The Phoenix Land (50 page)

My first move was to call on Edward Wood, the English delegate. I explained to him that it was because of this minority problem that we had to protest against a Council seat for Yugoslavia. He said that he understood our point of view but did not otherwise unbend. I then turned to Hanotaux. He seemed
more appreciative but did not yield either, even after we had
discussed
the matter at length. He stated that it had already been decided. Finding myself in a hopeless situation, I then suggested that, if this could not be changed, and the ‘Little
Entente
’ was thereby given a permanent advocate in the Council, perhaps France as the traditional defender of the people’s rights would accept the role of champion of the minorities and use her powerful voice in defence of the justice of their cause. Hanotaux accepted this most solemnly. Indeed he was a great and
noble-minded
man. I believe that he only did this for me because he had grown fond of me, and I always think of him with gratitude.

This was a substantial achievement, and I was sure that Hanotaux would keep his word. It also meant that when I became ambassador in Paris I would always be able to count on his support and protection.

Nevertheless, I still considered this only as a second-best arrangement that had been compulsorily imposed upon us. It would still be better if somehow we could bring about the failure of the plan to give a seat to Yugoslavia; and so, although I did not have much hope, this is what I started to work towards.

First I considered what forces I had to contend with, and decided at once that there were three groups where I might muster support. First came the Baltic States, who always stood as one man. With them I had always had good relations. Because of our common Finno-Ugric origins we had always been in
sympathy
with them, and so I won them over easily. The Finns and Estonians had long looked on the Hungarians as poor relations do on their more eminent cousins. They were proud of the
relationship
. This meant three votes for us, for Finland brought with her Estonia and Latvia. It was possible that Lithuania would also join us as, since the decision about Vilna, they felt a great
resentment
against the Great Powers. And so it happened. Now we were four.

The next, and much stronger group, was formed of the South Americans. At that time their leader was Rivas-Vicunna, one of the leading delegates from Chile. He was a dignified man with a great love of truth. I do not now recall how it was that we came to be on terms of confidential friendship. It may well have been
that I found him sympathetic at our first meeting, or maybe I found just the words to arouse his sympathy. Perhaps he had first aroused my interest because I had once read that the Chileans still represented the purest Castillian bloodlines since they had never intermarried with the Moorish, Indian or black races. This may all be later rationalization, but whatever it was it is certain that he stood by us most steadfastly. He promised to rally to our side all the other South American countries. He started by
inviting
me to a dinner where I met all the South American delegates, and he saw that I had the opportunity to talk to each of them individually. As a result, I was able to tell them all sorts of facts about Hungary of which they previously had had no idea. They heard me with great interest, and, since my good friend Rivas-Vicunna had previously spoken well of me to all of them, I did not find it hard to win them to my way of thinking. It was in our favour that they started without any preconceived partisan
feelings
and indeed found much of the mutual distrust and hatred of the European countries for one another senseless and absurd. This meant that we now had some fifteen or sixteen votes: a tidy number but still not enough.

As there were fifty-two countries represented, I would need twenty-seven votes to be sure of winning.

The third group comprised the Asiatic countries. Their leader was Japan, and so I started to talk to members of the Japanese delegation.

I already knew the Japanese ambassador to Vienna; and I had also read a great deal about Japanese culture. I had always been fascinated by the Far East, and my friend Vilmos Pröhle had taught me a great deal about the Japanese. Ever since the
Russo-Japanese
War
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I had learned more from an assiduous reading of the
Illustrated London News
, which for decades had published much about Japan and the character of its people. I was familiar with their unspoken patriotism, and also with the
Bushido
traditions
that ruled their daily lives, from how they cut their nails to their acceptance of hara-kiri, the ritual suicide to preserve honour. Perhaps also I have in me, by some process of Mendelian inherited characteristic, an oriental sympathy that allows me more understanding of the Japanese temperament
than is the lot of those whose ancestors are of wholly European origin.

The members of the Japanese delegation took all their meals in the dining room of the Beau-Rivage. They ate their lunch at a single long table, while I sat at a small table nearby. It was
interesting
to watch them. They ate in silence with a mechanical air, almost as if they were still asleep, lazily, and seemingly
indifferent
to their colleagues’ presence. Occasionally they would all suddenly liven up, as if struck by lightning; and this was when a Chinese delegate entered the room. Then their eyes all focussed on him, as they carefully looked to see with whom the Chinaman had come in, with whom he spoke: indeed seemingly taking note of everything about him. This only lasted for seconds before the masks of apparent indifference fell once more into place, and anyone would imagine that they had no interest at all in what went on around them. There was something frightening in this latent invisible alertness.

I became on reasonably good terms with them from our first encounter. I soon discovered that they were interested in my being Hungarian, for they had a keen feeling that Hungarians were in some way related to them. I have no idea if there may be any historical justification for this, although I believe that their country had been invaded in antiquity by Hiung Nuk, and by this conquest the eastern Huns had become the ancestors of the
Daimios
, the ancient Japanese noble caste. This has been denied by certain Indo-Germanic scholars who claim that the Japanese ruling families are descended from Malaysian pirates; but,
whatever
the truth may be, I can only say that, while in my country this notion of having Far Eastern cousins exists only in the dream-like theories of some ‘turanist’ scholars
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, it is still widely believed in Japan. This was an asset when I went to see the Japanese delegate.

I started by giving him a resumé of Hungary’s recent past. I explained what an injustice it was to brand us as war criminals when there was proof enough that Tisza, then prime minister of Hungary, had strongly protested at Austria’s decision to send such an impossible ultimatum to Serbia and had only remained in his post by the order of the old ruler
130
. With exemplary
patience he had silently suffered public blame for involving us in a war he himself had worked so hard to prevent. Although he had been no warmonger, it was because people believed the opposite that he had been murdered. Only later, when the records in Vienna had been made public, did the world get to know that Tisza had been forced to remain at his post since he was only too aware that, if he had then made his real views known, the morale of the country would have been shattered, and the ultimate catastrophe would have come all the sooner. He had seen clearly that the loss of the war would inevitably bring with it the
dismemberment
of his country – and this is indeed what happened. By keeping the secret, he became a martyr to his oath of
allegiance
and to his sense of duty
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.

The Japanese seemed much impressed by what I had told him of Tisza and then, uttering the greatest compliment a Japanese could give, said: ‘For us it is a moral law to endure infamy if it is for the good of our country.’

He then gladly agreed to vote with us on the matter of
elections
to the Council and promised also to rally the support of China and Siam.

After this visit the Japanese treated me as if I were a
fully-fledged
Asiatic and soon afterwards asked me to attend an
otherwise
wholly Asian dinner. The host was Ishii, their chief delegate who was then the Mikado’s ambassador in Paris. The entire Japanese, Chinese and Siamese delegations, with most of their wives in national dress, were present. I was the only European.

It was a most interesting dinner not only because of the exotic appearance of the guests. The Chinese women in their national costumes were ravishing. I had already seen them in the hotel, but I had found something droll about their appearance when dressed in European clothes. Mostly rather short, they walked awkwardly in high-heel western shoes. Now they were
dazzlingly
beautiful. It was not possible to talk to them, although whether this was because they spoke no English or because
etiquette
forbade them to speak at all I do not know. They smiled but never spoke. On the other hand, the Japanese women – there were only two or three of them – were quite Europeanized. I sat
next to the hostess, who was a real beauty; not at all like the diminutive doll-like geishas of popular legend but rather a tall slender woman with an ivory skin that would have been the envy of any elegant European. Her face was narrow, her nose thin, and she held her head high above a tapering neck. In an off-
the-shoulder
Paris dress she was a ravishing figure who would have stood out in any gathering of the world’s most famous beauties. She had a completely cosmopolitan air.

The conversation was in English, as few of the guests would have understood any of the others’ languages.

It was soon clear to what extent I had been accepted as one of them. They talked to me unreservedly about their former allies, especially about the English, who were the subject of much
criticism
. They all believed that they had been made false promises that Australia would be opened to Chinese and Japanese
immigrants
so as to induce them to support the Allies in the war. Both countries suffered from rapidly increasing populations they could not support at home, and as Australia was so sparsely inhabited they had counted on this promise as a solution to their problems. When the war was won, however, the promise had not been kept, and even America imposed new restrictions on
immigration
. The Far Eastern countries received no reward, and even access to colonization in Polynesia was denied them. And not only that, but it seemed that there was to be no question of
restitution
of the huge losses they had incurred. The gist of
everything
they said was that they no longer believed in the good faith of the countries of Europe.

I enjoyed all this whole-heartedly, especially the fact that the usually reserved and inscrutable Orientals said all this openly to me just as if I were one of them and so could be trusted. For a diplomat this was indeed a great satisfaction.

With four Baltic, four Asian and fifteen South American votes added to our own, we now had twenty-four on our side: close to but not yet quite forming a majority. I still had to look for a few more, so I tackled the Bulgarian and Albanian delegates, and with them I obtained a majority vote that caused the nomination of Yugoslavia to be defeated. If I remember the voting was twenty-six to eighteen. I can still hardly believe it.

There were several especially favourable circumstances at that time. It was fortunate that the election meeting’s president was the highly popular old Swede Branting, while it was also undoubtedly in our favour that everyone knew that it was the Serbs who had repudiated my agreement with Ninçic, thus labelling themselves the spoilers of the peace process. There were probably other reasons too, notably that not a few of the neutral countries, led by the South Americans, had grown tired of everything being decided by France and England without prior consultation with anyone else.

All this required nerve-shattering relentless work. It needed a great knowledge of men, or rather of the spirit that guided
different
peoples. It meant being constantly on the alert to analyse every word spoken to me so that I could put myself in the mental position of the man I wanted to win over. I feel that one of the most important assets of a diplomat is the ability to understand a way of thinking quite alien to one’s own. I feel too that maybe it was my experience as a writer that provided me with
something
of this ability, since all writers must be able to put
themselves
into the minds of others. It was also to my personal advantage that since early youth I had read widely and, having an excellent memory, retained a multitude of diverse facts,
ethnographical
and historical, which would at once come to mind when I found myself talking to foreigners, were they Finns, Swedes, Japanese or Bulgarians. I found that having such
knowledge
of their own countries rejoiced their hearts and, indeed, impressed many of those with whom I had to deal. I even remembered facts about Simon Bolivar gathered from my
boyhood
reading of adventure stories.

There was another aspect of this affair that surprised me then – and indeed still does – and that was that all my hard work before the election could be done in secret, and that the secret was kept. Neither then nor later did I see the smallest sign that anyone had noticed what I had been doing. I am particularly sure of this as regards the French, who always displayed towards me the greatest goodwill, despite the undoubted fact that, as the nomination to the Council had been put forward by them, they would have been understandably angry if they had known my
part in its frustration. This was probably because the French were so sure of themselves that perhaps they had not bothered to wonder what was being whispered in the wings; and perhaps, too, because I had been dealing with diplomats who knew how to watch their tongues. It was an exhilarating experience for me when the voting took place, and we won with an important majority.