MAGYARS AND SLAVS.
INTERFERENCE by criticism between the different races which make up a nationality is, as a rule, as dangerous and as invidious as interference between man and wife. Neither side is likely to be grateful, and there is always a danger of the quarrellers finding at any rate one point of agreement in hating the interferer. In spite, however, of these considerations, we are tempted to say a word or two about Hungary and the difficulties between the races which compose it, our reason being the interesting telegram from the Vienna correspondent of the Timm published in Tuesday's paper. If we were indifferent to what befell Hungary, had no sympathy for the gallant Magyar race, and did not care whether the successors of Kossuth and De.11 and the other patriots of 1848 went under or survived, we should not dream of offering advice to the rulers of Hungary, or of expressing our regret at what seem to us as onlookers certain dangerous tendencies in Hungarian politics. It is because of our sympathy with Hungary as a whole, and our admiration for the great qualities of the Magyars, that we venture to state our opinion on a matter of internal politics, and at the same time to express the hope that our action, whether it is appreciated or condemned in Hungary, will at any rate not be misunderstood. Whether we are right or wrong, we will ask the Magyar leaders to believe us to be their friends and not their enemies. Whatever we may say is prompted, not by prejudice or enmity, but by the very reverse. We desire to see Hungary grow in health and strength long to live, and we want to see the Magyars taking the lead which belongs to them owing to their remarkable political instincts and civic intelligence. But we want to see them lead in a country of free men, not dominate, either by force or by political strategy, in a land of serfs.
We do not propose to enter into minute ethnological details, but we do not believe that any impartial person who considers the evidence can doubt that at the present moment the Magyars are pursuing a policy towards the Slavonic peoples of Hungary proper and of Croatia which is unworthy of them, and which if continued must produce the gravest consequences. In effect, the Magyars are determined to maintain their existing ascendency at all costs. But they realise that under modern conditions this cannot be done by the old direct methods. They cannot in the twentieth century assume the attitude of- " I am a blessed Glendoveer,
'Tis mine to speak and yours to hear."
They must work through democratic and representative institutions, and cannot frankly say to the Slav races of Hungary: " We have a better right to rule than you, and you must be made to acknowledge our right." The method which the Magyars now seem determined to adopt is that of the "Magyarisation " of the sub-nationalities. They do not say that the Slays cannot expect equal rights. Instead, they say that for the safety and welfare of their common country it is essential that Magyar ideals and Magyar influences shall prevail. The way of safety is the Magyarisation of the other races. If and when the Slays become Magyarised in language and aspirations, then the Magyars will be perfectly willing to share political power with them. Till this happy result is reached the Slays must, by various methods of political strategy, be kept in their proper place and prevented from interfering with the true destiny of Hungary,—their proper place being one of political impotence.
We do not wish here to describe in detail the methods of political strategy to which we have alluded, but they may be generally likened to those of the American politician in one of the Southern States who thus described to an English stranger the attitude of the whites to the blacks :—" Sir, we have no racial prejudice and no hatred of the coloured man. On the contrary, when he is well behaved we like him and feel every sympathy for him, but we vote him ' and mean to vote him.' It is for his good and the good of the country that we should do so." Voting a coloured person means, of course, refusing to allow him to exercise the franchise except in the way desired by the whites. Whether this is a wise policy in the Southern States we cannot discuss here, but that it is an unwise one when pursued in the case of the cultivated and intelligent men of Slavonic strain who form the non-Magyar population of Hungary we do not doubt for a moment. That in a certain sense it might be good for them to be Magyarised, and for a more homogeneous State to be produced, we are quite willing to believe; but, at the same time, we are convinced that no successful Magyarisation is possible through the methods which the Magyars unfortunately seem determined to adopt. The Slays are too numerous, too intelligent, too proud, and too richly endowed with high racial aspirations to be dragooned into acquiescence in Magyar ideals. That they might adopt them, or a great part of them, willingly we can well behove, but the7 will never accept them under pressure. Even that which is best in those ideals will become hateful if once it is made the symbol of ascendency. Cromwell says in one of his speeches :—" Every sect saith : 0 give me liberty ! ' But give him it, and to his power he will not yield it to anybody else. Liberty of conscience is a natural right, and he that would have it ought to give it." If we substitute " Political liberty" for " Liberty of conscience," these words deserve the most earnest consideration of the Magyars. They asked for liberty, and through their high courage and tenacity they obtained it. Alas ! now that they have got it they will not yield it to anybody else, and forget that he that would have it ought to give it. Yet, set as the Magyars seem to be upon taking the wrong course, we venture to ask them to consider whether, even apart from all questions of abstract right and justice, and in view of the future of their own race, they would not be wise to adopt a different policy and give to others what they have claimed for themselves. If they are willing to do this, we do not doubt that they may play, owing to their moral and intellectual qualities, a role of the utmost importance in the future of Central and South-Eastern Europe. If they are determined to lead through sympathy the Slavonic population of Hungary, and perhaps even of Austria, who knows whether they may not in the future become, as it were, the spear-head of the ablest -and most intelligent section of the great Slavonic family, and by moral and intellectual rather than physical force or political subtlety Magyarise the Slays of Austria ? If they refuse, and thus miss the great opportunity before them, we cannot conceal from ourselves the fear that the future of the Magyars must be short and precarious. Even reckoning among them nearly a million Jews, and many hundreds of thousands of recruits whose allegiance is due rather to interest than to conviction, and who would leave them at a time of stress and peril, the Magyars are unable to represent themselves as possessing a population of more than eight and a half millions. But if we consider the vast and ever-growing multitudes of the Slav race, can it be hoped that a people of such comparatively small numbers as the Magyars will be able to hold their own ? No man dare prophesy in detail the future of the Slays, but we cannot be wrong in thinking that somehow or other in the course of the next fifty or sixty years the race will come to the front. We do not say, and we do not believe, that the future belongs to the Slays, but at any rate they are destined to play an infinitely greater part in Europe than they do now. If, as is quite conceivable, the unrest in Russia ends in the triumph of Pan-Slavism under some form of Constitutional government, Russia's energies and ambitions will be turned away from Asia and towards Europe. In such an event, it is by no means unlikely that she may choose as her role in the first half of the new century that of the emancipator of the Slays. Should that happen, it is not necessary to dwell upon the dangers and difficulties that must threaten those who have insisted on making a large portion of the Slav race regard them with feelings of special enmity.
We cannot leave the subject with which we have been dealing without making it clear that we by no means desire to write as if we thought that the Slays were angels of light and as wise and enlightened politically as the Magyars are unwise. We fully realise that the words we have quoted from Cromwell apply with equal force to the Slays. They can show a capital example of a race which asks for liberty for itself and will not yield it to others. Look at the case of the Poles and the Ruthenes. The Poles in Galicia have obtained from Austria a very large measure of self-government, but this liberty they will by no means yield to the Ruthenes who form a portion of the Galician population. They are oppressed in the matter of language, of education, and of the exercise of political rights. In a word, the Poles seem to have copied the political strategy of the Magyars, though they have not even the excuse of belonging to a different race, for Poles and Ruthenes are alike of Slavonic origin. In these instances of Slav injustice the Magyars should find a special opportunity and a special reason for main- taining true liberty. If they were to set an example in freedom and toleration to the rest of the seething nationalities that make up the Austrian Empire, and to adopt a bold and a generous policy, they would, we are sure. reap a rich reward. The moral force of such an example would be tremendous, and would place the Magyars in a position of immense strength and influence.
The sands are running out, but even now it is not too late. If the Magyars will voluntarily abandon what we have termed their political strategy, will grant a system of universal suffrage such as exists in the other half of the Dual Monarchy, and will abstain from the exercise of unfair and arbitrary influence at the elections, we believe that they will in the end emerge triumphant. No doubt there may be for a year or two a good deal of trouble, agitation, and unrest while the newly enfranchised citizens are learning how to exercise their power. Ultimately, how- ever, the political experience and the political instincts of the Magyar race must prevail, and they will find that they have abandoned an unjust and ill-founded political ascendency to take up one that was far better worth having, because founded on moral and intellectual qualities and " broad based upon the people's will."
We have one word more to say. We do not propose to open our correspondence columns to a discussion as to the political strategy of the Magyars or as to their treatment of the sub-races in Hungary, for such discussion is far more likely to do harm than good to the cause we have at heart,—that is, a strong and united Hungary. This decision will not, of course, preclude us from publishing a correction should any matter of fact prove to have been misstated by us.
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