HUNGARY: Kdrolyi to Canada

Karolyi to Canada

A London despatch states that Count Michael Karolyi and family are in Cardiff, Wales, en route for Canada, ” where the Count proposes to live his remaining years.”

Few political figures in this post-War period have excited such violent controversy as Count Karolyi.

His chief claim to notice before the War was his marriage to Countess Katinka Andrassy, a daughter of Count Julius Andrassy, last Foreign Minister of the Dual Monarchy. The Andrassy family is one of the principal pillars of Magyar aristocracy. During the last century a Count Andrassy was Foreign Minister at Vienna, and considered one of the greatest statesmen of his time. Countess Karolyi, granddaughter of this famous statesman, was once considered to be the most beautiful woman in Europe. The beginning and the end of Karolyi’s influence in politics lies between October 31, 1918, and March 22. 1919. It has been written of him that he is the “Pure Fool of Hungary with the accent on the pure.” Recently the Budapest Supreme Court confiscated his lands, finding him guilty of high treason. There is no question of accents. Karolyi is either a fool or a traitor; most probably a fool: At the end of October, 1918, he formed the Hungarian Provisional National Assembly, and some time later he was elected first and last President of the Hungarian People’s Republic. At this time Hungary was at war with the Allies. Karolyi either surrounded himself, or, more probably was surrounded, by a group of disreputable Hungarians and Jews. It appears that his best defense is that he was the tool of these people. At any rate, when Karolyi and some of his ministers appeared before General Franchet d’Esperey at Belgrade to negotiate armistice terms, the Allied Generalissimo looked scornfully at them and said: “Vous etes juifs?” Turning to Karolyi he said: “Vous etes tombes si bas?” Then turning on his heel he left them, declining to negotiate terms of an armistice for Hungary. That was the impression which the Ministers of Hungary made. After this it appeares that Karolyi was unable, or did not try, to do anything for Hungary. Disaster followed disaster until, on March 22, 1919, following a note from Lieutenant Colonel Vyx, representing the Entente, the power of Government was seized by the proletariat, and Karolyi resigned the Presidency of the Republic. “I preferred this sacrifice to assuming the cheap martyrdom of letting them arrest me, because I wanted to avoid bloodshed and mass murder in the streets of Budapest, to spare the country from the worst horrors of civil war”* Nevertheless much blood was spilled. It is significant that the staunchest defense of Karolyi comes from one of his Bolshevik brethern, Professor Jaszi-Jakabo-vics in a most unreliable book on the revolution. Karolyi fled to Gablonz in Czecho-Slovakia after his resignation, thence to Austria, and on to Italy, whence he was forced to go to Yugo-Slavia. Now he is about to settle in Canada.

*KABQLTI’S.DEFENSE. -ArJjeiter-Zeitung of Vienna, July 25,