HUNGARY: Confidence

Shrewdly sidestepping such grave internal problems as the peasants’ demands for partitioning the big estates, what to do with Hungary’s Jews, Premier Count Paul Teleki last week asked Hungarians to vote confidence in his foreign policy of close but wary association with the Axis by keeping his Government Party in power. In Hungary’s first secret ballot since 1920 they did. Result: for the Government Party 180 out of 260 seats. But this Hungarian rhapsody ended when returns showed that the five Hungarian Nazi parties had increased their seats from 14 to 39 and their total popular vote was 21% as compared to the Government’s 56%. In Budapest Nazis polled 145,000 votes to the Government’s 132,000, all other parties’ 144,000.

For the first time the outstanding opposition party in Parliament, jubilant young Nazis swaggered through Budapest streets, thronged their brilliantly lighted, swank, Berlin-financed headquarters.