nuber was consul-general in New York and Pelényi was his subordinate in Cleveland, but, whatever the reason, Nuber protested vehemently. He declared that it was impossible for anybody, no matter where he was posted, to get a higher salary than was due to his grade. I asked if he could get a supplement for the high cost of living? No, that was not possible. Nuber quoted all the official texts that prohibited such a proceeding. I retorted that is was his job to find a paragraph that would allow it, because such things can always be found if one really wants to do so. This only made Nuber even angrier.

The man’s behaviour was quite improper and if I had not been restrained by my own sense of humour I would have become very angry too. As it was the scene was irresistibly comic: the little grey man jumping up and down with rage in the middle of the room and stamping on the floor with his tiny feet. He was like Chaplin doing a Red Indian war dance. He was throbbing with anger, huffing and puffing, sneezing and screaming, so
much so that I almost burst out laughing. For a moment I left him to his stamping about and his rage and then said:

‘Look, Mr Nuber, I must ask you a few questions. As a
minister
, do I have the right to give a man a special task and then
remunerate
him for his extra work and for the expenses entailed?’

‘Why, of course … yes … but it isn’t allowed … it isn’t allowed…!’ screeched the little man.

‘Wait a moment, please. Do I have the right to establish a fixed expense allowance?’

‘Why, yes, that too is possible … but of course it isn’t allowed!’

‘All right. Look! I shall give Pelényi a special assignment. It will be to look after the well being of our immigrant workers in America, to help them maintain their Hungarian traditions and to visit them for this purpose whenever his other responsibilities permit. Therefore I authorize payment of the sum I have already mentioned, which will be paid from the secret fund and which will officially be granted for travel expenses.’

Little Nuber was so surprised he almost sat down on the
parquet
floor.

‘You see? As I said before, one can find a legal way to do
anything
if one really wants to! And so now, Mr Consul-General, go back to your office, have the official documentation typed up so that I can sign the order in the morning.’ When he was almost at the door, I called after him: ‘Thank you very much for your excellent advice.’

It was a comic incident.

What was not so amusing was the silent resistance of the
ministry’s
permanent staff who tried to sabotage everything that I proposed and every measure I put forward to modernize our methods and bring them into line with the spirit of the times. The administration as a whole was still rigidly following the methods of the Ballplatz
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without having that ministry’s ancient traditions. This was because most of the civil servants we employed now came from the lower grades of the old consular service or from other ministries.

The master spirit of the Ballplatz reactionaries was Kálmán Kánya, the minister’s permanent adviser. He had also moved up
from the consular corps having served in his youth in the Balkans – in Üsküb, if I remember rightly – and later in Mexico and other far distant posts. From here he managed to get
transferred
to the Foreign Ministry in Vienna, firstly in the personnel department and later was accepted into the diplomatic service itself. It is said that it was he who drafted the ultimatum to Serbia in 1914.

In the old civil service lists he appears as ‘Herr von Kania’.

He was highly intelligent, with a vast knowledge of archives and historical events; but he was also spiteful and malicious, ambitious and vengeful. He loved to play at conspiracies. He financed confidential agents in Upper Hungary, in the lower Carpathians and in Yugoslavia, which would have been
acceptable
if he had not made the mistake of being personally in touch with them. He got himself into trouble over this more than once, for these informers were apt to turn to blackmail, and on one occasion his name was mentioned in a criminal trial in Bratislava. These activities he concealed from successive ministers because, in his view, such people were, like me, ‘newcomers’ who had not sprung from a lifetime in the Foreign Ministry and who were therefore categorized as dilettantes and interlopers here today and gone tomorrow. Such people should be told nothing. He, of course, would always be there and so everything must depend on him, and on him alone. Indeed, that is how it was; and he was feared by everyone.