Foreign News: Munk

What does it mean when an orator says “in Russia’s sphere of influence the civil liberties of non-Communists are suppressed?” Last week TIME Correspondent Robert Low was in Szeged, a south Hungarian town famous for paprika and embroidered slippers, when Communist suppression became a dramatic reality. Low cabled:

A gusty wind, sweeping up from the Banat plain across the Yugoslav frontier, seemed to heighten the nervous tension in the town. It snapped at the shawls and embroidered blouses of the peasants, sent newspapers and political handbills scurrying around the huge square in clouds of dust. Slowly, the crowd gathered around the oldfashioned, three-storied brownstone hotel at the corner of the square. From windows the loudspeakers monotonously blared out the announcement: “At 6 o’clock, a meeting of the Freedom Party.”

At a marble-topped table, in an unswept, musty cafe, I sat discussing the meeting with the three anti-Communist members of Parliament who were scheduled to speak that evening. One of them, tall, hawk-nosed Vince Nagy, former Minister of Interior in the Károlyi Government after World War I (no kin to exiled Premier Ferenc Nagy), said: “A few days ago when [Dezsö] Sulyok, head of our party, said in Parliament there was no freedom of speech in Hungary today, the Communists called him a liar. Now we’ll see.”

Fifteen minutes later he had his answer.

Surplus Food. Seven hundred people —peasants, workmen, other townspeople —jammed the hotel’s auditorium to capacity. On the stage, the speaker’s table was covered with the green, white and red of the Hungarian national colors picked out in wild flowers. Everything looked peaceful enough. But the local secretary of the Freedom Party was worried. As he took me into the box overlooking the auditorium, he said: “Yesterday the Communists sent down a truckload of agitators from Budapest to organize things for this meeting.” He pointed out a group of 150 men bunched together, halfway down the side aisle. They looked tough, all right.

“We’ve asked the police to maintain order,” he said, “but they say they’ll only intervene if there is trouble. And if we organized the guards, they would accuse us of using fascist methods. The guards are a political luxury that only the Communists and left-bloc parties can afford.”

When the three M.P.s walked on to the stage, they got a rousing welcome. But as Nagy stepped up to the microphone and started to speak, his first words were drowned out by shouts from leather-lunged Communists: “Long live Stalin; long live Rakosi.”

Immediately came the crowd’s response: “Long live the Hungarian Republic. Long live freedom.”

Unruffled, Nagy began again: “I appeal to the Communists who came here to break up this meeting. . . .” He was answered with a shower of eggs from the Communists.

It takes a good man to find the mot juste at a moment like that, but Nagy was up to it. He cracked: “I am pleased to see that the Communists find the food situation in Hungary good enough to use fresh eggs for political activities.”

Suddenly the public-address system went dead, the lights went out. The main power switch for the district had been pulled. And that seemed to be a prearranged signal. Like a well-trained football formation, the Communists began pressing toward the speaker’s stand, shouting: “Munkások egyesüljetek!” (Workers unite!). It had the cadence of: “We want a touchdown.”

Out came blackjacks and brass knuckles. Two Freedom Party men went down under the onslaught. A roar went up from the crowd; in a moment hundreds of people were bearing down on the Communists, brandishing chairs over their heads (see cut). One man went crashing through the glass to the ground, two floors below. Fury flamed up, then died out like a flash of powder. A couple of dozen casualties lay on the floor.

But the Communists were forced out of the hall. A cheer went up from the crowd; the unbroken chairs were put back into place. The meeting would goon.

You Can’t Win. The Freedom Party secretary came dashing into my box. His eye was cut and his mouth was bleeding, but he shouted triumphantly: “We’ve taught the bastards a lesson—we’ve won.”

But he spoke too soon.The Communists were back, and with them the grey uniformed police, rifles at the ready. One Freedom Party man who attempted to defend himself from a renewed attack by a blackjack-wielding Communist was promptly arrested.

On to the platform stepped a fat colonel of police: “In the interests of public order this meeting is closed.”

While the injured were being carried out, the police calmly proceeded to arrest the “disturbers of peace” pointed out to them by the Communists.

When Nagy and two other deputies appeared in the window of the hotel overlooking the square, a tremendous cheer went up from the crowd that had gathered there. But this was a short-lived victory, too. The police colonel spoke again: “I warn you, if you appear anywhere in public, I’ll arrest you for attempting to incite a riot.”

Soon a hundred police were in the square dispersing the crowd of 8,000. They first drove a wedge down the center, then divided halves into quarters, until each group was small enough to deal with individually.

Finally someone said: “No free speech —but a lesson in tactics.”