The Phoenix Land (46 page)

Chapter Eight

It was the beginning of summer when I returned home from Genoa.

As soon as I was back in the office Kánya, who had deputized for me while I was away, made his reports of what had happened during my absence and what decisions had been taken. I was not able to take charge immediately as I had to spend a week at the Városmajor sanatorium for an urgent but minor operation, and then Professor Manninger only let me go home on condition I did not go out for five or six days afterwards.

On the morning of my return to my own house there occurred the incident that spoilt forever my relationship with Kánya.

It was the day when the Serbian ambassador was to have his first audience with Horthy. This was due to take place at eleven o’clock in the morning with all traditional pomp and ceremony. Kánya mentioned this, along with a number of other matters, but failed even to hint that he had decided to waive some of the traditional customs that had always been observed on such
occasions
. The accepted order of ceremony was that the newly appointed ambassador, in the presence of the foreign minister or his representative, hands over his Letters of Credence to the head of state and pays his respects with a suitable speech to which the head of state replies. After this the ambassador, now fully accredited, presents his suite. According to centuries-old custom, the foreign minister of the host country provides the transport to and from the ambassador’s residence and the palace, and etiquette prescribes that as many cars or carriages needed to seat the entire ambassadorial party comfortably and in a manner suitable to their number and rank will be available. The embassy will previously have let the ministry know what will be needed.
The procession takes place with much festivity and ceremony. At one time gilded carriages would have been used, but now cars were sent with a high state dignitary called the ‘
Introducteur des Ambassadeurs
’ whose presence symbolized the invitation of the ruler and whose duty it also was to escort the ambassador and his suite on the return trip after the audience. We used to entrust this office to István Bárczy, secretary of the prime minister’s office.

All this would be preceded by an exchange of letters between the two countries’ foreign ministries in which the name of the new ambassador was submitted for approval by the host
government
. This is called the
‘Agrément’
– whether it is asking or receiving approval. The government to which the ambassador is being sent has the right to object when the name is submitted, and, if one is not accepted, another name must be put forward.
Agrément
is not required for any other members of the embassy staff, such as attachés or secretaries. It is neither expected nor requested; and foreign ministries are expected to send whom they wish without limitation. All junior members of an embassy staff can be changed whenever the ambassador wishes without any formalities. On the other hand, when the ambassador is changed the whole process has to be gone through all over again in all its stages. This is the unwritten rule of diplomatic practice.

In the case of Yugoslavia, Belgrade acted strictly according to the rules. The name of Mihailovic, who had been Serbian chargé d’affaires in Budapest before the ratification of the peace treaty, was put forward. We gave him the
Agrément
. They also told us all the names of the junior members of the embassy staff, most of whom had already been some time at their posts.

In this case, the situation was somewhat unusual in that neither the ambassador nor his staff arrived after the
Agrément
for the simple reason that they were all there already. This was, of course, one of the effects of our having lost the war, for the Victorious Powers had sent in commissioners without asking for our approval. In this capacity had come in Hohler, Foucher, Castagnetto, and their staffs – and these were all later
automatically
transformed into diplomatic missions.

The credentials of the Yugoslav Embassy, as I have already mentioned, were dealt with by Kánya, while I was still in Genoa; but when he made his report he did not reveal that there had been a difference of opinion between himself and the newly appointed ambassador. Instead he let me understand that
everything
would take place according to the established procedure.

It was Kánya’s plain duty to inform me that he was planning to depart from the usual practice in such a matter as the
presentation
of an ambassador’s credentials, because any such
deviation
was not a simple matter of form but a political act for which the ministry would be held responsible. What Kánya had done was markedly unusual. He had decided that those junior
members
of the new embassy – secretaries and the younger attachés – who had been Hungarian citizens before 1918 would not now be acceptable as staff members of a foreign embassy in Budapest. He had therefore demanded that any such persons – there were two of them – should be changed. The ambassador objected, arguing that such a demand was contrary to all accepted
diplomatic
practice. Apparently this disagreement had gone on for some time without a solution being found – but I had been told nothing about it.

Then arrived the day for the presentation of credentials. The ceremony was due to begin at eleven o’clock. Horthy, my deputy Ambrózy and the standard-bearer, all in full ceremonial dress, were waiting in the palace for the ambassador’s arrival. István Bárczy had left for Pest to collect the ambassador, but Kánya had sent only one car in which there was room only for himself, the ambassador and two members of his staff. Earlier he had sent a message saying that he did not consider former Hungarian
citizens
, whether of Serbian origin or not, to be acceptable as
members
of the embassy, and so any such persons should remain at home. Kánya must have imagined that the ambassador, out of respect for the head of state, would find himself obliged to
present
himself with a reduced suite, and so, by the exercise of this ruse, the question of the disputed attachés would find itself solved. However, the new ambassador told Bárczy that as the Foreign Ministry had not sent the number of cars he had said would be necessary for his staff to be transported to the royal
fortress in Buda, he would not be able to present himself to the head of state. He put the whole responsibility for his action on the Hungarian Foreign Ministry and remained adamant, no matter what arguments Bárczy used to persuade him otherwise. One hour after he had been supposed to appear with the
ambassador
, Bárczy returned empty-handed. The general frustration can only be imagined.

Lajos Rudnay, my cabinet chief, brought news of this to me at lunchtime. Obviously something had to be done at once to
prevent
our relations with Yugoslavia becoming poisoned by what had just occurred. The ambassador might well take the insult as directed not against himself but against his country, and unless I was going to be able somehow to put matters right at once,
endless
complications would ensue which could only end in
humiliating
apologies from our government. There was no question that Kánya’s action had no lawful justification. We had ratified the Treaty of Trianon, which had specifically stipulated that all ethnic Serbs living in Banat or Bácksa (both former Hungarian provinces) would now become fully-fledged Yugoslav citizens. Given enough ill-will Kánya’s action could easily be interpreted as denial of the treaty’s validity by the Hungarian foreign office. It was therefore vitally important that I should speak to the ambassador as quickly as possible so as to make sure that when he made his report to Belgrade he could truthfully say that this delicate affair had been settled to his entire satisfaction.

Accordingly, although I was still convalescent, I sent Rudnay to the ambassador saying I would like to see him at once.

Early that afternoon he arrived. We settled the matter without delay, as soon as I had explained that I had had absolutely no knowledge of Kánya’s action and that I deeply regretted that my illness had prevented my handling the matter myself.

My proposal was as follows:

As soon as I was on my feet again I would myself arrange the presentation of credentials to Horthy, to whom I would have already made suitable excuses to prevent his taking offence at the failure to accept his first invitation. As to the question of those attachés who were formerly Hungarian subjects, I too agreed that their appointment was undesirable as it might create the sort
of resentment which could be harmful to the amicable relations we were all striving to achieve. I proposed therefore that the gentlemen in question should indeed be presented to the head of state as members of the ambassador’s staff, but that immediately afterwards they should return to Yugoslavia and be replaced by others who hailed from the old kingdom of Serbia. As to the future, it was agreed that Belgrade would only send us persons to whose antecedents we could take no possible objection.

The ambassador accepted these proposals, and so this trivial but potentially inflammatory matter was resolved.

About a week later I did indeed direct the ceremony of
presenting
the ambassador’s credentials. One of the two attachés left Budapest at once, and the other shortly afterwards.

This incident shows how even such a personal matter can be smoothed over with goodwill and good manners, despite the lack of an internationally recognized precedent. Of course Kánya could perfectly well have dealt with the matter by telling Mihailovic that he could not give the
Agrément
until the two attachés we considered undesirable had been withdrawn from Budapest. But to give the
Agrément
and then make conditions when it was too late and only to send one car as if the conditions had been agreed and imagine the ambassador would swallow the insult made no sense to me and is hard to understand.

It can only be explained if one is familiar with the ingrained arrogance of those who served the Ballplatz. Their noses were rubbed in it from the day they started as junior clerks. Maybe it was foolish, when a diplomat’s job must surely always be to smooth things over, but then in earlier days, when the monarchy was still a great power, she could afford the luxury of being rude to those she considered beneath her. It may have been
unreasonable
and certainly was expensive, but this was the Ballplatz in the old days. For us to maintain this arrogant tone was, to say the least, harmful. Kánya, of course, had become accustomed to acting in his way when, as a young employee of the Austrian
consular
service, he had found himself lording it over some small town in the Balkans when the Austro-Hungarian consul stood sky-high on the social scale. Kánya never lost this Viennese arrogance, which had remained unchanged since the days of
Metternich; and, following the Ballplatz tradition, never lost his disdain not only for all inhabitants of the Balkans but also for the Italians. He loathed the northern Germans, held the French to be unreliable and reckless (as many had thought after Sedan); and his contempt was not affected by the fact that Italy had become accepted as a Great Power, that since the Balkan war and, later, the Versailles treaty, both the Greek and Serb
kingdoms
were no longer mere pawns on the board; while through their own efforts Romania and the new Yugoslavia, which included Serbia, were even now emerging as powers in their own right. Even France, after years of hard struggle, was only now educating her sons with a realistic ideology. Of course, Kánya could not have failed to see all this, but he was too emotionally involved in the old attitudes to understand what it all meant. He was firmly, if perhaps unconsciously, stuck in the belief that all this was temporary and should not be taken seriously as it would not last. As a result he was apt to overestimate the difficulties now being encountered by the new states, to exaggerate the
dissatisfaction
of the Croats, the Slovaks, of the Ruthenians and, as a result, to take pleasure in personally being in contact with frequently dubious and shady unofficial envoys from our new neighbours.