THE DANUBE: Puppet Strings

Into the highceilinged, ornamental, gilt-walled hall of the Hungarian Parliament’s Lower Chamber walked surefootedly one day last week a young, handsome aristocratic statesman exuding confidence. He was Count Stephan Csáky, Hungary’s Foreign Minister; before him were 262 uniformed deputies, waiting expectantly to hear a scheduled speech on foreign relations.

The room in which Count Csáky stood represented only a small part of the detailed workmanship and great wealth that had been poured into Hungary’s impressive Houses of Parliament. Standing on the Rudolph Quay in Pest (i.e., on the left bank of the Danube, the flat half of Budapest), this 19th-Century, Gothic-style building ranks as one of the largest legislative palaces of the world. It cost $8,000,000, covers four-and-one-half acres, has a dome 315 feet high. It was intended, when built, to show Hungary’s importance, but after World War I, which reduced Hungary’s population and territory by 70%, the country scarcely rated such an edifice. Few things of world-shaking importance have happened there in the past 20 years; it was left to the young Count to show that doings at Parliament Square, Budapest, could still be called significant.

Ever since the present war started, enlightened statesmen of the little States of southeastern Europe have believed that the Danubian countries must either hang together or be hanged separately. They urged the formation of a bloc of Danubian neutrals who would temporarily forget their sectional differences. Fortnight ago even Hungary, most intransigent of revision-seeking powers, was believed ready to join up. Then last week something happened: the big powers yanked their strongest strings, and Danubian federation was once more pulled asunder. The biggest string stretched was Count Csáky.

His speech had the blunt, threatening, direct, totalitarian touch so typical of the masters of Berchtesgaden and Rome, whom the Foreign Minister has several times visited. He hailed the “new era” that Nazi Germany had brought to Eastern Europe. He gloated over the “collapse of an artificially created Czechoslovakia.” He sneered at onetime President Eduard Benes of Czecho-Slovakia and resented what he called M. Benes’ renewed “propaganda and activities.” As for neighbors:

> “Hungary’s most intimate friend is Italy.”

> “To Bulgaria we are tied by friendship and by the injustice of the treaties.”

> “Relations with Yugoslavia are improving. There are no unsolvable problems between the two countries.”

> “It is impossible to imagine a clash of interests between Hungary and Russia.”

But when Count Csáky, in the course of his travelogue, arrived at the Rumanian border, his tone grew tough. That country, he said, was the chief stumbling block to a Danubian bloc of neutrals. Until Rumania decided to listen to the “voice of the new era”—i.e., hand back to Hungary Transylvania, which Rumania took at the end of World War I—Hungary would refuse to play ball. “It is up to Rumania to accept the ideas of modern times and thus cooperate in forming a new order on the Danube,” threatened the Foreign Minister. “Otherwise history will lay its hands on her.”

In Bucharest the reaction to this sudden recrudescence of Hungarian Irredentism was instantaneous. Rumanians thought it no coincidence that German troops were reported concentrating at just that time in the Nazi dependency of Slovakia, north of Hungary, and they suspected that the troops were meant not only as a reminder to Rumania to behave but also as a hint to Hungary that toughness toward Rumania was expected.

Nor was it a coincidence that a Nazi trade delegation in Bucharest demanded: 1) more Rumanian products; 2) cheaper prices; 3) increased transportation facilities. More than half the German-Rumanian trade in grain and oil used to go by sea from Constantsa to Hamburg. That route is now cut and the trade has to be rerouted up the Danube or across southeastern Europe’s poor railroad system. But barges and railroad cars are scarce in Rumania, and, moreover, many are owned by France and Great Britain. When the German delegation requested the Rumanians to commandeer these, Rumania refused. The Germans departed, but scarcely had they passed the frontier before Rumania had changed Governments. Premier Constantin Argetoianu resigned, and King Carol appointed 47-year-old George Tata-rescu to head a new Government.

Poet and playwright, formerly identified with Rumania’s very conservative Liberal Party, M. Tatarescu is known as a deadly foe of the pro-Nazi Iron Guards. At the war’s outbreak, he was Rumanian Ambassador to France. King Carol considered him a Francophile, and so interested was the King in keeping Rumania neutral that he recalled the Ambassador for no other reason than that he was too much of an Allied partisan. His new appointment was accepted in France as good news, in Germany as bad; Rumania had at least entered the picket lines of the Allied camp. One good turn deserving another, 36 new British-made Blenheim bombers were delivered in Bucharest.

Belgrade was as sensitive as Bucharest to the Allied-German string-pulling in her part of Europe. Yugoslavia’s most immediate problem was copper. The Yugoslav copper mines, largest of Europe, are operated by French and British companies which no longer sell to Germany. Moreover, a French trade delegation is scheduled to arrive soon in Belgrade with the explicit purpose of buying up all this copper output. The special Yugoslav dilemma is whether to expropriate the mines and let the output go to Germany, in which case the country may risk an Allied blockade, or whether to let the French buy the copper, in which case Führer Hitler might decide to create a diversion on the German-Yugoslav frontier.