Democrats are in demand in Budapest. Choleric, dictatorial Regent Nicholas Horthy and his landed-gentry friends need a new act, are ready to try "the People's Will" if it can get them out of the war without penalty. Except for the brief moment of Count Michael Károlyi's Republic at the end of World War I, Hungary has never seriously tried democracy and the first moves were awkward.
Royalist Count Anton Sigray solemnly assured the docile Parliament that the Hungarian State had always been based on democratic principles, always pursued a democratic policy "in the best meaning of the word. The Hungarian kingdom...